The Culling

The Culling is remembered as a time of darkness, where creatures would spill out of shadow to take children and animals and vanish. These horrific monsters, or Widderkin, came in all shapes and sizes, with hooks and plates and gnashing of teeth. The records from this time are considered unreliable, as the worst terror of the Widderkin is that as the came and went, they left nothing behind, even memory.

Children taken went unremembered by their parents, and the only accounts of what they appeared as are hastily scrawled notes taken down as the Widderkin were attacking. The authors of these accounts had no recollection of writing, and in the early days of the Culling, it is believed many were tossed or lost as flights of fancy.

For the next century, the Culling was no longer a rumor, no longer ignored, but only survived. Only seven of the original twenty families remained.