The Coywolves (Pronounced Kai-wolves)
The Coywolves are not a Pack in the traditional sense. Three generations ago, they were only travelers, traders, and bodyguards – unfortunate ones at that. They began as a trade caravan traveling between the Watchwolf settlements of Luna and of Sol, whose number also included traders from almost every Clan whose territory lies between the two Watchwolf Packs. Their allegiance was through trade, not family, as this band of many Packs crossed the Great Wolf’s Hackles, the central mountain range of Mardrun, bringing salted fish and fine jewelry from the Northwestern coast, and fruits and furs from the Central woodland, to barter for grain from the steppes of Nightriver’s holdings.
The mountain pass was dangerous and unmaintained, little more than a goat path. Still, it was safer from Mordok raids than the Northern route that threads between mountain and lake, and faster by a week or more than the Southern route around the range, at least for those with skill and strong backs. But sometimes skill is not enough. Winter comes early and storms strike suddenly in the high mountains. While leaves had only begun to fall in the lowlands, the travelers were stopped by the first blizzard of the season as they began their descent, high on the Eastern side of the range, where even the strongest trees crept across the ground like moss.
When the skies finally cleared, they found the trail both before and behind them collapsed and buried beneath knee-deep snow. Three scouts died discovering this. They hid everything they could not carry on their backs in a small cave and pressed onward, roped together and clinging precariously to the side of the mountain while they searched for a stable path. They soon rejoined the trail, and descended to where the trees grew tall once more. Still high above their destination, they stopped to rest in a large hollow. There is where they were when winter closed its fist on the mountains, and there they stayed until the spring thaw released them.
Some of the surviving travelers returned to their Packs and families once the ordeal was done, but many took it upon themselves to see that such a thing would not happen to any other traveler. They returned to the mountains, some taking their families with them, some leaving mate and children in the lowlands… and a few were stripped of their family name and warned never to return to those they left behind, their determination to aid strangers seen as a betrayal to their own blood.
A handful of young Ulven from other Packs on both sides of the mountain saw this as an honorable mission, and joined them. Allegiances blurred among the ever-shifting bands working to build and maintain paths and outposts through the mountains. The small groups began to feel kinship not just with the noble wolf, but with the artful coyote as well. This was a kinship also observed by their many detractors, who saw this new Pack’s near-anonymous labor as shameful and unworthy of the Great Wolf’s attention when compared to the deeds of Ulven warriors, and who called them Coyote the Disloyal, Coyote the Scavenger, Coyote the Coward.
And so the Coywolves were born. Claimed by the two primary Watchwolf Packs, but with little voice in the business of either, their numbers spread out over many leagues, they have paved a road over the Great Wolf’s Hackles, which their strongest constantly work to maintain throughout the year. Some of their older members, and those with very young children, work to extend that road to either coast. But though they are often far from home as a matter of course, they are not nomads – they are guardians. Their hearths are always warm, and their larders always stocked for company. Wayward travelers are always welcome at their doors, and one of the greatest taboos among the Coywolves is allowing a guest to come to harm under your roof.
The survivors of the original caravan all died upon the mountains, eventually, but life among the Coywolves is not for everyone, nor for every time in an Ulven’s life. Members of the Pack come and go. A born Coywolf joining a lowland Pack is not considered to have left, but to have become of two packs, and an outsider joining the Coywolves is accepted without ceremony.
Known Members
Ylsa Stormherald (235 – present)
Ioan Hindsblood (?? – present)
Branwen Stormherald (159 – 241) + mate & descendants
Amynedd Bloodskin (161 – 230) + mate & descendants