Have you ever wondered what makes a werewolf tick? What forces are at work that would make a human ally with such a creature? Designer Steve Miller takes you on a journey of discovery as he leads you ever deeper in the Circle of Vehlarr.

The battle that followed was short and brutal. The three warriors of the Silver Stake were quite skilled. However, they clearly did not know whom they were facing.

I warned them to leave the shop peacefully if they wanted to live. Their response was lightning fast: The half-elven female whipped a leather pouch off her belt and threw it at our feet, exploding with a gentle popping noise that was almost lost in the hiss of my sword leaving its scabbard. A cloud of gas billowed upward around Arahnar and myself from where the pouch had landed. Arahnar started choking immediately, even as she threw herself backward to avoid its effects. She collapsed onto the floor, spasming and gasping for air.

The gas had no effect on me, however, something that seemed to startle the werebeast hunters confronting us. It had apparently never crossed their minds that a human might be allied with a werewolf… and that I might be immune to whatever it was that the half-elf had just tried gassing us with.

Their surprise allowed me to close on them and keep any of them from reaching Arahnar before she recovered. But it was far from an easy fight. I killed or rendered unconscious all three of them, but blood trickled down my arm from a deep cut as I turned to where Angah Lalla had been moments earlier. He was gone, but the scrolls we had come for were still on the counter.

Then I heard the sound of a body being slammed up against a wall. I whirled in a different direction to see Arahnar, still coughing and wheezing but now in her manbeast form, with the robed figure of Angah Lalla in her clawed hands. She had lifted the man who had sold us out so high that his head was at a painful angle against the ceiling as she pressed him against the wall. "Now you die," Arahnar croaked.

Angah Lalla’s response was a strangled sob… and his voice was no longer a harsh whisper but instead sounded surprisingly feminine!

Even through her rage and pain, Arahnar was as surprised by this sound as I was. She released the pawnbroker and tore the veil from his face as he plummeted to the floor. Behind it was a pale-faced teenaged girl who was staring up at Arahnar with stark terror on her tear-streaked features.

"An imposter. The real Angah Lalla has been in business here for over a decade. She must be with them," Arahnar growled, hooking a thumb in the direction of the fallen warriors.

"Is this the genuine article?" I asked, holding up the bundle of scrolls we had come to purchase. "Will it get us to the Circle of Vehlarr?"

She opened and closed her mouth as though she was trying to say something but couldn’t get the words out. Her face took on an even greater look of terror. "Gone," she finally whispered. "Out of town."

"We’re not going to kill you girl," Arahnar said, her form shrinking and black fur fading as she retook her human shape. "You’re being spared, so you can tell the rest of the murderers in the Silver Stake that Arahnar is going to find her pack, and I’ll kill anyone who get in my way."

The girl nodded again, curling up within her off-white robes, pressing herself as far against the wall as she could manage, her hands clutching the golden amulet around her neck so hard that her knuckles were turning white. Her eyes remained fixed on Arahnar, wide with terror.

I told Arahnar that we should leave before any other customers or clients entered the shop. She could hardly breathe and my wounded arm was going numb. I wanted to leave this stinking shop and this crowded city so we could both recover and study the scrolls we had acquired without risk of further ambushes.

Twilight was descending by the time we’d made camp in a small gully, about two hours’ walk west of Scornubel. A small copse of trees hid it from the trail, so it seemed like the right spot for us to finally treat my wounds properly and rest. Arahnar has also still not recovered completely from the gas, continuing to wheeze and suffer from coughing fits. She speculated that it had been some sort compound that used wolfsbane, a substance that was deadly to her people. Her airways were gradually clearing, so she felt that she’d probably be more or less recovered by tomorrow.

After we tended my wounds, we turned our attention to the scrolls Angah Lalla had acquired for us. One was an ancient map of the Wood of Sharp Teeth and Amn. It was not tagged in any language I could read, but Arahnar pointed out the fact that the Snakewood and the Wood of Sharp Teeth used to be one large forest.

Although she had to struggle to read the scrolls, she recognized a single word that made her very excited. She understood exactly where her people had gone and why it was important for them to get there. While the ruined town of Vehlarr was clearly marked on the map—a ruin even in the ancient times—there was another place on the map. This was the city of Lharast, a precursor of the more famous Myth Lharast. Her excitement grew as she pointed to symbols by each of the long-gone settlements, stating that they indicated that they were magical gates.

"My pack went to Myth Lharast, one of the places where lycanthropes can live in peace from those that would hunt us, as the city is usually unreachable except under the rays of the full moon!"

She started to relate the tale of Lharast, Vehlarr, and the magical portal known as the Circle of Vehlarr, but then froze in mid-word, her arm bent at an awkward angle as she reached for something in her pack. I instantly recognized that she had fallen victim to a spell of holding and jumped to my feet as I seized my battle-axe.

"Put down your weapon, sir," a voice with a sibilant tone came from the darkness. "We wish you no harm, but the werebeast needed to be subdued before we could approach you with our business."

A lanky, bearded man wearing the scarlet robes of a Wizard of Thay stepped from the shadows. He held a wand in each hand, and one was pointed at me. Behind him were two broad-shouldered, bestial warriors in what appeared to be riding leathers.

"Believe me, there is no need for this to come to violence," the bearded wizard continued, the tip of his wand starting to glow with a bluish light. "But, I am more than willing to hurt you if need be."

The Silver Stake is a small adventuring company dedicated to extermination of evilly aligned lycanthropes. Among the unique weapons that have been developed by this union of monster hunters are small bombs containing gasses that can incapacitate lycanthropes.

Invented by alchemist Dram Kallen, a life-long resident of Baldur’s Gate and founding member of the Silver Stake, the bombs consist of thin pouches that are filled with pressurized gasses and powdered wolfsbane, catnip, or another plant or substance to which a particular type of lycanthrope is sensitive to. (Every lycanthrope has at least one plant and mineral to which they have a deadly allergy. The allergy is present both in the creature’s humanoid, hybrid, and animal forms. The doses contained in the gas bombs are not usually enough to kill the creatures, but it incapacitates or weakens them enough to make them easy targets.) Individual pouches tend to be prepared to fight specific types of werecreatures, as not all lycanthropes are allergic to the same substances.

The gas bombs radiate a faint aura of Abjuration magic. They appear like small leather or cloth pouches that are tightly sealed, and they explode when hurled against a hard surface, gas billowing forward and engulfing every being within a 15’ radius. All lycanthropes that are allergic to the gas within the bomb must roll a saving throw vs. spell. If the save is failed, the creature is seized by fits of coughing and sneezing and is unable to take any actions for 1d6+1 rounds. If the saving throw is successful, the creature suffers a –2 penalty to all attack rolls and saving throws for 2d6 rounds. After recovering from the initial onslaught of the allergic reaction, the werebeast suffers a –1 penalty to all attack rolls for 24 hours after the exposure.

Every member of the Silver Spike carries 1d4 gas bombs with him or her. A list of the most-typically created bombs follows. Unless the monster hunters are on the trail of a specific lycanthrope—in which case, the bombs carried are geared toward fighting that type of creature—the DM should roll randomly on this list to determine the specific nature of the bombs carried.

1-2 Werewolf Wolfsbane and silver
3 Werebat Skullcap and silver
4 Werebadger Poppy and silver
5 Wereboar Camphor and silver
6 Werefox Juniper berry, canine bones, and silver
7 Werejackal Fennel and copper
8 Wererat Poison ivy and silver
9 Werepanther Catnip and amber
10 Weretiger Ginseng and obsidian

The Search for the Circle of Vehlarr Archive
(Part 1) (Part 2) (Part 3) (Part 4) (Part 5) (Part 6) (Part 7)

(Forgotten Realms Features Archive)