Present day shaman of the Iron Wolves tribe, Kar Odacen is a man with tattoos across his shaven head. He had a dream in which a pack of black wolves chased a solitary white wolf across the heavens. Upon its back, the shimmering white wolf bore a mighty-thewed warrior clad in furs who wielded a great warhammer, and though the wolf was powerful it could not outpace its hunters. The white wolf turned at bay atop a tall peak of ice-slick rock, and together with its rider battled the snapping packs of northern wolves. The two fought hard and well, spilling the blood of hundreds, but even as they took heart in their slaughter, the dark wolves changed to become a roiling storm cloud of impenetrable darkness, pierced only by lava hot spears of lightning that opened great gashes into the flesh of both man and wolf.[1a]
Though he could not see within the cloud, Kar Odacen's dreamself knew something unimaginably ancient and evil lay at its heart. Even to one such as he, whose spirit had traversed the realm of daemonkind knew to dread its power. Indeed, without warning, the cloud swelled to swallow the man and wolf whole, and as Odacen awoke from his slumber, he knew that the night his predecessors had prophesied had finally come.[1a]