The Quarry (Private Story)

The solitary and solemn wind, the bitter chill. It was one of the eternal senses that the huntsman felt in his lifetime of travels of the snow covered grounds. One might presume the hunter always hunted or was hunted back as a creature of this land could be.

However, one that wards the wilds does not always hunt but observes but understand. One that lives a life of solitude from those that claim to think more highly than the beasts. What happens when one forsakes their natural incline and socialises with the beasts and trees.

What do they become ?

Vodarara did not always hunt to slay but every action had its methodical intentions. Vodarara’s quarry this day was not to kill but to train. Shevika and the Owling were young and inexperienced and these wilds you relied on your elders to show you the way, to show you how to survive.

The bitter winds called as they worked their way through trees of pine. Some stripped of their needles and others still strong even as snow gathered upon the ancient needles. A land stuck in a permanent frost, though many beasts thrive within these wilds no matter what came upon them.

The huntsman and his companions quarry this day was a Yeti, a creature of white hide standing far above a man such as himself and at least as tall as the tallest of imuchakk, in the case of their males.
This quarry a female of the species with a youngster in toe, down from the mountains which they commonly called home.

This expedition was training, rather than hunting as Vodarara moved his footing carefully and accurately across the terrain placing his feet in area's that he could perceive as the most secure to the best of his ability.

Creatures guarding their young were generally some of the most dangerous. Fighting with near unmatched ferocity and passion and as Vodarara made his way close drawing his companion beast's Shevika and the Owling with him.

This would be a time for their growth rather than Vodarara's. He hoped to show them through the movement of his body and position of it alongside the terrain and obstructions of the environment. As he used it to provide concealment or enfilade from the sight of the Yeti's.
He kept his position downwind as best as he could as he worked his way up the frozen riverbed and its limited breeze.

Vodarara observed the bristly white furred and fanged beasts, the mother beast with prominent horns twisting off from the top of her head and the youngster with just the nips beginning to grow out.

The creatures appears to be feasting on the remains of freshly caught fish, seemingly the mother creature had breached the surface of the ice to reach the frigid waters below to acquire some of the populous fish that lived under the ices surface.

Maybe their peak territory was sparse on food or maybe they had been driven out of a territory by other dominant beasts on the peaks. The creatures of Imuchakk were all of varying strengths, even the herbivores weren't exactly ones to be trifled with, their body mass seemed scaled on the natives body mass.

Vodarara observed the pair and he well knew that the two were likely the two most dangerous types of creature you could come across. A guardian or rather the caring parent of the species in this case, the mother and an offspring.

When cornered a creature entering a furious rage could be the most dangerous, a guardian could be particularly worse than an enraged creature filled with the lust for blood. Going beyond its norms to protect its offspring at all costs. Though this varied from species to species of course. Vodarara considered creatures in different situations to be of different possible threats.

While he did rate the creatures of Imuchakk within a spectrum of strength and power, he also had to consider other factors that could strength any threat he and his companions could face.

Vodarara would observe the white furred creatures as the biggest, the mother regularly returned to the cracked icy surface of the underrunning river after having dug into the roots of the sagged trees.

Vodarara’s understanding of this behaviour was that it was a method of hunting was that the creature was using grubs or other burrowing creatures that likely hibernated or were burrowed in down around the rooty core of the tree for shelter and warmth.
These meaty grubs at least when crushed would leak their life juices into the water and attract anything that was hungry into the claws of the awaiting yeti whom could then drag them out to be eaten by itself and its youngster.

Vodarara would observe the creature’s until they moved off back towards the mountain towards deep noon.
Vodarara would not assault the mountain with Shevika and the owling this noon due to the huge disadvantage that he had in the deep of night. In all truth it was actually to the contrary of Shevika’s species general nocturnal hunting though both the great wolves and the winter owls could hunt either day or night.

The forest provided good shelter but carried risk in and of itself with active predators.
The open tundra while you could bed down in a snow hole, it left you heavily exposed to the environment though you could dig out in the morning.
The mountains, shelter in crags and caves. Though finding one that wasn’t lived in was hard and the crags always carried the risk of being overrun by a possible avalanche.

Vodarara had no certain method to surviving a night, though it had become significantly easier with companions. These creatures were more alert than he was even when he hardly rested properly, a combination of traps and other methods to alert him were still all in use however.

Vodarara generally cold camped thus avoiding dissipating any light, the reason for this once he was sleeping was to avoid drawing the eyes of creatures and he hoped his scent would also act a deterrent to creatures.
As such the huntsman put trust in the time, he spent within the tundra and the blood that had been scattered upon him as a way for the more experienced predators to generally follow the rule of stay away from each other to avoid grevious wounds that would be the likely outcome of the two being in a significant fight which would not help the surviving party in the long run.

This was Vodarara’s home or at least what he interpreted as his home. He had once abandoned that other small little perch of wood and needles and headed to the larger mass of ice. It was risky and should he have been aware of the creatures that lurked that water all those many moons ago. He was almost certain he would not have braved rafting those rough, iceberg filled waters.

How would his hunts be differently though, if he hadn’t come to this ice mass and began traversing and hunting on it with its good supply of game to hunt. Though he had in a sense become the game of another stalker, a hunter not prepared to make themselves shown and even once you broke their pursuit eventually the same mannerisms of being pursued returned.

He had at least built a reputation with the dominant local beast, Imuchakk were master’s of the Ice and Human’s seemed to be the “masters” of the land’s beyond though it confused the Hunter even now as to why the “reds” had not out dominated the humans.

They were dangerous animalistic for those that other’s called civilized though Vodarara didn’t believe any creature could be completely civil. Nothing could be completely trusted, the land had a pecking order and you had to submit yourself before the stronger that would not eat you and flee or step above those that would.