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| The Terror of the Acrach Dubh-Coinean | ||||||||||
| Long ago, in the dark days when greedy despots abused the elements to further their own ambitions, there was a small fiefdom ruled by a particularly cunning and driven warlord. This warlord, whose name was Tillaery, coveted neighboring lands. His own army was insufficient to defeat the garrison of those lands with brute force alone, so Tillaery put his devious mind to hatching some machination to overtake the land with a lesser force. | ||||||||||
| After some pondering, Tillaery came up with a cunning plan. He would order his most gifted mage to conjure up some abomination to destroy the crops of his enemies. Without food, the larger army would face dissension in the ranks, and Tillaery's own, well fed men would be able to overcome the opposing forces with more ease. With a smile on his face, Tillaery went to his best dark mage and gave his orders. | ||||||||||
| Now, Tillaery may have known much of warfare and strategies, but he was rather oblivious of his subordinates. He knew little of them, save what they could offer his war efforts. So it was with his best mage, Kath. All Tillaery knew was that Kath could bend the dark elements to his will, creating abominations for his armies. Kath was not a worldly man, however, and knew little outside his arcane secrets. It was most likely this mage had never even seen a field of wheat in his life. Yet this was the man Tillaery placed his confidence in. And Tillaery was not a man whose confidence you wanted to betray. | ||||||||||
| Kath may not have known much of agriculture, but he did know his magics. He new the enemy lands were home to some fairly powerful mages of its own. If he were to create a successful crop destroyer, it would have to be subtle. Any strong magics to drain the life of the crops would be detected by the enemy mages. A huge rain of fire or a massive beast that could devour an entire field in its maw would surely be noticed, alerting the enemy troops, which could smite Tillaery in a heartbeat. So it was that Kath decided to craft a creature of darkness patterned after the only crop destroyer his limited wisdom could think of that fit his needs: The common rabbit. | ||||||||||
| For weeks Kath labored in his workshop. Rabbits were brought into his laboratory and subjected to starvation and torture, eventually being carved up into bits. Kath crafted a vile and insidious creature from these bits and pieces of rabbit, generously infused with the dark element to animate it and provide it with an insatiable hunger. The result was a hideous rabbit shaped creature. Its mangled fur was black as midnight. It had tattered ears, vicious incisor fangs and razor-sharp claws. Its eyes glowed red and its hunger caused it to slobber like a rabid animal. Its tail, though still a tuft of fur, ebbed and flowed like a flame. Kath dubbed his creation the Acrach Dubh-Coinean, the Hungry Dark Rabbit. And hungry it was. In Kath's trials, it consumed an entire bushel of cabbage within mere moments. | ||||||||||
| Kath had created a female first, and brought it before Tillaery for his approval. Kath told Tillaery that his plan was to create a male Dubh-Coinean and let both loose upon the enemy's crops. Within a moon, he predicted, they would be overrun by a horde of the little monsters. Once the crops were totally destroyed, the Dubh-Coinean's insatiable hunger would force them to turn upon each other, thus disposing of themselves once their task was finished. | ||||||||||
| Tillaery listened to Kath's plan with interest. It seemed sound. A subtle strike that would fester in the enemy's heart and kill them from within. He had but one small problem with the proposal. It would take weeks for Kath to complete the second Dubh-Coinean. Tillaery was not a patient despot. He reasoned that one Dubh-Coinean would not draw an excessive amount of attention. Plus, letting one enter weeks before the second gave them a chance to see how they would work. A trial run, so to speak. Tillaery ordered the Acrach Dubh-Coinean to be let loose in the enemy lands and sent some spies along to monitor for stories of crop failures. Kath was sent back to his workshop to construct the second Dubh-Coinean. | ||||||||||
| Little more of Tillaery and his small fiefdom is known. Some say that the dark rabbit returned instinctively to its home and wiped out the entire population, crops first and then people. Others say that on the way to the border, the spies and their dark cargo were intercepted by a border patrol of the neighboring land, alerting them to Tillaery's ambition, and they swiftly struck down his smaller army. There are those, however, who believe that a humble peasant was absent-mindedly weeding his fields when his hoe struck down the mighty Acrach Dubh-Coinean in its prime. The lack of crop failures led Tillaery to fear that his plot had been discovered, and when a massive army approached his borders, he fled to parts unknown, failing to notice the flag of truce they flew, for they only sought passage through his lands. | ||||||||||
| And what of the second Acrach Dubh-Coinean that Kath was sent to conjure? It is said that this vile abomination still roams the lands, devouring leafy greens and root crops wherever it may roam. Peasant children all over Temuair are warned that if they are not diligent in their farming chores that the Acrach Dubh-Coinean will find them and nibble off their toes. | ||||||||||