Tales from the Eiglophian Mountains
One tale the Settlement of Dinog often tell in dark winter nights, were the tale of Gorm Heimdul, Chieftain of Diong and a young warrior called Rann.
There were several murders during the time that followed the darkest months of the year, one night a female victim was sacrificed close to the village walls. The remains of the poor girl´s body were found shattered over the landscape. The cultist had not only been able to scarify the girl close to her home, but managed to get away without being seen. After that cruelly defiant gesture, the cult committed several murders in broad daylight. The native inhabitants of the region lost all confidence in the clan and their ability to stop the slashing’s and killings of the powerful Stalker men. There were talk about that the cultists might truly have the ability to shapeshift into humanoid dragons and to fade unseen into the shadows. Some whispered that the chieftain himself was too close to the cult, maybe in fact a member himself.
The villagers were becoming unnerved. They were trying to stop an enemy who was essentially invisible. They struck without warning after preselecting their victims by a process that evaded all attempts to define it. There was no way to determine who the cult's next victims would be or to guess where they might strike.
One summer night a young man called Rann was awakened by the warning growl from his dog. When he rose to investigate, a four-foot-long, barbed arrow whistled by his head, narrowly missing him and embedding itself in the wall. The next morning by the camp fire, he learned that two of his friends had also barely escaped death that previous night.
Rann decided to attempt to set a trap. On the path to a village where several slayings had already taken place, he sent two of his best men, posing as easy targets. The two walked side by side toward the village while Rann and a dozen other warriors concealed themselves in the bushes and snow at the side of the path.
Suddenly, issuing the blood-curdling shriek of an attacking dragon-like humanoid, a tall woman in dragon robes charged headlong at the two men, swinging a large club. The young man struggled with the leopard man, but before Rann and the other men could arrive on the scene, the cultist had smashed in the boy's skull with the club and fled into the bushes.
Rann had lost one of his best warriors, but the knife that the young man still held in his hand was covered in blood. They would now be able to search for a woman with a severe knife wound.
Rann was about to have some men take the bodies of the two men to the burial grounds when he had a sudden flash of intuition that the cultist woman might return to the scene of the slaughter. While the others searched the neighboring villages, Rann hid himself behind some bushes overlooking the trail.
When the moon was high on the night sky, just as Rann was beginning to think about returning to the village, a nightmarish figure crawling on all fours emerged from the snow, pounced on the young boy's corpses, and began clawing at their faces. But rather than claws raking the body, Rann caught the glint of a two-pronged steel claw in the moonlight. The killer had returned to complete the cult ritual of sacrifice. Rann advanced on the Stalker woman, and the robed murderer snarled at him as if she were truly a big reptile. When she came at him with the two-pronged claw, Rann imbued his sword into her chest.
With Rann's act of courage, the natives of the region had been provided with proof that it was possible to fight against the cultists. With their newfound courage they faced the chieftain of Diong, whom they suspected had a larger part in why the cult had such a hold in the vicinity. When they raided the chieftain’s house, Ranns men found a dragon mask, a dragon-skin robe, and a steel claw.
During the chieftains captivity the cultists increased their slaughter and among some of the victims were the wife and daughter of Gorm Heimdul, the imprisoned chieftain. The desperate village inhabitants had hoped that the sight of the mutilated bodies of his family would anger Gorm Heimdul into betraying the cult members who had so obviously turned on him, but the shock proved too much for the chief. When he saw the bloodied corpses of his wife and daughter and realized how viciously his fellow men had betrayed him, he collapsed and died of heart failure.