Chapter 6: Crimsoneye Lodge

Hunting lodges took many forms, but curiously many were more like monasteries than anything else and the hunters like monks. It wasn’t that strange for a village to form around a hunting lodge. Though many lodges were located in places far too inhospitable for a regular village to form.

A hunting lodge is quite a simple existence, if you don’t account for strange variations. It is a place where hunters gather, rest and share information. Of course one of the main reasons is to form hunting groups. Only a few people are brave enough or strong enough or foolish enough to hunt alone. Many hunting lodges raise up young hunters, passing down techniques taught to their members for generations. There are many hunters that long to join an ancient lodge and learn such techniques. There is a far greater number of lodgeless hunters that die compared to those part of a lodge.

Of the many kinds of lodges one of the most common is the charm or talisman lodge. Simply put this is a lodge that has formed around a particular object, such as an ancient lance or a trophy from a particularly strong creature or some manner of magical artefact. Sometimes the charm is worshipped, sometimes merely revered, sometimes just an icon, sometimes a treasure to be called upon in times of need. There are many reasons as to why something could become the core of a lodge’s identity.

Shiverclaw lodge, before it became Crimsoneye, had the claw of an ice fiend as their charm. Their hunters meditated on the claw and based their hunting style around the idea of it, the image of a claw that sent shivers. Nortrieln had countless ice aligned lodges of no great notability. Though perhaps a bit of credit was due to Shiverclaw for being in Sool Valley, but then again, it wasn’t as if places like Sool Valley were rare.

Shiverclaw hadn’t even known what the claw was from, other than it being a fiend’s claw and they had no unified style to pass down to new hunters. If one had asked a hunter from one of the big lodges if they knew about it, a blank look would be the best you would get.

The hunter breathed out heavily as he made his way uphill.

Crimsoneye was, like most of the Sool Valley lodges, lodged into one of the sides of the valley.

The hunter scowled as he looked up at the lodge. The entrance had quite naturally been resculpted to look like a massive eye. It was both absurd and foreboding. The hunter however just wanted to throttle whoever thought it would be a good idea to put a lodge into the side of a mountain without making a path.

It wouldn’t have been so bad if he wasn’t carrying the corpse of a basten.

Speaking of the basten, he had properly wrapped the thing, but it still felt like the fiend’s razor fur was cutting his back. Even in death it gave him headaches. Truly a fiend.

One hoof in front of the other.

The winds were far stronger, what with the trees around the lodge being sparser. It was likely that someone had thought that making it hard to get into the lodge would improve the character of the hunters or some such nonsense. What made it worse was that he wasn’t even really going to be relaxing. No, he was going to enter the heretical cult and spend the next few years trying to destroy it. Well, hopefully it would simpler than that.

After a while more of being buffeted about by wind, not only was the minotaur fed up, he had arrived at the doors of the Crimsoneye lodge.

The doors once had carvings of claws upon them, but now the faces of the doors were hacked off, a brutal absence in the place of artistic work. One would have thought that perhaps a eye painted with beast’s blood would be present, but there was not even something so simple.

There was only a scar. A wound.

The hunter grunted, shifting the corpse on his shoulders and back, he knocked heavily upon the door.

A part of the wood slid away, and a pair of glowing crimson eyes stared at him. There was something vaguely frenzied in those eyes.

“Your ascent has been seen hunter, you are not one of ours, what lodge do you come from, and what is your business? You risk your life here hunter” a feral voice snarled.

“My lodge became prey long ago when I was on the hunt, I’ve since avenged it, I’ve been alone since, but I wish to join your lodge, I come with an offering!” The minotaur replied.

The doorkeeper’s eyes raked the body of the basten.

“I must confer with the head hunters”

The wood slammed back over the opening.

The minotaur waited for what he felt was far too long.

Then, there was a click and the doors began to slide open with the clank of chains.

Greeting the minotaur was a youth with silver hair and glowing crimson eyes. He was pale and wore a bright red robe quite unsuited for a hunter. The robe had a kind of tabard that fell down from the shoulders. On the front of this tabard was, in the same material and colour of the rest of the robe a simple circle with a dot in the middle.

For a moment the hunter thought the dot was yellow and his heart grew cold, but on focusing on it, it was clearly crimson.

The doorkeeper offered him a smile that showed his sharp canines. A smile that didn’t reach his eyes.

“Welcome honoured hunter, to the Crimsoneye lodge”