Pann the Bowhorn Champion Lore
The tale of Pann weaves through hill and dale, fen and field, wherever nature’s endless growth rubs against the boundaries of civilization. His joys are revelry and the hunt, sensual lust and sensory overload, a nomadic existence without regard for borders or societies. He is said to make mortals dance to death, to drink and share tales with him for a night that really lasts a month, to lose their senses and join in wild chases across the landscape after any prey imaginable. To see his iconic pair of horns silhouetted against the moonlit sky is to invite a rush of thrill and dread. For their recurved shape he is called the Bowhorn, and he is indeed a master of the bow and the blade as well. Pann is a Fae, and his origin and affiliations are unknown. He has been tied to various magnates of the Fae Court as an agent, or even an avatar. Equally, he described as a wild spirit unmoored from loyalty to anyone or anything.
Pann certainly does not brandish any allegiances openly. However, he does have a fierce sense of justice, although, as with most Fae, it does not always resemble that of mortals. Pann is a protector of the wildlands, an ambassador and guardian of their ominous yet enticing unspoiled mysteries. Though he hunts wild beasts with reckless zeal, he protects the habitat in which these creatures dwell so he may yet hunt again. Loggers and herdsmen who overburden forests and fields may face retribution from Pann in the form of vandalism, sabotage, and intimidation. He rarely resorts to violence, preferring humiliation or deprivation as punishments. Woodland trespassers have been found vast distances away, and claim they were led on a frantic chase for league after impossible league, their feet compelled to follow a fleeting caprine figure. Separately, groups of clear-cutting loggers, drinking and feasting by night amid the stumps of their conquests, have been known to be visited by a boisterous and irrepressible party guest. But after a night of carousing, the workers awake bleary in the dawnlight to find their saws warped into contorted lumps of useless metal, their pack animals set loose to wander far afield, their provisions reduced to crumbs, and their every article of clothing stolen.
Often, the revels Pann holds with his friends are indistinguishable from the terror tactics he uses on his enemies. But he has been pressed into combat before by particularly irate despoilers of nature, and has shown that his skill is not limited to bringing down game. His goatish legs give him amazing powers of leaping and balance and with a combination of finesse and heedless abandon he can shoot or slash to threaten a foe at close range or long. Were that the extent of his capability, it would be sufficient to cow most warriors. But Pann’s whistling arrows and keening sword weave subtle Fae enchantments as well, creating the same sort of phenomena that tales attribute to Pann in less combative situations: loss of sense of time, irresistible compulsions, and spontaneous obliteration of all good sense and judgment. In battle, these become mortal dangers.
Pann is associated with the Sylvan of Mistwood, and encountered most often near there. But the Sylvan are planting the seeds of expansion across the globe, and alongside their gradually blooming presence, Pann is said to be frolicking further and further afield.