When the Wolfbane Blooms

Chapter 1 - Mort-par-Bête

"Even a man who is pure in heart

And says his prayers by night

May become a wolf

When the wolfbane blooms

And the full moon is bright."

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The village was officially known as Peu-de-Forêt. When people went looking for it, they were told to head north of Strasbourg and to keep going until they found the old Villenueve manor. The small farming village sat in the valleys beneath that manor. It wasn't on many maps, and most outside of the area had never heard of it. The village and its population of under one thousand kept largely to themselves.

The people of the Peu-de-Forêt weren't fond of strangers as a result. They very rarely received visitors, and the few travellers that came across the village didn't stay long. The village people preferred it that way. They had everything they needed; farms, a bakery, a bookshop, a doctor, and a seamstress. They had no need to travel outside of the village. Every year more and more of the young folk would leave for the larger villages and cities and would rarely return to the little town that raised them. Those who chose to live in the village paid no mind to the fact that their population dwindled.

The younger villagers moving away as they came of age wasn't the only reason the population of the village continued to shrink, however. For many years the village had been experiencing a series of strange attacks. Horror would strike every month on the full moon. Sometimes it would be smaller tragedies; a barn broken into and the chickens eaten, a few sheep would go missing, fences would be destroyed. Every few months, however, something truly terrible would occur. It had gone on for long enough that the village had a new and unofficial name, only known by the villagers and a few of the closest villages: Mort-par-Bête, or death by beast.

The full moon of August 1891 was one of such nights. Stanley, a local tavern owner, heard a strange noise outside his home that evening. LeFou, Stanley's friend and co-tavern owner, reported that Stanley decided to go out and investigate. Behind the home was a small chicken coop that the two kept for their own stores, which was where the noise had come from. Moments after Stanley went outside, LeFou reported a horrible and indescribable sound. When he went outside to check on Stanley, he found him and the chickens dead.

Nearby the home of LeFou and Stanley lived an older man named Maurice and his young daughter Belle, who ran a horse ranch together. Soon after Stanley was found dead, Maurice reported hearing a ruckus in his stables. He was too wary to check that night, but in the morning he found that two of his horses had been killed and the rest were frightened. Maurice described the horse's injuries as 'beastly', and he was adamant that no animal he had ever seen or heard of could have done such a thing. LeFou would later agree with Maurice's assessment.

On the other side of the village, up in the hills, Olivier Villeneueve suffered from a heart attack and died. His servants found him in the rose gardens outside the manor the next morning, where Olivier lay on the ground with a horror-stricken look upon his face. Some of the villagers speculated that Olivier had seen whatever creature had killed Stanley and Maurice's two horses, and that the horror of such a sight had caused his heart to give out.

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Maurice dropped his shovel with a huff. After all his years of being a rancher, he would never get used to the death of a horse. Even if he had, he was sure that the most seasoned of horse ranchers would go weak at the knees of the sight of his two horses. Whatever monster had torn through his stables the previous week wasn't one he ever wanted to see with his own eyes.