Pack Graytide
Clan: Belongs to Clan Grimward.
Estimated Size: Medium
Insignia: A single braid of gray rope worn on the belt.
Pack Graytide has always been an extremist group of Ulven. Their warriors are skilled and cunning, but prone to disputes and altercations with other Packs. Where other groups of Ulven would simply kill the Mordok and move on, the Graytides would create gruesome standards out of their corpses or hang them from trees. These acts were not favored by other Ulven, but many could understand the reasons behind it… the Mordok frequently mutilated dead Ulven and even feasted on their flesh, so the Graytides were turning back on them similar gruesome acts.
Graytides pride themselves in excelling at combat and their witches excel in curing diseases and poisons. An interesting quality to the Graytides is their acceptance of cast out or exiled Ulven. Although the exiles normally see Pack Graytide as a second chance and fall into place quickly, some more ruffian or criminal Ulven also find home here and tend to stir up more trouble than if there were still exiled and alone.
Pack Graytide was honored to join the war party created by Hanseth Longfang after the Mordok killed his daughter Veera Longfang at the Onsallas outpost village. To them, it was a chance to fight back against the Mordok in the dirge swamp. During the week long campaign and brutal fighting, the Graytides mutilated all the Mordok they had slain and left standards of bone and flesh in Mordok territory. Even if the Mordok never noticed, the personal victory of leaving some gruesome things for the Mordok in their own territory was worth every Graytide warrior that died in those battles. The Graytides suffered the worse casualties of all the packs in the war party but returned home with treasures and stories of battle.
When the colonists arrived on Mardrun, Pack Graytide was there alongside Pack Longfang and Pack Bloodriver. They met the colonists with fury and killed more of them than any other Pack involved in the fighting. They did carry over their gruesome tactics against the colonists and several Graytide warriors were seen adorning themselves with trophies of human and Syndar body parts and skulls.
Pack Graytide stands firm that the colonists have no right to stay on Mardrun and should be exterminated or cast back to the shores and sent to Faedrun. Things nearly came to a boiling point when Lycon Graytide led a warpack of Graytide warriors in an attack on a colonist caravan on its way to Newhope. As the Graytides killed them, a hunting party of Longfang warriors stepped in to intervene. They fought each other for a short time and then retreated after Harlok Longfang cleaved Lycon’s arm clean off. It was at that moment that the Graytides vowed to get revenge against not only Harlok Longfang, but all Longfangs. This event also furthered the political divide between the Ulven clans regarding relations with the colony.
A meeting of prominent Clan and Pack leaders from across Mardrun led to the drafting, under the hands of the Watchwolves Clan, of a resolution to prevent further violence between the colonies and the Ulven. This document, known as the Watchwolf Resolution, declared that the colonists, if they were to live on sacred Ulven grounds, had to observe certain rites in order to respect the Ulven Gods. The treaty was delivered to the colonists at New Hope by the pack leader of the Graytides, Khulgar Graytide, who volunteered to deliver the resolution because he had the rare skill of reading and writing. Despite his action as a pack leader being an outreach towards peaceful cohabitation, Khulgar was mistreated, mocked, and dishonored by the human nobles present at the political dinner, and chased back into his own territory. Perhaps this show of disrespect on the part of the humans pushed the Grimward clan over the edge, or perhaps the Graytides were just looking for a fight. Either way, the political climate in Mardun was about to boil over.
While most of the colonists agreed with and respected the Watchwolf resolution, a group of pioneering colonists ventured into Ulven territory and began building a settlement. According to the Graytides, these people had either not heard of the Nightriver Treaty and Watchwolf Resolution, or chose to ignore them. When confronted by warriors of Graytide, the human colonists, who were mostly farmers, refused to leave their homes and were massacred to the last man, woman, and child. The entire settlement was burned to the ground. Following these events, a peace summit was called by the Watchwolves and Nightrivers, who had drafted the treaties in question. The summit was held in Grimward territory, in the hall of Haygreth Grimward. Representatives from the Ulven Clans gathered together with delegates from the Human factions of New Hope, Vandregon, Crow’s Landing, and New Aldoria. The Graytides were accused of overstepping their bounds and committing cowardly acts of murder against defenseless civilians, and the Grimwards criticized for failing to manage the crisis. The meeting became heated and ended in violence, sparking the beginning of the first large scale Ulven civil war in history. Ulven of the Longfangs, Watchwolves, Nightrivers, and other smaller packs and clans now find themselves allied with the colonists, while Clan Grimward and their allies have called for either genocide or the deportation of the colonists, and death to any Ulven who have sided with the Humans and Syndar.