Dakulna, the Reaping Beast is a Apocryphal Lunar Patron or Maslunim.
Overview[]
<<Life feeds upon life. Death is its price.>>
The Reaping Beast is tied to the Moon's earliest association with agriculture, the harvest and the natural cycles of life and death. Dakulna is also associated with destiny and timekeeping. It may even have ties to the mysterious Incarnae, Gaea.
Its Demesne is a broad plain surrounded by deep primordial forest. The heart of Dakulna's realm is a patchwork of well-plowed fields, the furrows of which bend back upon themselves in impossible knotwork patterns. The soil is rich with decaying matter and studded with broken bone and fragmented headstones. Detritus from a million years of death slowly rots into loam there as carrion birds wheel overhead. At the center of Dakulna's land is a large, ow hill crowned with an enormous megalithic structure marking the seasons of the year.
Dakulna often appears as a goat-headed creature, sometimes bearing a pair of sickles and surrounded by a pack of semi-feral hounds. Its body is thickly muscled in summer, but grows emaciated and eventually skeletal by midwinter. Dakulna is always clothed with bands of ivy and crowned with mistletoe. The creature's speech is echoed by the death-rattle of various beasts. Few converse with Dakulna for long without giving into fear. The inevitable mortality of the world is expressed in Dakulna's very presence.
Dakulna's ire is provoked most by those who wantonly despoil the earth, waste life or avoid death. Vampires and all other manner of undead are some of Dakulna's greatest enemies. Naïve Uratha assume that humankind is also its foe, but Dakulna does not mark all of humankind as its enemy, though many of the race nowadays win Dakulna's contempt. It's not the use of nature, but its misuse that sparks its disgust. Interestingly, Dakulna also has little patience for humans who anthropomorphize animals or natural systems - people who dress their dogs, groups such as PETA and Dow Chemicals are all foolish to Dakulna, though the level of their sin is different.
With such a wealth of adversaries, Dakulna could inspire a crusade against vampires. Perhaps a misguided corporate scientist or Necromancer might unleash a plague of zombies (see World of Darkness: Antagonists) that might drive the Reaping Beast into action. Dakulna might also target a mundane human corporation or government for its wrath, or launch a crusade to take back some natural resource.
Dakulna's brood contains Ralunim (the Full Moon Choir), Elunim (the Half-Moon Choir), Ithalunim (the Crescent Moon Choir), spirits of death and nature.Chiminage: Blood sacrifice
References[]
- WTF: The War Against the Pure, p. 126-127