The town of Sturd. Not a pretty name, granted, but picturesque nonetheless, sitting as it does upon the confluence of the bonny River Lae and River Trium within the northern strathlands, where the oakwoods begin to meet the pinewoods of the highlands. It hosts a population of around 6,000 souls, not including the hundreds of small bands of trappers and hunters that come with the seasons, and who produce a good chunk of the kingdom's supply of furs and leathers.
The town is governed by Mayor Wulfred Laneig and has been for thirty years, by his father before him. He's a military man, cares more about his counting his guard than his gold, which is what you want this far north, where you start to see the fringes of orc and centaur raiding parties. Definitely not one of those soft mayors you get down in the lowlands. His eldest is Oswyn Laneig... capital educated, well-spoken and a little... fey.
You are Finn. The tannery you work for skins and processes the thousands of animals brought in every week by the trappers and hunters and farmers, from bloody hide into finished leather. It's a huge operation employing dozens of men. Not a glamorous profession by any stretch - smelly, laborious, and long hours - but the pay is good and the townsfolk respect the work you do, if only because it means they don't have to do it themselves.
The reason it pays so well is because the job is quite dangerous. Not in the way hunting is dangerous with the threat of disembowelment from bears or boars. Not because of disease either, though the work is unsanitary (With tanning you're always working with things half-rotten and doing things to them like pounding them with manure or pickling them in urine, so the risk of disease is quite high.) No, with tanning, the most dangerous aspect by far is the husks.
Husks get around and have many names. In some places they're called fleshbags, or skinsuits, or the flayed ones. Scholars call them epidermites. Here in Sturd they're called husks.
They're a parasite, essentially, a bloodsucker like a full-body leech or a tick. When not attached, they look like the empty skins of animals or humanoids. They hang from trees or lie in undergrowth for their unsuspecting prey - anything with a pulse - to stumble upon them. Some even fill themselves with air and float on the winds. Storms have been known to bring them from as far away as Nagrandia.
When they sense the hot blood of a host, the empty husk strikes, wrapping around the host and sealing them inside itself. Immediately it begins to exude a chemical that liquifies the host's own skin, which it consumes while integrating itself into their body. The host's blood becomes its blood. Its pain become the host's pain. Within just a few hours, host and husk are one, the animal trapped within its own parasitic skin, inseparable until death.
But after death? Husks are endemic in the wild. When a hunter kills a deer, there's a good chance the carcass has a husk, and they don't often die with their host. They lie in wait until the hunter comes along and sticks his knife in them, then they leap from carcass to hunter.
That's why catches are brought to the tannery to be skinned before being sent off for butchering. The hunters know not to risk their own skin. Because once a husk gets you, that's it, you can wave goodbye to your humanity. You're going to be spending the rest of your life inside the skin of a beast.
Identifying which carcasses are infested takes a keen eye. There are certain signs. If the meat is putrid but the skin is fresh, that's clearly a husk. If the meat and the skin don't match, it's a husk, though that isn't reliable. An animal with the hide of a doe fawn but the muscular bulk of a male boar is undoubtedly husked, and even hunters know not to hunt those. But the husks are crafty and will slowly remodel the body of the host to match their own design as the parasite drains the muscle and flesh, reshapes bone, until what once was a proud rutting boar is now unmistakable from an infant doe. Even adult deer have been seen to adopt them as their own, so complete is the change. Only the behaviour of the poor trapped creature gives away its true nature.
For tanners, husks are an occupational hazard to be lived with. Though you and your lads identify most of them, sooner or later they will get you, it's just a matter of time. About a third of the team are husked, mostly the older lads who've been in the job twenty-thirty years, although poor Janik got husked in his first week. They accept it, and they adapt to it, and they move on. Alas, so too do their wives, quite often. The townsfolk treat the husked tanners with respect and pity; the same dispensation isn't always afforded their families, and very few women are willing to deal with the public shame of sharing their bed with an animal.
It could be worse. Most people taken by husks are treated the same as natural-born beastmen - collared and chained faster than you can say "free slave labour". Thanks to the Guild of Tanners, that doesn't happen. As long as you pay your guild fees, you're to be afforded all the rights of a full, human citizen even if the worst happens. Anybody attempting to put a collar about the neck of a card-carrying member can expect to have the Guild come down upon their heads like the proverbial tonne of bricks.
That isn't to say people treat them the same, mind you. Even the owner of the tannery fell to it three months ago while arguing over a delivery of skins from a dairy farm. Your boss, Oskar, went from an imposing man of late-middle age to a productive young milk cow when one of the "skins" slithered off the back of the wagon and swallowed him up. Working udders and everything. He makes a show of being the fearsome man he once was but... the lads aren't afraid of him anymore. They snigger when he birches them, and make jokes behind his back - the young, un-husked ones do at least. It isn't right. It makes you angry. The husks will come for them too eventually.
You as well no doubt. You're thirty two, you've been in this business nearly twenty years, and you still have your own skin. Sooner or later your luck will run out, but you pray to the goddess each morning that it doesn't run out today. Not for your sake, for the sake of your wife and children.
There was no time for prayer this morning. You awoke late. You hurry through the early morning streets of Sturd. The sunrise glows pinkish-red through the mist rolling down the valley side. In one hand swings your lunchbox, packed by your wonderful wife, Corinna.
The familiar stench greets your nose as you enter the tannery compound, walking past the steaming pools where the skins are processed. You pull on the heavy, stained leather apron and begin your shift.
View Portfolio
Visit Notebook
Send Gift Points
Awards
Badges
Send Email
Community Newsfeed
General Discussion
Sponsored Items
Book of Trinkets
Static Items
Books
Groups
Interactive Stories
Audio
Campfire Creatives
Community Notes
Crossword Puzzles
Documents
Folders
Images
In & Outs
Madlibs
Photo Albums
Polls
Product Reviews
Quizzes
Survey Forms
Web Pages
Word Searches
More by this author