"The Gnawer of Bones" (Story) (Patreon)

I'm recently stared playing a druid-skald gnoll in D&D called Ingot. In stock 5th edition D&D, gnolls are just bloodthirsty monsters, but since a furry is running this game, he's created a custom race and given gnolls a very different treatment. It's been fun getting to play Ingot, and to support the character's interest in oral storytelling, I want to write some short pieces of lore he can reference in game. I'm not sure how many I'll do, but "The Gnawer of Bones" is the first.

Many wonder why my people keep old bones around in winter and do not bury them immediately. Well, I’ll tell you. One winter the snows came down from the mountains to the grasslands so strong with snow so deep that even we gnolls could not travel between our villages. The nomads among my people were forced to shelter in place, wherever the storms caught them. It’s not that we are unfamiliar with snow, gnolls live in the mountains after all, but the snows swept across the plains stronger and deeper than anyone could recall. And after the snow fell, the wind came, a wind so cold that our fur could not keep us warm. This wind tried to gnaw directly at our bones.

Many of the nomads perished, unprepared for such a strong storm. Theirs was a life on the move, and if they could not move, they could not live. The people in the villages fared better at first, but slowly the wind ate at them. Teeth marks started to appear on their houses, giant scratches etched by the wind. The wind was hungry, and it wanted to keep eating and eat it did. It stripped the skins off our tents, ate the wood off our homes, and when it finally broke in, it ate us, leaving behind only the bones of its victims.

No one knew what they could do. We started calling the wind the Gnawer of Bones for it would chew on the bones of those it killed. We had no idea how to stop a wind like this, but a young shaman came up with a way to save us. She saw that the wind left bitemarks on the bones it left behind because it was still hungry, so she decided to give it something to chew on. She took a shovel and went to the village’s refuse pit with the wind following her tail. Slowly she started to clear away the snow and dig into the frozen ground, searching the decayed garbage. The wind bit at her, ripping at her clothes, and slashing at her, but she kept digging, desperately trying to turn up the frozen soil even as the wind tried to devour her.

It was coming for her throat when her shovel struck the old bones of a roast cooked that autumn and flung it in the air. The wind saw what she was offering and seized it, carrying the leg bone of a roast away. Frantically, she started flinging more bits of bone that had been buried in the refuse pile into the air. The wind kept eating, chewing on all the bones she gave it, howling for more. The shaman kept digging until she collapsed from exhaustion.

In the morning, the sun came out and people of her village emerged, amazed. The Gnawer of Bones was gone, but where was their shaman? They searched for her, and they found her naked but alive, still clutching the shovel in her paws. They carried her back to her hut, confused at what she had done. None had been with her for she had refused to tell anyone her plan for fear of leading them to their death. Only when she had recovered could she speak of what had happened. Since then, each clan has kept the old bones of their meals from when the first frost is felt until the spring thaw, for we never know when the Gnawer of Bones will return.

And those that don’t? It’s usually not a problem, but sometimes, when the winter is harsh they go missing, their huts and tents torn apart by the wind.