Waern
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The waern is a vicious-looking embodiment of canine malice and tenacity. The waern's fiendish green eyes glow with insane appetite and her mangy pelt is so ragged, the rotting bones show through in spots. Long, malicious teeth curve out of the waern's rotting muzzle, and the tail that curves over the waern's back is hardly more than segments of bone interspersed with a few pieces of fuzzy, matted hair. Floating over the ground, her paws scarcely leaving a track, the waern dodges almost quicker than the eye can follow.
Hunting strategies
Waerns attack and move rather quickly; they tick about once every round / 6 seconds, but sometimes may tick every 4 seconds). However, they are quickly cut down to size by an effective stun, though they can shake it off. It is best to kill any waern in the room first, they are the only danger when under-hunting. Sorcerers with enough mana to spare might use a cast of Pain (711) to lock them in RT so they cannot use their bite maneuver.
With Mobility (618) and Strength (509) cast on you, along with armor adjustments, the waern will rarely succeed in biting you even if you have no training to that effect. Armored Evasion seems to be more useful than Armor Support, at least when strengthened without high encumbrance.
Other information
Waerns have the ability to inflict disease and drain spirit upon a successful hit. This has the potential to be deadly if the tower knocks you down.
Waern exist alongside dybbuks and eidolon, except on the roof where there are only eidolon. Swarms are especially dangerous.
Waerns have a "grappling" creature maneuver that can cause damage, induce roundtime, stun, and disarm a player:
A waern lunges at you! A waern grabs your hand in his mouth and shakes his head back and forth viciously! ... 20 points of damage! Shot pierces a wrist! You are stunned for 1 round! Roundtime: 5 sec.
Behind the scenes
Waern is an old Scottish word meaning the defenses of a fortification. Other creatures around Foggy Valley are similarly borrowed words from other languages, including: eidolon, dybbuk, vesperti, pra'eda, shan, and fenghai. These are thematically linked through Maleskari and Bonespear Tower. The pra'eda, shan, and waern are all warped travesties of wicked hounds, which is presumably an homage to the hell hounds of Castle Anwyn.
Bonespear Tower appears to be based on Clark Ashton Smith's "The Colossus of Ylourgne", which is set in the fictional French province of Averoigne whose forest is infamous for werewolves. Similarly, Shadow Valley with its night hounds is influenced by H.P. Lovecraft stories involving hideous flesh transmogrification, as well as unnatural hybrids and other motifs. These areas are all subtextually related, even though it is otherwise not obvious.
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