Ferrous Fortune-Hunters: Session III

It was an interesting night, and a bit on the slow side, as usual. I'm a touch worried about the general cohesiveness of the party, as Pat and Mary are paranoid psychos that stay with the party as a whole simply out of plot. Heck, Mary is dangerously paranoid, though that could very likely be painful metagaming on her part on top of a healthy level of paranoia. Heck, the Jharkorian and Pan Tangian (Adam and Jon respectively) are the most stable members of the party; where Jharkor is a nation not unlike Cardassia, and Pan Tangians are psycho pirates that deal with demons on a cultural basis.


After their little rondeveau with the hopped up lotus eaters, they left town shortly thereafter, not running into anything out of the ordinary for about four days. On the fourth day, while Analee (the dairy farmer girl) was relieving herself, she screamed for help and the party moved out to see what was wrong. There they encountered four hostile, flying sharks ('native' creatures of chaos) who were pacing around her.

After a bit, they took down the sharks, though they didn't think too hard on the fact that sharks in my setting tend towards hit-and-run tactics unless they're very hungry. With a bit of work, they now have quite a bit shark jerky for their journey.

While traveling, they begin to notice a lot of sloths hanging from the trees. Minor interlude, sloths in my setting are more or less normal except for several items. One, they only live in a forest of seqouias to the northwest of where the party is. Two, their reproductive cycle is a biyearly process where they become incredibly aggressive and feed off combat until they burst off a larvae within half a minute. Three, they are creatures of life and positive energy, and their venom (only really produced when 'reproducing') actually heals victims.

The party travels a couple more miles and begin to hear the sound of a plodding storm of steel on wood, without any footsteps amongst them. They hide behind some trees while surrounded by a score of sloths (small clumps of flowers blooming directly beneath them). Within twenty seconds, a cow-sized ball of ooze bristling with weapons and shields and armor bursts out of the trees and leaps onto Mary's horse. Not wanting to be anywhere near it, everyone except Mary leaps onto their horses and moves away. Mary goes toe-to-toe to get it to release her horse, which is promptly killed and absorbed into it.

Something about this very intense scene ignites the entire horde of sloths, who break out into a berserker rampage and descend upon every combatant and start clawing and biting like crazy. The party is fine for this, as their venom completely negates the damage they take. Meanwhile, they're unloading all sorts of ranged attacks at the very busy ooze creature, who gives out a 60' cone of shrapnel just before it dies under a pile of violent sloths (immune to poison, so it doesn't get healed).

Feeling a bit weird from the events, and a bit disappointed they can't milk sloths for their venom after they budded a larvae, they pack up and leave. After three more days of travel, they come upon a large plot of ordered land with the trees in neat rows and seemingly used as a farm, along with a giant pillar of smoke coming from the hill. Since they realize a massive storm is coming their way, they decide to attempt ask the resident for shelter.

Behind the hill, they discover a large man (6'8") tending to a blindingly bright bonfire (yes, during the day) who claims to be a disciple of a Lord of Law (specifically the one of Light). He asks what they want, gets informed of their reasons for being there (simple travellers) and allows them to spend the night in his home. He demands that they leave all of their belongings in a stone box out front and no weapons.

The party does so, except for  Mary who wants her stuff to be kept on her mule in the stable and proceeds to expertly hide five daggers on her person. Once inside, he provides them with fresh sloth meat and water. Analee breaks out some of her travelling cheese after getting permission to bring it inside from her pack mule, which  Mary makes the excuse to follow and watch her.  Mary makes up some cheesy excuse to stay a bit longer to dig through Analee's bags, where she finds two masterful kukris dripping with exotic poison. Our little snoop hides the daggers elsewhere and asks Adam's character to 'look at her bow string'. There, she shows what she discovered and begins to be very paranoid indeed. Note, she made extra certain to verify that the daggers were masterwork. Of course, she's passing on eating any of Analee's cheese.

After showing and telling Adam her discovery, they go back in and proceed to sleep, with Mary wanting one of the primary four to stay up and stand watch in the living room (the host provided simple bed rolls for all). Just before they began to bed down, however, a stranger began to beat on the front door while the storm raged outside.

The host, Chanter his name is, answered and gave him permission to stay the night as well. The stranger was a simple laborer heading for the seqouia forest for a logging job. Mary and Adam are a touch skeptical, but he seem simple enough, and Analee provides him with some cheese and leftover sloth meat. He acts and seems simple enough, staring awe-faced at the tales of danger the party has already been through, eventually going to sleep like the rest of the people.

Several hours later, the stranger gets up wobbly and then bolts outside in a raging storm to begin retching like a madman. The party awakens, curious as to what happened, had Pat and Jon examine the retching man (they have medical training) while the other two already figured it was poisoning on Analee's part, so they question her after checking their bags (the shield of chaos had been relocated from Adam's stuff to the stranger's bags).

It doesn't take much cajoling, as Analee is almost certain  Mary  is just waiting for the tiniest of excuses to kill her and she doesn't have much chance against a house full of people and running in a bad storm. She tells them she's a spy for the Yellow Night clan (a guild of assassins that honor the Lord of Nightshade and the Lord of Daffodils), who had heard of the Lotus Eater's vision and knew that whatever they were after is something they shouldn't have. One of their nightshade caste had tried to follow earlier (Adam's stalker back in the first town), but it showed they were too canny, so they sent Analee instead (of the daffodil caste). She recognized the stranger as a civilian mercenary sent by the Lotus Eaters to obtain anything valuable, and her orders are to kill them on sight (or at least make sure they die).

Oh, the poison used on the Lotus mercenary was a highly concentrated form of daffodil poison that causes near fatal levels of vomiting, which our arcanist friend was able to help make sure he would actually survive through. Chanter, the host, curtly informed the party that as soon as the bad part of the storm passed they were to leave post-haste.

Pony Day: Fancy Pants, Fleur di Lis, & Granny Smith Filly

A three-fer today for ponies, because they're appearing on E-Bay as the last pair did. Our first one is the couple that is the height of high society in Canterlot, Fancy Pants and Fleur di Lis.

And a personal favorite of mine, Granny Smith as a young filly. Her zap apple jam is worth waiting in line for days for.

Ferrous Fortune-Hunters: Session II

Today's session was fairly short as far as actual progress is concerned, because we got heavily sidetracked often and lengthily talking about our other gaming activities. We were also sans Mary(had to do day-long laundry).

I'm glad I've learned to not get frustrated with players that aren't into the RP aspect of the game, because if they enjoy it I shouldn't gripe at them all the time for not 'getting in character'. But let me tell you, Pat and Jon are emotional zombies in the game world practically. Violent, anti-social, awkward zombies of destruction...:)

And now, for details of the session...


They finally reached town to lay low for a little bit for a day or so to rest before they skip town. While in the bar, Jon deciphers the contents of the Grave King's grimoire, and discovers five seperate rituals and incantations...
* Ritually remove a victim's face, allowing you to later wear it as a mask and magically seem EXACTLY like that person in every way, down to picking up mannerisms and minor personality quirks
* Manifest a small boat, made out of dead men's fingernails
* Temporarily animate a statue (up to like 30' or 40' tall) that can also swim through the earth, for the sole purpose of relocation
* Ward an area from the presence of inevitables (incarnations of Law) sent out to bring justice to the caster
* Enchant a highly wrought figurine of moonstone to ward the bearer from the corruptive influence of otherworldly forces that might twist and 'change' the character

Meanwhile, our friend Pat and then Adam examine the journal of Vargaas for details of the strangely untouched magical city. While doing this, a noble and two cloaked bodyguards enter the tavern and take a central table, which prompts the bartender to act nervous and begin opening windows. All three have nearly pitch-black cloaks, with a sheen of emerald or ruby colors (ruby for the guards, emerald for noble).

After a bit of prompting, followed by collected knowledge on the part of Adam and Jon, they figure out that those patrons are members of the Black Lotus Eaters. They are a guild of sorcerers and their bodyguard slaves who collectively consume bits of black lotus for the enchancement of their power and visions. Few want to tangle with them, as they are a group of druggies with mystic power and hopped-up bodyguards and all.

While the noble sniffs a small amount of tea, the two bodyguards take a small sip and promptly spit it out and they dump the rest on the floorboards with some sawdust (to prevent overdosing). The people in the tavern leave them alone, and Adam does the closest thing to getting downwind of them, which puts him by the window near where the vomiting is done. While there, he begins to a hear a tinny grunting sound outside, prompting him to begin investigating. The sound is emitting from a puddle of yellow vomit. Poking said puddle provokes a rising bulge, further investigating revealing a well-made buckler given a semi-mirrored sheen and the symbol of an eye with eight arrows sticking out of it. The shield also seems to emanate an aura of dark energy when not looked at directly. Not wanting to get attention, he cleans it in a trough and hides it in his bag, then goes to bed to sleep off the booze with the intention to discuss it with the party on the morrow. Pat's character follows suit shortly, leaving Jon with his grimoire and checking notes a bit late into the night.

While reading, and about to go to bed himself, the lotus eaters seem to get down from their high and the noble walks over to him. Sitting before him, he begins to tell him that the flower will be his and that he cannot hide it forever. He informs him that his vision is but only a metaphor, but he knows enough that he (Jon) has it and that his people must have it. He creates the illusion of a beautiful, sandy-colored field of wheat with a single iridescent daffodil growing, then leaves with a warning that they will not rest.

Confused, and sort of weirded out, Jon sneaks up to his room and sleeps uneasily.

That morning, Pat is accosted by a group of locals who begin to start the celebration now that one of the heroes has risen from bed. The prisoners set free by Adam got to town and gave enough information to identify the slayers of the Grave King, who had beset the land for decades. Shortly thereafter, the rest of the party stumbles down and get dragged into the celebration (lots of booze handed to them).

Eventually, they're able to drag themselves away from the festivities long enough to confer on some of the weirdness from the prior day, name Adam's buckler find. After minor research, but mainly from each other's memory, they realize that this is a Shield of Chaos. Basically, it's a physical manifestation of part of an ancient Lord of Chaos who revels in the heat battle, unleashing/reflecting raw chaos every time it is struck in the heat of battle. There also exists lesser shields, which didn't have the same breadth of randomness or the power of the true Shield of Chaos, and in fact usually stuck to a single theme of effects.

Curious as all get-out, Adam tells Pat to shoot his best at him, utilizing his Deflect Missile training (he can deflect one arrow at a time with perfect accuracy). With a bit of coercion, it deflects off the buckler, creating a conflagration of flame to surround Adam and forcing him to roll on the ground to minimize the burning. With a smile, and temptation to test it more, he stores it away at the sound of knocking.

A young farmer girl (looks 17, actually 22) with wheat colored pigtails and a sunny disposition has brought a basket of cheese, bread, a couple pieces of fruit, and some wine for the heroes. While providing the food to the heroes and basking in their presence as only a teenager could, she eventually blurts out the desire to see adventure and wishes to follow the party to be a part of it all. Not really certain they would be able to convince her or stop her from following, they reluctanly acquiesce.

While Adam picks up a few supplies from the store (namely more arrowheads and fletching), he notices that he's being followed by some cloaked woman. With a few deft turns, he loses the follower, sneaks around to appear behind her to ask why she was following him. She attempts to say she wasn't following, gets an uncomfortable silence at Adam calling BS, then hurriedly swings a hidden kukri at him. Not surprised, Adam deftly dodges and tells her that he'll kill her if he sees her again, who takes up the offer and disappears into the crowd.

After a bit, they finish packing and head north for a caravan stop-over to get long distance supplies. While they travel Adam tries to show the girl at least a modicum of self-defense, noting that she's hiding the fact she's much more skilled than a simple farmer should be in both tridents and daggers, but doesn't try to broach the subject out of caution.

Once they reach the town and take a break at a local tavern, they notice the trailing edge of an almost pitch black cloak with a minor ruby sheen from a secluded booth along with a minor whiff of black lotus scent, which gets them nervous and proceed to sneak out of the bar to get the hell out of dodge. Just as they reach the stables with their pack animals, a black lotus eater guard is holding down the farmer girl (named Analee) while his boss sifts through the party's stuff.

As the noble is still coming down from his high, he reacts harshly and tells the guard to take care of them while he fails to mind control Adam (with an entirely too high of a roll to resist). The guard stabs into Jon's arcanist, his high making him a bit too bloodthirsty for what he was doing, noticeably wounding him in the shoulder. Jon panics and creates the illusion of a duplicate running in one direction while he runs in the other.

Adam steps back and swiftly plugs three arrows into the now very dead guard. The noble/arcanist gets desperate and calls on dark energies and unleashes a very large bolt of energy that damages Adam as much as the sword did Jon (which is alot and wasn't a solid hit either). Of course, this was a very desperate measure, as the party killed him in the next round.

They take some of the better things, such as a pouch of drugs and an intricate lockbox with a single black lotus blossom. Adam drops the guard's bloodied shield on the table of the one guard inside the tavern, telling him not to follow.

I end the session with the party hearing the giggle of a small girl in the darkness, unable to fully track where she goes when they begin to see her.

After Sundown: Persona non Grata

There is a system I go to for modern horror roleplaying, and that's After Sundown, which is essentially the Wold of Darkness game made better. The social system is particularly unique and intriguing. I've run a couple campaigns in it thus far, enjoyed by all. But I'm not here to give a review on the system, but instead a couple NPCs I've made for the game for a friend about to start their own campaign.


Aži Dahāka
   "Yes," the seemingly young Iranian man affirmed, his gloved hands working through the cadaver's entrails. The room was stark clean, chrome and white dominated everything but the desk. The desk was clear of papers, but had a large aquarium where exotic scorpions skittered about.
   "So the two snakes from the shoulders was true as well?" I inquired. It still came as a shock just how old some people, to use the term loosely, could be. Ambassador Aži was normally quite busy, and getting him during the twilight hours of his mortal job was the only time he was able to have enough of a mind to do something as mundane as answer my questions.
   With a snort and a sigh, "I'm purely yours I will tell you. That 'telephone game' I hear of is correct. My name means 'dragon' in the old language, and I can multitask much better than a man. They call me 'man with many brains', and it gets twisted." While speaking, he continues to look into the corpse as he rummages around, and out of the corner of my eye I can see a handful of scorpions gathered around a pen and wrestling with it. Their struggles are leaving pen marks on the form, and then I notice it's creating a barely legible scrawl.
   "My reign was also changed, as I only ruled for four hundred years. This was before the Silence, so I didn't hide my nature. I kill some people, yes, but no more than any other king back then. But the legend of my body erupting in scorpions and insects, that is true. What is also true is a Marduk named Fereydun bludgeoned me with the prophesied weapon of my defeat and tied me up in a cave. They got which cave wrong too, but I think that was on purpose, so I am not found. That was long ago, I do not care about then any more. Now, I care about human medicine and I care about immortal medicine." His analysis complete, he throws away the sterile gloves and walks over to the doctor's scrawl on the desk, the scorpions skittering up his sleeve as he grabs the papers.
   "Now, I give you much tonight. I have told you of my past, I have given you the script of the words that heal." He held out a hand, and I handed over to him a length of metal corkscrew, obviously ancient yet firm in construction. For the script, the Rati was worth losing.


   A1400 year old Persian (Tajik), and is the original evil king of Iranian legend. Appears roughly as a Tajik man in his early 20s. His body is filled with winged scorpions. When he was excavated by miners four hundred years ago, he spent some time as a tyrant and a warlord, bitter from his over half a millennium of imprisonment. Time has pacified him, and has taken to refocusing on his scholarly pursuits in ways beyond war. He seeks to understand his own biology, and keeps a secret lab on the facility that was built when the building was thirty years ago, while also working as a high-ranking forensic pathologist.

He is a Mi-Go of some age. He is introspective, ruthless, and has an ambition that is easily swayed by fear of constraint after centuries of imprisonment. In combat, he will default to making his opponents run away, 

Stats: S: 2; A: 3; I: 4; L: 5; W: 4; C: 8; Edge 4; Potency 3

Skills: Combat 4, Drive 1, Perception 6, Stealth 5, Survival 3; Tactics 6, Persuasin 6, Bureaucracy 6 (Government), Empathy 6, Intimidation 4; Medicine 6 (Forensics), Operations 2 (Repair), Research 5 (Library), Sabotage 5 (Disabling Stuff)

Backgrounds: Iranian History 4, Chemistry 3, Biology 6, Cauchemar Commune Politics 6, Local Law 4; Infernal Finances 6; Supernatural Medicine 6; Ballistics 4, Forensic Pathology 6, Local Drug Gangs 5

Powers: [Mi-Go] Small Witness, Body Colony, Abyss of the Body, Patience of the Mountains, Attract, Supernatural Senses, Telepathy, Magnify the Swarm; Dampen Senses, Learn the Heart's Pain, Thaumaturgical Forensics, Dismissal, Psychometry, Siren Song, Summons, Aura Perception

Resources: Language 2 (Persian, French), Science 2 (City Forensic Lab), Secrets 3 (Burnt Limbo copies of books from the Library of Alexandria), Destiny 2 (Ratir), Assets 5 (*is* a major Syndicate functionary)

Pony Day

Yes, I am a Brony, a male fan of the My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic cartoon show. I personally know Sanada, who makes custom MLP figures, and I will periodically show some of her work. They're something I feel must be shown to the world, especially since her work is so underrepresented on the internet. Such days will be called Pony Days, and I apologize in advance for those uncomfortable with such, but I assure you, it will not be the sole thing about this blog.

Today's pony is a twofer.

Spitfire, a member of the Wonderbolts, who are an elite team of pegasi that perform aerial acrobatics. This is one of the ponies up for sale on Ebay.

Next we have Big Macintosh, big brother of the Apple family. A pony of few words and a big heart, also on Ebay.

Ferrous Fortune-Hunters: Session I

Iron Heroes, I'll speak of it's foibles another time. For now, just let it be known that I wanted to run a game. I had players who were interested, and so, it began.

This is their story.

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Due to popular vote after a narrowed list of three choices, the game will be set in the world of the Elric Saga. The time period is approximately 50 years before the book's tales begin, and the characters are all human, essentially.

The cast consists of:

Mary: Man-at-Arms who is essentially an Aragorn style ranger, master of stealth and Florentine two-weapon fighting.

Adam: Archer extraordinaire, whose tactical prowess combined with uncanny luck with the dice promises much death raining down upon the enemy.

Jon: Arcanist and master of mental arts, and possibly the only arcanist-type I've seen who isn't putting his soul out to the lowest bidder.

Pat: Executioner, silent and deadly to anyone who bothered to get an anatomy

Everyone was still getting used to the system a bit, so they didn't take full advantage of what they could do, though Adam's bow superseded alot of this. Also, because it was new, nobody had even come up with much of a name or background or even why they wanted to get started on the adventure. Their ultimate opponent was someone that called himself Torir, the Grave King and servant of Chardras the Reaper (Chaos Lord). He terrorized the local countryside and was a sorcerer of some note. Prophecy foretold that the night of the Blood Moon was the point in which Torir's power was at its weakest, and our semi-associated party made way to follow a secret tunnel to attack him at this time.


Mary pulled out some 'vengeance for killing my mother' excuse out of her butt, while Adam used the 'hired to kill him' one, as did Pat. Jon heard rumour he had a particular tome of interest for his motivation. Only Adam and Mary actually knew each other and came together, while the other two were comparative strangers that will end up sticking with each other out of safety. Once they decided they weren't enemies, a dozen bandits came upon them, and were promptly slaughtered. Jon did an amusing tactic of making one bandit look like him and then grappling to confuse their identity, while Pat had some fun shoving them off a 10' wall for some damage. However, Adam held the light here, by personally killing 7 of the bandits.


The entrance to the tunnel opened afterwards, whence they descended and plumbed its depths, eventually coming upon a large chamber holding a 40' tall statue of the Grave King holding a sword over his head that led up to a trap door. There were various other entances that led to the catacombs, but were bricked up. As the party got ready to climb up the statue, spry zombies began to pour out of the trap door and unleash arrows and an attempt at some going melee. In the end, the party jumped down (barely got to the feet) and simply peppered them with arrows from safety, relying on their attack bonuses to still hit them despite the noticeable cover with the zombies. They fell like flies, 6 of them solely taken care of by Adam himself, the other two plinked and knocked into a 40' drop to finish them off.


Once they climbed up, they got ambused by a particularly vicious ghoul at the trap door, but shortly took care of him. They found themselves in the necropolis of the Grave King, right in the middle of the castle's courtyard. Since there was a party taking place, and the guards expected an outward assault, nobody noticed their arrival. Jon managed to bluff a few of the passing guards that he was simply a reveler getting some fresh air, while the rest of the party hid like wraiths.


While sneaking towards the primary building, one of the real revelers, a drunken silk merchant, burst out and thought the party to be guards and demanded he be escorted back to his quarters. They humoured him, and then ransacked his bedroom for anything interesting while he slept like a rock, using some of the costumes they found (and Jon's actual Disguise skill) to blend into the party.


As they discovered, part of their advantage in any real combat was that the party had a local torturer (who dressed in Melnibonean hand-me-down fashion) using a red hot poker on some captured people, so there were many screams in the background anyway. Of course, they killed the torturer something fierce when he recognized the group, but hopefully an intimidate check kept the prisoners screaming for cover. Once inside, they were able to evade notice with the costumes, passing through various silk curtains in the place. At the far end of the chamber was the Grave King and three concubines, who due to poor rolling on my part, didn't notice the party for what they were. This proved to not be a true benefit, as Mary very suddenly went hostile, initiating combat.


The first round, Adam got a critical hit and spent all his tokens, thusly doing 76 damage in total; fortunately my villain was tough enough to survive that and subsequently roll the 10' stone wheel off his dais and over the archer. The concubines turned out to be werewolves (gifts from the King's patron), and focused on the archer. Mary and Pat charged up the dais and did a combined total of 15 damage this round. Jon pulled out the stops and charmed the three concubines in one spell (not very resistant). Once the second round was finished, guards started investigating, Adam finished off the Grave King and Jon pumped more magic into his charm to make the concubines fanatically loyal to him for a minute.


Commanding the concubines to attack the guards, while setting fire to some of the silk curtains (which were hanging all over the damn place), the group got the heck out of dodge and down the tunnel. Of course, they grabbed a small lock box from under the Grave King's throne and anything valuable he was wearing. Once in safety, they discovered a peculiar book that wasn't part of his occult collection, which seemed to be a journal of Vanteel Vargaas (this setting's equivalent to Marco Polo). The journal spoke of a mythical city that actually managed to survive the onslaught that turned the entire nation into a massive desert known as the Sighing Sands.

Assessment
Mary was a bit tired, which was to be expected with her sleep schedule as of late. Pat was his usual ultra-quiet self. Adam, as per usual, dominated the combat scene for this adventure. One bit of a change though, Adam actually seemed to feel guilty being so utterly more powerful than the party. I suggested attempting to take advantage of various debuff stunts to help with the problem, and I myself hope the party isn't too annoyed with his position.

Taboo Deformation: Names Best Left Forgotten

Words hold power. We communicate with them, and as a race, we’re still amazed at them. We inherently think that speaking of something calls upon it and lets it influence us. I’m sure you’ve seen examples of it, such as He Who Must Not Be Named. Thusly, we have euphemisms for words, thinking that if we call it something else it won’t have the same effect. We do it right now with euphemisms for swear words, code words in military communication, politically correct speech, or even double speak.

Where the fun starts is its historical effect on language. Eventually the original word that was avoided falls completely out of use and the euphemism becomes the new word, in a process officially called taboo deformation. One of the most notable examples is the word ‘bear’, which linguistically means ‘brown one’. In fact, the original word for bear is completely lost in our language, and even in the language English came from (combination of Old German and French). We can only infer what it might’ve been by looking at ancient Greek and extrapolating from there. The original word for bear in Proto-Indo European (hypothetical language from which modern languages evolved from) is a synonym for destroyer. From the perspective of a Bronze Age man, a bear is certainly a force of destruction. So calling upon the bear by using its real name was taboo, and remained so for so long, its original name was lost completely.

It’s already been established in fiction where it’s taboo to refer to someone by name, such as Harry Potter’s Voldemort, the true name of the Beast from the Bible, or the big villain of the Guilty Gear video game series (‘that man’). In ancient Egyptian mythology, removing a person’s name from all records was believed to destroy their Ka (roughly speaking, their soul).

Instead, where knowing a name gives the speaker power over the subject, the subject is soo powerful/dangerous that the advantage is reversed. The subject gaining power over the speaker.



Here's a depiction of bears for use in your D&D games, without really changing any rules, so much as giving a story to the larger ones.

Dire Bear
As written in the standard rules for D&D 3.0+, this is the beast that man tried to forget. In times thankfully forgotten, the beast that would later be called bear roamed the lands. It slept like our bears, but its slumber was more akin to dragon sleep than human rest, its cavern a place of prophesied dread for the inevitable stirrings. It walked through the forest like our bears, but the ground shook in terror at its footsteps. Its claws can rend steel, its rage can bring a frost giant to a standstill.
They had been forgotten for so long. But then someone found their name. Some fool found their name and spoke it. Not even most bears remember their nature, but some retain an inkling of something missing. When they hear their name, they remember strength, power, and rage as footpads of creatures forgotten walk the land again.