Children of the Moon

Lucy Monroe

Their Beginning

Millennia ago God created a race of people so fierce even their women were feared in battle. These people were warlike in every way, refusing to submit to the rule of any but their own...no matter how large the forces sent to subdue them. Their enemies said they fought like animals. Their vanquished foe said nothing, for they were dead.

They were considered a primitive and barbaric people because they marred their skin with tattoos of blue ink. The designs were usually simple. A single beast was depicted in unadorned outline, though some had more markings which rivaled the ancient Celts for artistic intricacy. These were the leaders of these strange people.

Some surmised they were symbols of their warlike nature and in that they would be partially right. For the beasts represented a part of themselves these fierce and independent people kept secret at the pain of death. It was a secret they had kept for the centuries of their existence while most migrated across the European landscape, some to settle in the inhospitable north of Scotland others settling elsewhere. Their Roman enemies called those in Scotland Picts...they called themselves the Chrechte.

Their animal like affinity for fighting and conquest came from a part of their nature their fully human counterparts did not enjoy. For these fierce people were shape changers and the tattoos on their skin were marking given as a right of passage. When their first change took place, they were marked with the kind of animal they could change into. Some had control of that change. Some did not. And while the majority were wolves, there were other animals of prey as well.

The one thing they all shared in common was that they did not reproduce as quickly or prolifically as their fully human brothers and sisters. Although they were a fearsome race and their cunning was enhanced by an understanding of nature most humans do not possess, they were not foolhardy and were not ruled by their animal natures.

One warrior could kill a hundred of his foe, but should she or he die before having offspring, the death would lead to an inevitable shrinking of the tribe. Some Pictish clans and the shapechangers recognized by other names in other parts of the world had already died out rather than submit to the inferior, but multitudinous humans around them.

Most of the shape changers of the Scottish Highlands were too smart to face the end of their race rather than blend. They saw the way of the future. They realized after the atrocious betrayal of MacAlpin, who killed the other remaining royals of the Chrechte, that they could die out fighting an ever increasing and encroaching race of humanity, or they could join the Celtic clans. They joined.

Because it was not in their nature to be ruled by any but their own, within two generations, the Celtic clans that had assimilated the Chrechte were ruled by shape changing clan chiefs. Though they did not know it. There were very few humans in the clans that knew the secrets of their kinsmen. Those that did, were aware that to betray the code of silence meant certain and immediate death.

That code of silence remains rarely broken to this day, though the shape changers have migrated to other parts of the world along with their human counterparts. They can be found on every continent, though few believe in their existence and even fewer know for sure.