Meet the Character – Domihaus the Bloody-Horned

Meet the Character – Domihaus the Bloody-Horned is part of the Meet the Character series on official website. This entry was published on 08/02/2017.

Contents
Sons. Daughters. Gather your kin. The time has come for our scattered clan to reunite, for soon we shall have a home. Your father followed the hag mother's signs. For thirty days and thirty nights I traced a path of crow-pecked carcasses through the highland crags, seeking the story their picked and broken bones would tell. Under the light of the full moons the Hunt-Father revealed to me his blessed beast.

Twice my height and thrice as broad, this great brute needed no cunning to best any mortal man. His eyes regarded my approach, reflecting their keen edge in the moonlight. His gaze was more curious than wary, and that made for the two of us. The hag mother had crooned of a beast who would impale the twin moons upon its horns, but impressive as this Minotaur was, it seemed a feat beyond a creature of flesh and blood. I began to question whether I had I picked the path true, or read the rooks wrongly.

My doubts were tossed aside as the beast drew himself to his full height and I glimpsed what the hag mother espied in her fevered dreams: the beast's horns aligned with the twin moons at their zenith in the night sky. It was then I knew I'd found the Hunt-Father's favored. Triumphant, I bared my throat to the sign of the speared moons, threw my arms wide, and howled. The cry was caught short as the great beast seized my throat with his massive hand, but I did not flinch. If the Hunt-Father desired my sacrifice that night, I would have been blessed to meet my end at the hands of his chosen beast.

Without effort he tore the talisman I wore from my neck and regarded the ruddy stone carving with recognition.

“Keptu" he uttered. Though the word meant nothing to me, the omen was a good one.

I watched in silence as the beast lowered itself to the cold stone and began a wordless chant that called to the mountain. The stone began to shift, and where once there was only flat rock a basin began to form. He tore his palm on the point his horns and let his blood flow into the shallow bowl, then he bade me do the same. As our blood mingled in the shallow pool, the heat of the wounds grew as pale and dim as the moonlight.

He held out the talisman of our ancestors, dwarfed in his massive fist, and squeezed. With a snort and the muffled crunch of stone he scattered its dust across the pool. The echo of crumbling rock returned to us a hundred fold, but it was not carried on the wind. The mountain's reply rumbled from deep within its belly, stirring like a long hibernating beast woken by the cry of its lost cub. The feeling in my bones was the land, our land, calling us home.

Hear me now, as I echo the call of the land, my wayward sons and daughters! Heed me and follow the Horned Lord's favored son to the den of our ancestors! From this day forward we are the Dreadhorn, and our brothers in hoof and horn are one with our clan. From this day forward we will retake all that has been poached from our lands and hunt the Nords who've spent their years siring a soft brood fattened on undeserved spoils. All their weakness will be trampled under the hooves of Domihaus the Bloody-Horned and our ways will shape these lands once again!

-Snatched from the crows of Gherig Bullblood, Patriarch of the Dreadhorn Clan