The Wolf and the Fox

[Aristocratic Barbers' Association]

[Three pieces of parchment, seeming to tell what looks to be a children's story, are posted on the tree near the Lady's Resting Place.]

THE WOLF AND THE FOX

~ - ~

Once upon a time, there lived a wolf in a forest. This wolf was unlike any wolf you’ve seen or heard about before; it was always hungry, always angry.
Its eyes were afire, its fur jet black, its teeth long and razor-sharp. Its cruelty knew no limit.

Long ago, the wolf's ancestors drove out a band of hunters from the woods it called home.
"Never again conquered, home forever more," it growled, intoning with reverence a solemn vow.

The wolf's ancestors drove out the perfidious snake from within its midst.
The mountain cat then would be next to go. "They posed a threat to the peace of the forest," or so he reasoned.
However noble the wolf's ancestors may have been, the wolf himself cared only about attending its own hunger.
Indeed, it would turn on its own packmates, tearing out the throat of a she-wolf it thought ambitious and killing a cub out of a litter of ten.
None of the critters living in the forest were safe. Not the rabbits, not the squirrels, not even the innocent doe.

It wasn't enough to have sole dominion over one forest. It needed even more ground to hunt.
There was another forest, separated by a river.
Hearing that a mighty bear it had once been afraid of had met its end, it made the crossing.
Ever hungry for more, it prayed upon the woodland creatures in this forest as well.
The wolf would take, and it would take, and it would take, until the woodland creatures had nothing to defend themselves with.
The wolf's ancestors were liberators. The wolf himself would become a conquerer.
Life was strangled from the forests. Many of the eldest trees would start to wither and die.

When the wolf's pack wasn't enough to keep them all in line, the wolf dealt with hunters who came from beyond the two woods but now called it their home as well.
Some of these hunters worked with the wolf because they were afraid, others were eager to prove they too were better than the woodland creatures, and others still simply wanted power.
Time and again, the woodland creatures would band together to drive the wolf out of the forest, and time and again, they would be thwarted.
They began to lose hope. They began to despair.

Along came, then, a fox. He was much smaller than the wolf and nowhere near as vicious.
However, what he lacked in brawn and malice, he made up for in cunning and compassion.
The fox rallied the woodland creatures, never staying in one place, remaining unpredictable.
When the wolf and his pack gave chase to the fox and his friends, they would find nothing there.
Eventually, the wolf's own pack would turn on him. Fear only works for as long as one is feared, as the wolf soon learned.
The woodland creatures would drive what remained of the pack out from the forests on both sides of the river.
The woods, cursed due to the wolf's foul presence, were no longer warped and twisted, but instead became rich, verdant.

.. and everyone lived happily ever after. The end.

//Posted in-game.

[DM Indolence]

[The parchment is torn down. A bloody fox fur is nailed in their place.]