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For most of the night, the entire village was silent. No one could sleep; the doom of the villagers seemed imminent though uncertain. Then, in the very darkest hour before dawn, several things began to happen.
The wolf, having weighed its choices of kills, transformed shape and padded off through the village.
Nilp’s wolves, almost entirely forgotten, lifted up their mournful howls to the waning moon: a sound entirely beautiful and sinister and sorrowful, all at the same time.
From the chosen victim’s house, music woke. The sound was at once familiar and strange, and those who heard it recognized it immediately as the music of their troubadour Wilwa, music that was an echo of happier times.
The music of the wolves and that of Wilwa combined to make a composition that sounded haunting and resigned… and yet, not without hope. Could there still be a way to rid this village of its plague?
Abruptly, with a jarringly discordant chord, the music stopped. The two villagers not present would later find out that the strings of the instrument on which Wilwa had been playing had been ripped off.
Then there was silence. Eventually, the wolf returned home, and the sun soon rose. The villagers knew before they even met together that Wilwa was no longer among them. A trip to her house revealed that after her instrument (they now saw that it had been a mandolin) had been destroyed, her insides had been ripped open. After being destroyed, they had been tied in bundles by the strings from her now useless mandolin, which had afterwards been coated in her blood.
They found a scrawled message on a sheet of paper nearby, short, simple, and to the point: I wish for hope, yet fear there is very little. Good luck. –Shirriff Wilwa.
And so the unlikely trio – wolf, cobbler, and ordinary villager – departed the house. This day spelled doom, either for the wolf or the villagers; only time would tell.
~*~*~*~
Living:
Eomer
Saurreg
TORE
Dead:
Firefoot – drowned and burned by werewolves on Night 1
Nilpaurion (Ordinary Villager) – beat piñata style and killed by villagers on Day 1
Fea (Ordinary Villager) – gutted and stuffed by werewolves on Night 2
Oddwen (Ranger) – killed by Nilp’s villager-provoked wolves on Day 2
Durelin (Hunter) – Deadheaded by werewolves on Night 3
TGWBS (Ordinary Villager) - Slain by Hunter on Night 3
Kitanna (Werewolf) – Paralyzed and hung by villagers on Day 3
Dancing Spawn (Ordinary Villager) – Twisted like a pretzel and stuffed in a closet by werewolves on Night 4
Elf-Warrior (Ordinary Villager) – Stabbed through with knives by villagers on Day 4
LMP (Ordinary Villager) – Suffocated by werewolves on Night 5
Oromin (Werewolf) – Crushed under gallows by villagers on Day 5
Kath (Seer) – Scalped with eyeballs ripped out by werewolves on Night 6
Mormegil (Ordinary Villager) – Cut off his own head rather than having the villagers handle his axe on Day 6
Encai (Shirriff) – Burned to death by werewolf on Night 7
Lhuna (Ordinary Villager) – Jumped off a cliff on Day 7
Wilwarin (Shirriff) – Ripped open by werewolf on Night 8
Score:
Werewolves – 1
Villagers – 2
It is now Day 8. Day will end in 24 hours or earlier if the vote is passed by then.
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