Sartar has one of the – if not the – highest percentages of werewolves of any civilized kingdom. Some 2% of the population are werewolves! The Prince is defended by werewolves and they played important roles at key battles against the Lunar Empire such as Dwarf Ford.
Now we Sartarites know that they are a separate tribe, etc., etc.. but I imagine every outsider “knows” that Sartar is the Orlanthi kingdom with werewolf elite guards, and allied with Praxian nomads and dragonewts. They are the Monster Army all over again!
The Orlanthi werewolf kingdom that talks to dragons and is friendly with Animal Barbarians also has duck people! No wonder in the Lunar Heartlands, they just assume the Sartarites are monsters!
But honestly – 2% werewolves! Those are crazy numbers.
There are obviously a lot of wolves in Dragon Pass! There are at least 10,000 in the area around Sartar. In comparison there are only 100-500 in the Yellowstone area.
And I think that more than anything explains the problem with the Telmori. There are just too damn many. It works as long as the Prince is throwing them meat, but once that stopped in 1602, they had to prey on something.
So imagine how farmers, shepherds, and other herders feel with so many wolves around. And remember, the Telmori packs likely range everywhere east of the River. Real world wolf packs can travel 50 km in a day. That gets us a Wildday hunting radius that includes Apple Lane, Jaldonkill, Herongreen, and the Dead Place.
So everyone in that range no doubt fears the wolf packs. And are those wolves on Wild-day just mundane wolves, or are they werewolves?
The very existence of thousands of magically invulnerable wolves is going to be an existential crisis for anyone with livestock.
And given that they attack on Full Moon day, that’s going to feed into all sorts of other concerns.
We moderns tend to look at wolves as loveable pseudo-dogs. But for ranchers and shepherds, wolves have always been seen as a dangerous threat to their livelihood. That may not be fair, and certainly wasn’t ecologically sound, but tell that to peasant trying to keep their family fed.
Doesn’t Argrath wipe them out? Maybe, maybe not. That is a campaign event. Maybe he suppresses rebellious Telmori and replaces them with Wolfrunners – the very folk who killed the werewolves and wear their skins (like Sigmund and Sinfjötli). Or maybe he defeats them and accepts their submission (and then uses them as an elite regiment sworn to him). This is one of those things that players can be right in the middle of.
The tapestry of your RQ campaign has many threads and they can be woven in many different ways.
But some might view the Telmori as traditional mercenaries of the Princes – others rightly view them as Chaos-tainted killers that massacred the Maboder Tribe.