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Wolf Lord
Lupus Seyhrain. Planar animal lord [he/him] N
Realm: Beastlands / Karasuthra / Wolf Lord’s Hunt
The current Wolf Lord has a problem—and it’s not really his fault. See, there’s a dark history surrounding the first Wolf Lord and while it might have happened thousands of years ago, it turns out immortal animals have a long memory. In fact, the story of the first Wolf Lord lives on in the back of the mind of every being on the Beastlands. The first Wolf emerged way back when the wolves became powerful enough on the Prime to merit a ruler on the Beastlands. However, the first Wolf Lord took on far too many of the negatove characteristics that mortals ascribe to wolves. The mortals believed wolves to be cruel and vicious creatures, and so that’s exactly what the Wolf Lord and his followers became.
The first Wolf Lord, is called the ulraehn (dark seed) by the seyhrain, and he started his reign of terror off by openly provoking the Dog Lord into the declaration of jakishta. Wolf then began to prowl each layer of the Beastlands, seeking out and slaying each of the Dog Lord’s minions—and indeed canine extinction came close to occurring. Even on the Prime, the animals could not resist the primal call of their Animal Lords, and jackals and wolves began to fight all over the Multiverse. Chant goes this is where the hatred between the wolfwere and the jackalwere stems. After the Dog Lord conceded defeat, his tail between his legs, even then the Wolf Lord did not let off his attacks, and began to hunt any kind of beast that he was able to find. Seven different Mouse Lords existed during the year after which the Dog Lord surrendered, and Wolf hunted down each of them for sport, torturing then killing them and feasting on their very essences, while casting their bodies aside uneaten. This was not the Way of the Beastlands.
Dog himself was allowed to remain alive, if only so that Wolf could gloat about his victory. The Animal Lords all over the Beastlands feared him, but were powerless to fight the might of the wolves. The Cat Lord was unable to stop the packs of wolves that roamed Karasuthra, killing each of her solitary panthers one by one and leaving their bodies unstripped of flesh. This is the gravest possible insult on the Beastlands, for if an animal is killed and the flesh left to spoil, they are deemed unworthy to eat. Thus, the Circle of Life is broken and the beast’s death stands for nothing but cruelty. Such a thing is not the Way of the Beastlands, and the Cat Lord took the insult personally, and swore jakishta against the Wolf Lord. The results were a disaster, for the minions of Wolf hunted down Cat’s predators one by one, and killed the Cat Lord herself in the end.
This behavior continued for at least ten cycles—the years that the Owl Lord remembers as the most harrowing of his existence. Luckily for him, the birds were relatively safe from the slavering jaws of the wolves, but the dire news of the actions of Wolf were met with shock and horror. All seemed lost; singular Animal Lords could not defeat the evil of the Wolf Lord, but uniting was impossible given their natures.
Then, one day, the Wolf Lord was torn apart by his own pack! To this day nobody knows why, but the smart money is that the Beastlands itself had finally seen enough carnage and moved to rid its boundaries of the poison in its system. The Animal Lords of the Beastlands breathed a collective sigh of relief, and went back to repairing the damage done to their populations. A new Wolf Lord ascended, promoted by the strange forces that rule the Beastlands. However, no matter what this Wolf Lord did, he was always judged by the deeds of the ulraehn, and not for his own actions. Every hunt seemed evil; every kill seemed cruel. Because of this prejudice, the second Wolf Lord and every Wolf after has faced the challenge of not allowing darkness to consume their soul. Some handle it better than others; sadly, the third Wolf Lord followed in the footsteps of the first for a short while before being killed by the Cat Lord himself, who by then was quite ready for a threat from the wolves.
The current Wolf Lord exults in the Hunt much more than most—the kill matters little to him, only the thrill of the Hunt and the exhilaration in the chase. He’s been known to free particularly worthy prey if he’s not hungry, so that he can hunt them again on other occasions. Any planewalkers coming across the Wolf Lord had best be prepared to flee for their lives, and to do a good job at it, too: the Wolf Lord doesn’t let just anyone go. The present Wolf Lord doesn’t dwell too much on history, and instead lives for the Chase. However, it’s likely that the wickedness of the ulraehn does still lurks somewhere within his heart, just waiting to be let out…
Canonical Source: Planescape Monstrous Compendium Appendix 1 [2e] p12,15; On Hallowed Ground [2e] p50. AD&D 2e stats for the wolf lord can be found here.
Source:Â Dave King aka Heregul, Jon Winter-Holt. Canonwatch: The Wolf Lord is one of the four animal lords detailed in Planescape MC1