A corrupted dire wolf is a dire wolf that the Sorrow has taken and reshaped. Three of them came out of the forest at the Standing Stone on the night of 27 Coldrise, 1714 PSF, drawn by the Sisters’ warding ritual.1
Dire wolves are known in the Silver Vale without the corruption. A sighting in the country around Crick's Bend would have been a piece of news ten years ago.1
Appearance
At first sight one looks like a big wolf moving much too low to the ground. The legs are splayed out at crossed angles and bent so that the joint stands above the body, so that each leg rises, turns at the joint and comes back down to the ground. The effect is of a four-legged spider. The bones in the joints crack at every step, the mouth hangs open and drools, and the animal snarls continuously.1
Burning the fur away leaves black skin underneath, veined and tinged with blue.1 Black fluid foams out of the mouth, thick and oily and stinking of rot, and the grass it touches withers and dies at once.1
Behavior
Hazel warned that they hunt in packs.1 One will bend its legs under it and leap a great distance to land on a target with all four feet at once, then kick off to knock the target to the ground.1
A wolf that has been put down gets up again. One with a broken leg grew a replacement out of the shoulder beside it, bare bone and muscle with no flesh or fur on it, and left the broken leg hanging as it stood. It moved more slowly afterwards.1 The wounds stay open, and the animal goes on moving with them. By the end of the fight there was too little left of either wolf to move.1
The one that got back up bent low, whipped its head up and howled, twice. The sound comes out distorted and far louder than the animal should manage, carries into bone rather than ear, and drowns out thought for a moment. Iva came out of one howl bleeding from her ears, nose, mouth and eyes.1