Tharn Ravager
GUTS AND GEARS — THE BEASTS AND MACHINES OF THE IRON KINGDOMS
If the Circle Orboros wields the barbaric Tharn as a tool, then that tool is an axe and the ravagers its jagged, bloody edge. The Tharn sacrificed their bodies, souls, and humanity to the Devourer Wurm centuries ago, but they feel they have lost nothing. The gifts granted by the Beast of All Shapes have made them much more than mere men, and the ravagers exemplify the ultimate personification of the savage spirit. Emboldened by their allies and masters in the Circle Orboros, the Tharn have emerged from the wild corners of the Iron Kingdoms to once more hunt the denizens of civilization. The ravagers lead these bloodthirsty attacks, and their ranks count every grown Tharn male fit to hold an axe.
The identity of the human tribe who would become the Tharn, as well as the history of their pact with the Great Beast, remains lost to time. Records of transforming barbarians appear with regularity, if no great frequency, throughout the Thousand Cities Era, and many scholars of the time identify them as remnants of the Molgur, though no sources offer proof stronger than their opinion. Certainly the few stories of Molgur rituals surviving
in trollkin and ogrun histories bear a striking resemblance to practices observed among the Tharn. This most likely results from similarities in worship of the Devourer or reflects the realities of a subsistence hunting
lifestyle as much as any direct social descent.
Records from the Orgoth Era make scant mention of Tharn, though the scribes of this time first used that name.
Records of barbarian attacks and Orgoth reprisals survive, but they indicate few clashes after the invaders claimed the territories the Tharn inhabited. The Tharn apparently did not contest the sites the invaders desired. Instead, the Tharn moved to occupy regions of little use to the Orgoth, although the invaders did drive the Tharn from certain traditional territories in the Thornwood and elsewhere. After the defeat of the Orgoth, the Tharn had greater liberty to raid into the edges of the new-formed Iron Kingdoms. They erased whole villages and murdered isolated columns of soldiers to consume their flesh.
Unprecedented numbers of Tharn, their confidence swollen by success, fell prey to the cunning lies of Khador’s Queen Cherize. Many thousands journeyed south to raze the strongholds of Brachenmir and Loghrin in northern Cygnar. Civilization is ever grasping and static, seeking to hold and retain, while the wilderness is ever fluid and changing — the Tharn, focused only on hunting and killing in the Devourer’s name, fought not to claim and rule territory, willingly giving up ground as
the Cygnarans rallied. The Tharn participated in Cherize’s ambush of the Eternals and Cygnar’s Queen Serahzha with no thoughts but for
greater slaughter, and they paid the price of their ignorance.
In response to the blasphemies of Queen Cherize, an archon of the Prophet levied The Ten Ills of Morrow on the Tharn. This curse afflicted them with a series of misfortunes, but the first, lasting, and most terrible was the infertility of their women. Perhaps one in ten pairings produced children, and while they grew as strong and savage as their parents, these were too few to risk in raids and random war. The Tharn withdrew to the wilderness to husband their numbers and seek an end to their curse.
The druid Morvahna the Autumnblade came to these barbarians with an offer of aid, reversing the Ten Ills a scant thirty years ago. By delivering them of this curse, Morvahna earned the devoted loyalty and affection of countless tribes, all of whom have come to swear binding oaths to the Circle Orboros. The Tharn remain truly grateful to the Circle and Morvahna and have proven keen to flex their growing power as the druids’ shock troops. The Circle has taken advantage of this gratitude by offering “opportunities to display their hunter’s prowess and devotion to the Devourer”. Many Tharn elders see through this pretext, but most care little. They live for the thrill of the hunt and slaughter dedicated to the Unsleeping One and if killing for the Devourer also means killing for the Circle, so be it.
Tharn divide themselves into tribes that claim large hunting grounds and further divide into local communities, both of which they call tuaths, a linguistic distinction lost to outsiders. An athaor, a word that roughly translates as “first hunter”, rules each community and larger collection of villages. Past a certain size, the pronunciation of athaor changes slightly and translates more accurately as “king”, though such lords command the loyalty of a few thousand souls at most.
Athaors attain their position through accomplishment, though ancestry often lends weight to their claims, and can arise from nearly any part of Tharn society. The most accomplished beast lord usually rules his tuath, but occasionally a shaman or an exceptional bloodtracker fills the role. Powerful athaors, such as Kromac the Ravenous, can unite many tuaths, but Tharn will rarely follow an athaor that they do not personally see repeatedly prove himself in battle. Thus, as Kromac’s tuaths move, many tuaths remaining behind fall beyond his influence.
The ability to call on the Wurm and transform into a ferocious aspect of their god is the birthright of every male Tharn and arrives with puberty. Tharn reach this stage several years earlier than humans, perhaps as a natural compensation for a much abridged expected lifespan. Imbued with the instincts, dexterity, and raw physical prowess of the greatest predators, these young Tharn learn the ways of war and to control their powers by joining their elders on the hunt. The young do not join the ravagers until deemed ready by the shamans to honor the Lord of Predators through the sacred act of hunting the hunter.
A shaman of the tuath takes aside all the young Tharn ready for their first sacred hunt three nights before an auspicious alignment of Calder that occurs each season and subjects them to days and nights of privations and bloodletting. Visions and lessons received during this time mark the Tharn forever. Similar rites exist for other Tharn, and among their own people, Tharn often identify each other by the season of their first hunt, a time that seems to have spiritual impact on the rest of their lives. Finally, they are taken into a shelter by elder ravagers, fed and rested, and at dawn released on their first sacred hunt.
For his first hunt, a young Tharn needn’t stalk seasoned predators, but he must claim something at least as formidable as himself. Most tuaths
consider young trolls, spine rippers, burrow-mawgs, and adolescent
Thornwood maulers fitting prey. Recently, with the Tharn on the
rise again, more of these first hunts have targeted humans and
trollkin. Tharn return to the ritual of the sacred hunt to mark milestones
throughout their lives, and such hunts often include events interpreted as omens from the Devourer.
When all the young Tharn return, or a full seven days pass, the shaman leads them back to the village and into their first ritual feast. The kills are prepared and blessings chanting to the Devourer as the young Tharn consumes his prey’s heart. As the tuath feasts, the shaman ritually connects and inks the scars inevitably earned during the hunt into a unique tattoo pattern that forever serves as the hunter’s personal symbol. The Tharn then arises covered in his own blood and that of his prey as the tribe’s newest ravager.
Led by older, more experienced beast lords — who have survived many dangerous hunts and proven their skills in battle — ravagers seek to embody the most direct and violent aspects of the Devourer Wurm. Before battle, each beast lord gathers his own handful of ravagers for an invocation that dedicates to the Devourer all the blood they are about to spill in the kuthoth (roughly “greatest hunt”) ahead.
As they mature, some veteran ravagers feel powerfully drawn to the mysteries of the Great Beast. They seek out their tribe’s elder shamans and learn the blood rites and sacred rituals of their people. The shamans tend to the tuath’s spiritual needs and conduct the sacred rituals that bring them favor with their god. A typical tuath only has one or two shamans, with several apprentices ready for initiation in case one of their elders should fall.
A ravager shaman remains a hunter and fighter and lends his primal magics to his comrades’ bestial passions in combat. Once the ravagers have begun the slaughter, the shaman consecrates the kills and empowers the organs his warriors consume with the favor of the Devourer. The shaman’s totem staff, festooned with grisly trophies and tipped with an axe blade, becomes a portable, and lethal, altar to the Wurm on which to splash the blood of fresh sacrifices. The shaman adorns his trophies with the runes and sacred marks of his faith. A combination of glyphs older than civilization and forms created in the last few years by the Circle Orboros, this symbolic language glorifies the Unsleeping One and invites His blessing.
The reversal of the curse has prompted an explosion in the Tharn population. Morvahna’s efforts resulted in much higher fertility and common multiple births. Tharn mature twice as fast as humans, so many generations have passed in a few short decades, and the growing tuath hunger for new territories. As the vitality of the Beast of All Shapes reinvigorates the Tharn, they push farther into areas they abandoned centuries ago, and strike ever harder against those who pushed them out. The Circle employs these warriors in increasing numbers and varieties over wider and more distant battlefields.
The settled peoples of western Immoren have begun to discover devastation along their borders unseen for centuries, and the quiet fear of the wild that lurks in the heart of every ‘civilized’ man has grown strong. The howls of hunting Tharn rise again from the forests with echoes of a joyful savagery older than humanity, and begin to shake the foundations of civilization.
Fonte: No Quarter 19
