The Empire Fights Back, or 'Fangs for the help'.

Shambling zombies and regiments of skeletons led by their vampire masters have been raiding human villages. Even the pagan Vikings are considering allying with the imperial forces. The empire needs all the help it can get and although distrustful of the brutish Northmen it will overlook their dark tendencies.

The Vikings include beserkers, in their bear and wolf skins. These warriors, usually armed with two handed axes, will frequently throw off all armour and much of their clothing to charge into battle in a frenzy or foam flecked mouths and grinding of teeth. A rare few, especially of the wolf and bear cults, even shape shift into enormous werewolves.
Most famous of the werewolves is Snorri Thorsen. Even at birth he was unusual, with only four digits on each limb and thick eyebrows.
In his teens Snorri began baying at the moon, particularly full moons. He took to the teenaged boys mock battles with gusto, so much so that the other boys grew afraid of him. A raiding party of orks changed things forever.

Thirty of the slavering green skins attacked ten of the boys when they were fishing by the fjord. None of them survived - the orks that is. You see Snorri was with the boys, even if the others kept some distance from him. As the orks screeched in triumph at their discovery Snorri jumped, a full five metres from his rock perch ,right into the middle of the intruders.
Not only did Snorri display his usual aggression and strength; he actually grew and changed.........into a wolf like creature. Snorri's clothes lay shredded at his clawed feet. He roared, bestially, from his sharply toothed mouth and grabbed the nearest ork and with his huge hairy hands deftly removed his head! He sank his fangs into another ork's neck. In a whirr of unnaturally muscled hairy wolf/human limbs and snapping jaws the orks fell...in pieces.

Snorri was covered in sword and axe cuts that began to heal within minutes. A nearby Viking boy, Erik Ravener, saved from an ork's clutches, stared up at towering Snorri. 'Thangs...I mean thanks.' Snorri growled an acknowledgement and bounded off, into the forest after the scent of a female wolf.

Snorri returned to the village some days later, covered in mud and blood, completely naked and back in his boy shape. The others accepted him, warily but gratefully.
Two years later, at age sixteen Snorri was accompanying Viking warriors in their raids on other humans and orks. Unlike other werewolves, in living memory, Snorri could change more readily; no full moon was necessary, just the threat of violence. Unlike the other werewolves Snorri did not turn on his own kind in battle...usually.





Meanwhile the Empire has mobilized its heavy infantry.


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