We loboshigaru are a proud race of hunters and warriors. Like Brother Wolf, to
us there is no greater bond than that of the pack. After all, the name
loboshigaru means “Wolf of Loboshi” in the divine tongue, after the Elder
Goddess to Whom we owe our creation, and to Whom we give the name Pack Mother.
To a loboshigaru, the pack is all. We live for the pack, we die for the pack.
The pack is our family, love them or hate them, they are all that one of our
kind has in this world. Once the pack is gone, we are fated to walk alone until
the end of our days. An outcast. A lone wolf.

Beyond the basin, we are a largely nomadic race, moving according to the
seasons and the migration of our prey. The world outside the basin of life is
perilous at the best of times, resources are scarce and creatures twisted by the
taint roam freely, spreading anarchy and death wherever they go. Despite this,
it is not uncommon for a pack to settle in one area and to live off the land,
trusting to the seasons to bring new game to hunt while raising their own
animals for food, and erecting defences to ward off the tainted creatures that
threaten their way of life.

This was the choice made by my pack, the Graywind.

For decades we had wandered the lands south of the Basin of life, reusing
certain areas as camps according to the season and deviating as the food supply
changed. For the longest time, the settled lifestyle of the Basin dwellers did
not appeal to us, for as nomads we were free to go where we pleased. But as our
numbers grew and our pack flourished, there came a time when we needed to give
up our wandering ways and settle in one place.

And so, we made out home at the base of the Razine mountains on the outer
southern rim of the Basin of Life. As we adapted to this new way of life, our
people began to learn new trades. No longer were we primarily hunters and
gatherers, but some settled into different roles. Artisans, Jewellers,
Herbalists Alchemists and more, all began to thrive. The arts especially began
to flourish. We had grown from being more than a simple pack to become a tribe.

For all of this growth though, we never forgot who we were, what our values
were. We were still a pack, and our leaders, the Graywind Alpha and his mate the
Alpha female, maintained absolute authority over us. All important decisions for
the pack and its members needed to pass through them. They presided over every
detail of our lives. Births and deaths, authorising or denying lower pack
members the right to mate and bear young, trades and disputes with our
neighbours, welcoming new loboshigaru into the pack on occasion. When we fought
to defend our home, they lead from the front. When we held festivities, they
were always the greatest revellers. When we grieved for lost loved ones, they
were the ones to howl the longest and loudest in mourning.

It was Graywind Alpha Dantas who lead the pack to settle in the mountains. He
had walked the realms near to eighty years at that time, sixty of them as our
Alpha, and he continued as our Alpha for another two decades before the
leadership passed to his son, Verral. Before taking leadership of the pack,
Verral had gone for a year on a pilgrimage into the Basin itself. After months
of careful meditation in one of the many alcoves atop Avechna’s peak, he
received a vision of a monastery hidden deep in the Northern Mountains, and
decided to seek it out.

It took many days of searching, but at last he discovered it, the Tosha
Monastery, run by an enclave of loboshigaru monks who sought enlightenment
through physical discipline and meditation. Verral spent several months living
and training with the monks until being deemed worthy by the head of the
monastery, Master Quettle, to take the greatest trial of the Tosha monks;
entering the loboshigaru spirit realm. He spent many days wandering in that
place, stalking the spirits within and being stalked in turn, but eventually he
tracked down the one spirit he sought and, after a long battle, emerged
victorious, having passed the test.

Immediately after, Verral returned home and contested his Father for the
position of Alpha. The contest was short, brutal and decisive. Showing
incredible power and tact, he outwitted and overpowered the old Alpha in a
spectacular display of combat skill. It was clear to all that this was our new
Alpha. Dantas bore no ill will to his son for usurping him, as this was the way
of our kind, the same way he had taken the position sixty years previously.
However, the celebrations of the new Alpha were cut short by the death of
Dantas, who had fallen gravely ill shortly after at the contest. The pack
mourned and death rites were given for our old leader.

According to our legends, when the Elder Goddess Loboshi split Her essence and
cast it into the first world, each shard fell upon a pack of wolves, infusing
them with a spark of the immanidivinus and giving birth to the loboshigaru. Such
was our origin, born of the union of the Pack Mother’s divine spark and the
bodies of wolves, who were the creation of Volkh, Her lifemate Who was long lost
in the wars with the Soulless. We believed that after death the divine spark
must be released from the body to return to the Pack Mother, and so a pyre would
be built, the body anointed with flowers and oils, and then it would be burned
while the pack gathered around to dance and sing for the safe passage of the
soul back to the Pack Mother.

This was the rite given to Dantas, and to all the honoured loboshigaru
ancestors before him, back to the very first of our line. This was the rite that
I, alone, performed for my fallen packmates two decades later.

Ah, but that is yet to come in the story. There were happier times before that,
and other stories to tell. You have been most patient to listen to an old wolf's
story for so long, and I have not even had the grace to tell you who I am! My
name then was Rennak Graywind, littermate and Beta wolf to Verral. I am the last
true wolf of the Graywind pack. But I no longer bear that name. You may know me
now as Enlightened Ulan of the Tosha Monastery.