1. Overview
The Lone Wolf Pack Guild is a band of outcasts, survivalists, and wildfolk who have turned the frontier into both their home and their battlefield. They are hunters, trackers, and defenders of the untamed, safeguarding scattered settlements in Eastern Siar’Morrin from monsters, raiders, and worse.
Unlike their rivals in Guild Venator, the Lone Wolf Pack shuns polish and hierarchy, embracing the chaos and freedom of the wilds. Their creed is simple: survive, fight, and protect the pack. With the recent addition of Cailean Varkalir, a rumoured demi-god of the wolf-folk Cia’an, their reputation has grown from local hunters to something approaching myth.
- Type: Guild
- Base of Operations: Narrowmere, Pilliga
- Core Purpose/Focus: To defend frontier settlements, master the wilderness, and live free from the constraints of civilization.
- Reputation: Viewed as capable but unruly. Admired by frontier folk for their protection, but often dismissed by nobles and rival guilds as crude and undisciplined.
- Symbol: A wolf’s head silhouetted against a crescent moon.
2. History
The Lone Wolf Pack Guild was born of exile and necessity. Its founders were poachers, criminals, and misfits cast out from cities who found kinship in the wilderness. What began as scattered survival bands grew under the leadership of Kaelric Dorn, who forged the guild’s identity: a pack bound not by blood, but by choice.
Over decades, the Pack shifted and formed into what it is now, a force for good that frontier folk could not ignore. They defended villages from marauding beasts, cut down bandit gangs, and hunted creatures others feared to face. Yet their methods — brutal, unrefined, and often disdainful of law — won them little love from nobles or competing guilds.
In recent years, the Pack’s fortunes shifted when Cailean Varkalir joined their ranks. His rumoured divine heritage and leadership in great hunts have elevated their standing, making them less a rabble of exiles and more a brotherhood set on making a difference in for those living in the harshest corners of Staterum.
3. Structure & Organization
The Pack rejects rigid hierarchy, instead modeling itself after wolf packs: loose, shifting, but bound by loyal:
- Alpha: The guild’s figurehead and leader, chosen not by lineage but by strength, reputation, and the loyalty they command. This position is liable to change and shift, based on guild needs.
- Beta: Veteran hunters who lead small packs, when jobs require conjoined efforts.
- The Pack: Ordinary members, hunters, and survivalists, that make up the bulk of the guild.
- Omega: Essentially the hired help, that oversee the mundane operations of the guild.
4. Culture & Practices
The Lone Wolf Pack Guild embodies the paradox of their name: independence balanced with loyalty to the pack. Each member is fiercely self-reliant, yet bound by an unspoken code of comradery and respect. The Pack also represents the largest gathering of Cia’an outside Sabhaile Forest, offering a place of familiarity and belonging for those exiled, estranged, or otherwise forced to leave their ancestral homeland. Within the guild, these wolf-folk find kinship among others who live by fang, claw, and survival, their traditions interwoven naturally into the guild’s own.
They celebrate victories with wild feasts and boisterous revelry, often carrying on through the night and into the following day—sometimes for days on end. To them, civilization breeds weakness, while the wild breeds strength and offers truth. This often puts them at odds with more structured groups — particularly Guild Venator, whose polished professionalism they deride as hollow.
Their guiding belief: the pack survives where the lone wolf dies, but the pack only thrives if each wolf stands strong on their own.
5. Key Figures
- Alpha Hrothgar Fenwolf: Current leader of the guild, Hrothgar is a scarred veteran of great repute in the guild. Though advancing in years, his cunning and ferocity keep him firmly in command.
- Cailean Varkalir: Cailean’s presence has elevated the guild’s status to near-mythic levels. He rarely fights alongside packs, instead roaming alone across the wilds, answering threats that no ordinary hunter could face.
- Beta Ragna Blackbriar: A fierce and uncompromising hunter that oversees operations primarily within the Shattered Kingdoms. Known to be initially standoffish, yet excessively affectionate to those they consider friends.
- Omega Branik Mossfoot: A hulking half-orc with a gentle demeanor, Branik manages the guild’s supplies and upkeep. Despite his low station as Omega, he is indispensable: ensuring caches are stocked, lodges repaired, and rooms keep clean.
6. Geographic Influence
- Areas of Operation: The Pack ranges primarily across the eastern wilds of Siar’Morrin. It’s headquarters situated on the outskirts of Narrowmere, bordering The Great Dividing Forest.
- Allies & Enemies:
- Rival: Guild Venator, seen as over-refined elitists who hoard contracts and disrespect the Pack’s ways.
7. Resources & Capabilities
- Military Strength: The guild fields no formal army, but its ranks include some of the most seasoned hunters, trackers, and survivalists in Eastern Siar’Morrin. Small packs strike with precision, leveraging ambushes, terrain mastery, and guerrilla tactics to overwhelm larger foes. Their reputation alone can deter bandits and monstrosities alike.
- Economic Power: Modest compared to formal guilds, their wealth comes from frontier contracts, monster bounties, and barter with isolated settlements. What they lack in coin, they make up for in practical self-sufficiency — hides, furs, and wildcraft keep the guild sustained without heavy reliance on outside markets.
- Special Assets: Their greatest strength lies in their knowledge of the wilderness. The Pack maintains a network of hidden lodges and caches across the frontier, stocked with supplies and weapons. They also boast the largest concentration of Cia’an hunters outside Sabhaile Forest, whose keen senses and wolf-born instincts give them an edge in tracking, ambush, and night warfare.