The Wild Lands and the frontier villages are bedeviled by the presence of creatures earning the name ‘Dark Beasts’ from the lips of terrified peasants.
The latest threat to the peace of Aquilonia comes from no natural source. It is not the thunder of a Nemedian army’s march, or the howling cries of a Pict tribe running to battle. Instead, the Wild Lands and the frontier villages scattered throughout its reaches are bedeviled by the presence of creatures earning the name ‘Dark Beasts’ from the lips of terrified peasants.
Exactly what the Dark Beasts are and where they come from remains a mystery known only to those involved in the creatures’ sorcerous birth. The beasts hunt animals and humans alike, though not always for food. While many victims of Dark Beast attacks end up serving as feasts for the creatures’ appetites, many more are slaughtered and left to rot unburied, seemingly killed for no reason beyond the malice of these monsters.
Few who meet the beasts live long enough to tell of what they saw, so the creatures are known to the people of the Wilds Lands as a shadowy threat, a faceless danger, and the gruesome evidence the Dark Beasts leave after a hunt. Those who survive to speak of the creatures tell tales of black-furred abominations with long, bestial claws and maws of teeth that tear flesh with hideous ease.