Out on the moor, there stood a red deer.

A fuzzy-antlered buck. It sur­veyed the rip­pling moor. Waves of pur­ple heather and gold wheat­grass under a cathe­dral of dri­ving clouds. It sniffed lan­guid­ly. The moor smelt of hon­ey­comb and alfal­fa. It chewed, kept back to munch­ing the flo­ral scrub.

There was a whistling in the breeze. An angry, near­ing whine. No soon­er had the deer’s ears pricked, than a blad­ed ash shaft stove deep and wet into its side, pass­ing through. The buck bolt­ed two dozen meters, muz­zle froth­ing red. Abrupt­ly, it stag­gered, went to its knees, tipped over.

“A fair shot,” said a voice over the heathered rise.

“Ah do believe it was,” nod­ded anoth­er.

On a hill some ways off, there crouched on the scrub and heather two men in leather jack­ets and twill trav­el­ing cloaks. One had a spring­bow. The oth­er a bun­dle of kin­dling. They stood, cloaks and unshorn locks whip­ping in the wind. “Aye, Whee­lan,” said the bow­man, a blond, raspy fel­low, shad­ing his eyes. He nod­ded, sat­is­fied. “Ah believe e’s right stuck ‘n scarpered.”

Whee­lan start­ed off down to the kill. “Waste no time then, Gar­les.” He scam­pered down the rustling hill. “I’ve an inten­tion to smell roast­ed veni­son before the sun’s full down.”

They walked. Whee­lan inspect­ed the ragged lung-shot his bolt had made; and Gar­les, with a length of rope, tied the buck­’s legs for trans­port. They trekked a few hills over with the soft, bleed­ing car­cass in tow.

There, in the forest­ed lee of a great glacial rock, they had a camp. Whee­lan quick­ly struck up a match and began to coax their fire to life. Gar­les dressed the kill and hung it from an alder to bleed. In lit­tle time, the min­gling smell of smoke and spilled iron filled the shel­tered spin­ney.

Some time lat­er, as a few lin­ger­ing gold rays fad­ed round their rock and alder, Gar­les was carv­ing healthy cuts of back­strap. He worked his curved knife through the flesh with gus­to. “Been awhile since Ah’ve put a shot to any­thin’,” he com­ment­ed. He slapped a heavy cut on a stump and kept cut­ting.

Across the fire, Whee­lan squat­ted, teas­ing cher­ry coals togeth­er under an iron pan. “Aye. No’ since that nest o’ wretch­es few months back.”

Gar­les grunt­ed and slit anoth­er lean cut off the back. “Plen­ty pleased to be shootin’ deer ‘nstead o’ them bas­tards.”

“Rather enjoy­ing life with­out sum­much nec­es­sary vio­lence, ye know?” With a knife, Whee­lan carved a pat of but­ter from a jar and slid it spit­ting into the pan. “Maybe it’s the hunter’s life for us? Maybe leave cut­ter­ing behind?”

“Could be. Might do.” Gar­les stooped and prof­fered the bloody steaks. “Can’t be makin’ deci­sions onna emp­ty stom­ach tho’, can we?

Into the bur­bling but­ter went the veni­son, along with a hand­ful of mar­jo­ram and a pair of quar­tered leeks. Whee­lan seared the lot, turn­ing with a big fork, sniff­ing eager­ly. “That’s the stuff.”

“ ‘Tis,” said Gar­les, buff­ing a steel plate with his sleeve. “N’ the rest’ll fetch us a fair bit.” 

“Aye. Fair bit. Hold that out now, it’s ready,” indi­cat­ed Whee­lan. He forked up a steak. But­ter siz­zled into the coals.

“Much oblig­ed.” 

They tucked in with their knives, but man­aged not two scant bites before a pecu­liar sound gave them pause: A faint clack­ing and a clat­ter­ing like dry shims beyond the trees.  

Gar­les froze, a speared bit of meat halfway to his lips. He looked to Whee­lan, eyes white. Whe­lan hunched as if some­one had pinched him between the shoul­der blades. He whis­pered: “Whot was tha’?”

“A rum sound, fer sure,” mut­tered Gar­les. He put down his knife, look­ing about.

“Wha…” Whee­lan start­ed, trailed. Gar­les raised a fin­ger to his lips.

For the rat­tling came again, dry and over­lap­ping. Like chimes of hol­low bone. Not loud, but pas­sive, as if swayed by wind—or the gait of a stalk­ing crea­ture.

Whee­lan’s eyes widened. He hunched fur­ther and frowned. “No. Could­n’t be. We don’t kill that much. And it’s not been so long since we have. Could­n’t be. Could­n’t be…”

Gar­les waved at him. “Shoosh.”

Whee­lan piped down. “Could it?” he repeat­ed, small.

Their eyes tracked over to Gar­les’ spring­bow; to the hang­ing, bloody buck. “Cou­ple ‘o weeks is long enough,” said Gar­les, low. “Bloody well could be.”

Whee­lan looked at his steak. He looked to the hang­ing buck, long­ing­ly. “Than wha’ do we do with these?” he said.

“Only one thing ta do.” Gar­les tucked back into his food with haste, shak­ing his head. “We fin­ish up and we leave the rest for it.”

He wolfed down the leeks. “We leave it for the rat­tle­shake.”

For every preda­tor, there’s a scav­enger not far behind. With the wolf come the ravens. After the shark fol­low the hag­fish. Fol­low­ing the lynx: the worms.

And behind the ven­ture­some cut­ter waits the rat­tle­shake. *

Bone collectors

A rat­tle­shake is a mon­strous scav­enger from anoth­er world. Where pre­cise­ly, none can say. Only that the mon­ster was nev­er ago known in the time of Noren.

It is an osteophage. An eater and col­lec­tor of bones. It desires not ani­mal flesh, only the rich sponge of mar­row. This it obtains by crack­ing, gnaw­ing large bones with its sub­stan­tial, molared beak. The emp­ty bones, gnawed to long splin­ters, it col­lects. It lodges them away in the stiff, deep, gum­my folds of its skin, where they pro­trude, stuck fast like the nee­dles of some dread­ful por­cu­pine. This coat of bones pro­tects the mon­ster and lends its stoop­ing gait a hol­low, rat­tling clat­ter: the source of its name.

A rat­tle­shake will ply its scav­enger’s way for many decades. Gnaw­ing and crack­ing and col­lect­ing the bones of man and beast alike. ** It grows steadi­ly larg­er, more ensconced in prick­ling bone. Its gross­ly-fold­ed skin grows ever wrin­kli­er, every tack­i­er; cement­ing its rat­tling bone quills and per­mit­ting the crea­ture to affix favored skulls as armor upon its beaked head.

Many who’ve spied a rat­tle­shake will describe a haystack of rat­tling bones. A huge cloak of quills wrapped round a cow-pelvis mask or some oth­er large bone for a face, with a hooked and nib­bling beak below.

Haunting

A rat­tle­shake is not par­tial to exer­tion.

In lieu of the effort required to sniff out car­cass­es, it will pre­fer to “haunt” a reli­able source of kills, usu­al­ly an apex preda­tor. † It fol­lows at dis­tance, wait­ing. When said preda­tor makes a kill, the par­a­sitic rat­tle­shake patient­ly awaits its bony share.

Cut­ter bands nat­u­ral­ly risk acquir­ing the haunt­ing of a rat­tle­shake. †† Giv­en the lev­el of vio­lence inher­ent their pro­fes­sion, even mod­er­ate­ly lethal cut­ters pro­duce a trail of corpses eas­i­ly suf­fi­cient to attract and keep a bone col­lec­tor pleas­ant­ly fed and grow­ing. And, if their trail con­tin­ues apace, cut­ters may not even notice the haunt­ing, so occu­pied might the rat­tle­shake be sev­er­al killings behind. If they do notice, it will be by dint of back­track­ing. Of return­ing to where they left car­cass­es behind. There, they will find only bone flakes and curi­ous, pal­lid dung.

Of course, if they stop their killing, cut­ters will indeed come to notice their trail­ing haunt.

Most scav­engers are also hunters, if need be. The rat­tle­shake is no excep­tion. If a haunt­ing grows unfruit­ful and stops yield­ing kills, it becomes the hunter who appeals as the rat­tle­shake’s next prospec­tive meal.

Cut­ters who do not kill for a time may come to notice the cir­cling, rat­tling mon­ster. Though they may not see it, for rat­tle­shakes are adept at hid­ing. The near­ing, clat­ter­ing man­tle of bone splin­ters grows loud­est at night, when the thing nears to sur­vey its prey. To prospect its ambush.

Though a rat­tle­shake is loth to exert itself, it will if imme­di­ate food presents itself. And it will do so ter­ri­fy­ing­ly. With wiry mus­cles laden with potent phos­phate stores drawn from digest­ed bones, a rat­tle­shake moves with explo­sive force. Strik­ing from ambush and armored with lay­ers of spiny, anchored bone, it is a woe­ful­ly chal­leng­ing com­bat­ant. Worse yet are its skull-crush­ing beak and its propen­si­ty to house a ret­inue of dead­ly grues in its lay­ers of bony spines.

Many an unwit­ting band has stopped to rest, after long weeks ven­tur­ing for a warm bed and a prop­er meal. Rest, until there grows—out of sight but not out of earshot—the rat­tle of the haunt­ing rat­tle­shake.

How to Use the Rattleshake

“The gang acquires the inter­est of a rat­tle­shake,” is an entry on my wilder­ness encounter tables. Here’s how it works:

• Put togeth­er a hasty list of the last ten (?) fights in which the play­er char­ac­ters pro­duced a corpse. Indoors or out, no mat­ter.
• Ran­dom­ize what fight the rat­tle­shake first ate. This is how many days away it is.
• Start count­ing down, one fight, one day at a time. (Or .5 per day if a giv­en fight was pret­ty big.)
• Once the rat­tle­shake is one day away, PCs will hear dis­tant rat­tling when they camp/outside their pub. Appro­pri­ate lore skills will iden­ti­fy its ori­gin.
• At the end of day 0, the rat­tle­shake will attack. It will only do so if it has a good ambush set up. If the char­ac­ters are too well pro­tect­ed or in civ­i­liza­tion, it bides its time.
• If new corpses are added to the trail, reduce the rat­tle­shake’s prox­im­i­ty accord­ing­ly.
• Every five corpse-eat­ing days, the rat­tle­shake gains either one hit dice/chunk of HP or an accom­pa­ny­ing grue. 

Here are my rec­om­men­da­tions for stat­ting the rat­tle­shake:

• Make it a mini­boss.
• Give it a ret­inue of two or more grues (fast, dan­ger­ous “undead.”)
• Only make it attack in a “boss are­na” ambush point that gives it some advan­tage of your choice.
• Mod­er­ate health (increas­es with each meal.)
• Some com­bi­na­tion of high armor value/AC, and phys­i­cal dam­age resis­tance from its thick bone cloak.
• One leg­endary save, if your sys­tem has such a thing.
• High speed. Should prob­a­bly ping­pong between oppo­nents.
• Three or four attacks per round, split up between two acti­va­tions per round (gets two ini­tia­tive mark­ers.) Split the attacks between dif­fer­ent oppo­nents. This may seem too much, but it’s essen­tial if you don’t want a boss to get punched down imme­di­ate­ly.
• Make it proc some sort of bleed or debuff, due to embed­ded bones, after attack­ing.
• Make it retreat after los­ing 50% health. It drops its mask, puffs out its spines like a hedge­hog, and runs.
• If it must con­tin­ue to fight, it deals extra dam­age (~30% more) and dam­ages play­ers if they hit it in melee, due to hedge­hog mode.
• If it runs suc­cess­ful­ly, it won’t come back. Its mask remains as loot.

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Con­sid­er becom­ing a sup­port­er of Incunab­u­li on Patre­on.

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