The Wolfhounds

A unit made up of prisoners whose sentences had been commuted due to their skills being usable in the war effort, the Wolfhounds' stubborn refusal to die with grace earned them a begrudging respect from their comrades.

Purpose

Their original mission was to precede the army into an area, identify and eliminate active therianthropes. Over time, the unit was called in to deal with other monsters. Managing active therianthrope infections carried a heavy death toll even before the war, but the depredations of the war - starvation, lack of able-bodied people to fight off carriers, and lack of available medical care - combined with the risk of enemy combatants and rumours of one or both sides using therianthropy as a rudimentary form of biological warfare, meant that the work fell to those that were considered expendible.

Structure

A dozen recruits under the command of two arcane-capable officers, to act as wardens.

Recruitment and equipment

All members of the Wolfhounds were convicted felons in their home countries, chosen due to some useful competence, such as medicine or engineering, that would otherwise go to waste. Recruits were chosen from a pool of volunteers who went on to recieve basic military training, plus specialist training in therianthrope identification and containment. In addition to standard equipment, the Wolfhounds each carried silver-plated knives and bullets, wolf traps, and a cyanide capsule to be taken in the event they becae infected. The unit medic als ocarried hexensalve and a dozen vials of the then-experimental spirit of silver, on top of the standard equipment.

Notable members

Monk

Hope

Echo

Jolly

Ma Gogg

Tall Bill

Evolution of the unit

Although originally tasked with identifying and eliminating therianthropes, the Wolfhounds quickly found themselves dealing with everything and anything the old forests of Ewaes threw at them.
Of note was the shelling of the Rahkervald, which woke the eponymous Rahk - a being of vengeance and fury - and re-ignited a blood feud that all but wiped out the mining town of Fersohnon. Although silver and therianthropic containment techniques were of little use against the creature, the Wolfhounds were able to engineer a scenario that led to the beast being trapped and its influence contained.

Legacy

After the war, the surviving members were granted their freedom. 'Wolfhound' (or its regional variant) has become a colloquial term for professional and semi-professional monster hunters, reflecting both the service provided and the often criminal behaviour the hunters engage in.

Type

Containment/Hazmat

Overall training Level

Semi-trained