Open And the rabbit goes to... (Job Thread One)

[Koran Frostfawn]

6 Fall, 514 AV

Koran rose before the sun that day groggily reaching for his white bow made of ox bone. He didn't need all his equipment today to hunt which was the chief goal for today. Due to his level of experience with hunting and his weapons skills he would not venture far into the wilderness and would only be out for the duration of the day, and come back before night fall. He grabbed his bow, his quiver full of arrows and equppied his leather arm guard and glove he used for archery. He took a single full waterskin, a fishing pole, his medium sized pouch that contained his hunter's kit and the snares he bought and were included in his hunter's kit which were the three small animal snares and one tiny animal snare. He was well equipped to go into the wilderness and bag a few small critters.

He dressed comfortably as he always did in simple clothing. The chill of the mountain air didn't bother him much, to what felt like coat weather to most felt to him a breezy day due to his gnosis granted to him by the Goddess of Winter. It dawned on him that the queen of Avanthal would be visiting the rest of the world very soon, and she would certainly bring winter to Lhavit. Perhaps he would be able to see his Goddess after so long from being away from his home. He would leave tomorrow's thoughts for tomorrow though he thought as he made his way out of the apartment and past the Amaranthine Gates, all his equipment on the backpack he carried on his back and the rucksack around his waist right under his backpack his bow in one hand, his quiver next to his backpack on his back and held the snares in the hand he didn't have the bow in. They were simple foot snares he didn't quite know what to do with. They were simple traps made with rope and spring loaded so two planks of wood would enclose on the animals leg when stepped on the trigger in the middle and several wooden spikes would entrap it's leg. It seemed brutal but how else was he supposed to catch a rabbit, they were fast little buggers. He took the bow with him just for a modicum of protection and maybe the slim hope of shooting something by chance maybe a wounded badger!

Koran looked out at the wilderness from beside Hachia's home and made his way through the Lhavitian wilds. He briefly wondered what the name of this portion of Lhavit was called but it was just a momentary thought. It was gorgeous and alien to Koran. Though he had spent a few days in the Kalean wilds barely surviving it still took a lot of adjustment to not see snow covering the ground and it was almost impossible to accept all the lush green vegetation that assaulted his senses. The smells of green life filling his nostrils, all the green assaulting his eyes. It was vastly different than the pure whiteness of Avanthalian life. Sure The Northern Reaches had the occasional tree, and you had to really hunt for the animals that made their home in the tundra but here he saw several frogs hopping around a bush before their hopped away quickly at his approach. The sounds too were unbelievable. Again Avanthal was near silent in the terms of nature's music but here he could hear what he was sure were various birds, frogs croaking in the distance a distant animalistic noise he couldn't be sure from what origin it had come from. To him this was a jungle compared to his home. It was a definite culture shock to him.

He didn't exactly know where he would place his snares. The tiny animal snare he would try to snare a frog or some form of rodent with it. This one consisted of just some wiry rope. He searched in the underbrush, pushing dead leaves out of the way to find some sort of area where he could trap something. He eventually found a bush with low hanging branches he tied one end of the snare to the lowest branch and let the rest of the snare hang down. The rest of the snare was in a small loop and it hung like a noose so that the loop just brushed against the ground that way if an animal ran through the loop it would hopefully step on the rope tightening the loop around the poor animal and entrapping it for Koran to later collect for whatever he would use it for. He would probably just use the tiny rodent or frog for his own nourishment. He didn't think a lot of people were in the market for rat or frog skin and or fur. If they were he didn't think he would find the one person looking for frog skins or rat fur and he wouldn't pay all that much for it. No Koran would probably make a bowl of frog or rat soup out of the meager finding if he indeed did catch anything in this snare. He covered the snare up with some dead leaves, trying to hide it as good as he could for the placement of it, he hid the majority of it in the bushes branches, letting the bush disguise the trap. He dragged his foot along the dirt making a huge X near the trap so he could know where the trap was when he needed to find it once again.

[Koran Frostfawn]

Koran further searched for more places to drop his snares. He had no clue how to track an animal and how to properly use the tools in his hands. He of course knew some basics, a trail of footprints had to come from somewhere right? And the snares wern't alien he knew how they worked, animal steps in animal gets it's leg trapped. Things like where to put the snare to have better chances of trapping an animal or how to make a snare like this one or the one he had previously laid for the frogs or rodents. The only option left for using the snares was to wing it.

Koran searched the ground for footprints or any kind of game trail signs. He didn't know many signs of animal activity and he didn't find any in the Lhavitian wilderness. He was definitely used to finding footpronts in snow, which was infinitely easier, to him at least, than trying to find them under leaves and in dirt. He found a single footprint from some animal but it was most certainly not a trail and he couldn't figure out which way the animal went or how to follow it. He finally decided to just drop the snares at random. He put one of the snares directly out in the open with nothing to disguise it but a few dead leaves of underbrush. The next he put under a tree, maybe a squirrel or something would fall on the snare and trap it he wasn't sure if it would work. The last one he was a bit more strategic about, but only slightly. He put the trap right over the elongated animal foot print. If the animal past this location once, it wasn't too much of a leap to think he would take the same path once again. This would most likely be the one to trap the bigger game he was hunting for. He was hoping for a nice rabbit. As with the others he stretched the trap until the spring loaded with a small click that meant the trap was armed.

The four traps he brought were all placed and loaded at this time. It only took maybe half of a bell or thirty chimes. He didn't put a whole lot of thought in his placement of the traps he set not because he didn't care but because he honestly didn't know much about the wilds or about the animals he could find here. He looked around until he spotted the glistening city of Lhavit. That was his rule of thumb right now, if he could see Lhavit he wasn't too far into the wilderness. He would learn how to survive in these wilds soon enough after all his job was to obtain animals from this place and bring them back to civilization for their resources. Today was not that day however. He would have to wait until his traps were sprung in order for him to actually gain anything for his efforts so he decided to do one of the greatest pass times in his culture, wood carving.

He knew he had to find decent sized blocks of wood to shape. He knew hoe to find good wood in the wilds of the Northern Reaches. The problem there was finding it dry. He carefully searched the ground under bushes and trees. He found several long branches he thought he could whittle into crude arrows. That was probably a useful skill, might even save him some money if he learned how to decently make ammo for his bow. He stopped at about ten long sticks of dry wood. Those he would use for arrow carving. He only wanted one other thing before he could let himself re enter the city. He wanted a nice sized log or block of nice dry wood.

He searched for a few bells under trees, in bushes and around lichen covered rocks before he found what he was looking for. It wasn't perfect by any means. It was a large piece of wood about three fists long and two fists wide and about three fists high. It was easily portable but what made it look a little undesirable was that it was very charred, Koran assumed from fire or maybe a bolt of lightning that broke this piece off its origin, and seemed brittle to him. It wasn't exactly the ideal material for carving something artistic but hey he wasn't skilled enough to make anything he could sell. His conscience wouldn't allow him to sell something he wouldn't buy himself and he certainly wouldn't buy anything he could carve. He hadn't had amny chance to carve anything either. This would be the first time he took chisel to wood in a long time. He picked up the charred piece of wood and made his way to the city of Lhavit where his wood carving tools were, which he now thought as an excellent buy seeing as he now had a decent hobby.

[Koran Frostfawn]

The tools in the kit were both simple and identifiable to him and some were completely alien and he had no idea how they worked. He grabbed the pouch and made off into the wilderness past the Amaranthine Gates once more. Koran found a nice shady green tree with bark that wasn't too uncomfortable to lean against. He had tried several times on several different trees to sit under but the majority of them stabbed him in the back or were simply too rough or rugged to spend any considerable time leaning against. He laid the sticks and charred piece of wood on the ground right beside him and grabbed a carving knife out of the woodcarver's kit. He held the stick in his hand and pulled out an arrow from his quiver, to compare his finished product to and to model what he would create after the professionally made arrow.

Th first step he would take would be to slim it down, he thought to himself as he held the stick in his hand. The carving knife he held was made of stone but had a severely sharp edge to it. The arrow he would make couldn't be as bulky as a tree limb, it would have to be slender in order for him to shoot it from the bow. It was just common sense that a heavy object would be harder to shoot than a lighter one, or so he assumed seeing as how the professional arrow was about as wide as his thumb, or maybe a bit wider. The stick however was as wide as his arm. He took the carving knife made of stone and grasped the wooden handle. Starting to shave the stick from it's wooden sheath that held the arrow within it's confines, he started with the nearest point toward his body and using his thumb as a guide he slid the knife along the length of the stick until a long wooden ribbon fell upon the ground. It left in it's stead a flat surface of tanned colored wooed as opposed to the brown that it once was.

Snick...snick...snick. The rhythmic hacking away of wood from the stick was something akin to mesmerizing for the young Vantha. After nearly thirty chimes of work he was satisfied with the circumference of the shaft of the arrow to be. It was a chewed up gnarly looking bit of wood but it was a start if a brilliant projectile to pierce the very realms of the gods! ...or maybe at the very least pin down a rabbit.

The next step in his mind-consuming task was to make the arrow shaft smooth as was his other arrow serving as the model. He examined every one of the tools. He knew some of them and he tried to think back to watching his mother. She was a brilliant artist when it came to wood and ice. He picked up a tool he had seen her use often when she wanted to smooth out the design of her sculptures. The process was far from finished after this, there was still detail work to get done but for his task the process needed no artistic detail, just functional detail.

The tool he picked out was a medium sized hand tool with a coarse and rough flat area on the opposite side of where he would hold. Like all of his tools the business end of it was made of stone and the other end where he would hold was made of wood. He did not know the name of the tool he held but he knew it's purpose. He held his gnarled looking arrow shaft, pointed at both of it's ends, and put the tool to the wood. First things first, he took care of one of the shaft's ends. He dragged the tool across the wood and it made a grating sound. Wood dust and chips fell from the unfinished arrow as chimes passed while he worked.

[Koran Frostfawn]

As the dust from the wood passed to the ground so too did the chimes from his life. It took a long while for the shaft's end to become a smooth flat surface and it made a surprising amount of dust on the ground. The stick now looked like a stake. It was around ten inches in length including the rough point at one end where the branch broke from the tree he assumed it fell from. He planned on sharpening the point of course, it wouldn't serve much to have a dull arrow. He took the tool he used on the arrow shaft's end and started to work on the length of the shaft. His goal was to make a smooth rounded shaft.

Rounding the shaft was harder than expected. Scraping the rough stone tool over the wood posed a problem due to the uneven nature of his cuts into the wood. The scrapings became uneven as he ran the tool over the wood. When he picked up the wood it wasn't exactly dry or dead so sap had started to cover the now shaved and pointed stick. He furrowed his brow and started to use the tool to scrape the sap off the center of the wooden shaft. After about ten chimes of work he gripped the arrow shaft and pressed the tool to the center of the shaft, to remove the sap. A loud crack rang through the wild environment as the stick broke and splintered into pieces. Several bells of work completely and utterly wasted! He let out an angry grunt and tossed the two pieces of splintered wood as hard as he could and shoved his knife into the kit and the kit back into his backpack, along with the block of charred wood he had found and would keep to carve at a later time. He was far too upset with his own failings now to continue fletching arrows or continue his carving efforts now anyway. He shouldn't be too upset though, he thought to himself, it was his first attempt to fletch an arrow.

It had been nearly six bells if his sense of time was anything to go by, and generally it wasn't. Six bells of laying traps, carving wood, and waiting on a hapless animal to stick their foot in one of his traps. He hoped to have at least one of his traps sprung by now, if not he would simply come back in the morning. That was one of his shortcomings that seemed to go unnoticed by Koran. His inability to be patient. He checked the first couple of traps he laid down carelessly and with little effort. They were empty of prey but they had all been sprung and were now brutally mangled. The third he laid was also empty of prey and mangled but held a nice little surprise.

Small amounts of blood glistened off the sprung trap. Some of the wooden spikes were torn off. It looked as if the animal had sprung the trap and managed to escape it's clutches. Maybe it escaped with a wound. He examined the trap, and it was definitely sprinkled with some sort of animals blood but he couldn't make out a trail from just that. He would have to find a little bit more to go on if he were to find the prey he so nearly acquired.

[Koran Frostfawn]

He searched around the trap. Nothing. The ground held nearly nothing he could see. He knew enough that if he found a trail he should follow it. The problem was finding a trail. Through luck or sheer perserverance he found something after a couple of bells of work.

A single leaf with a glistening spot of blood. It was an obvious sign and at the same time very little to work with but it was all he had. The leaf was several feet away from the trap and lying alone on the ground. Koran sighed and ran a hand through his short spiky dark colored hair. Searching aimlessly brought him no fruitful results. It wasn't like there was an arrow that told him which direction the wounded animal went. He almost gave up before he saw a single snapped twig lying on the ground.

It was hard to say if the twig was related to the animal he had unsuccessfuly snared in his trap. Koran looked around the broken twig to find what appeared to be a muddy partial footprint, of what animal he couldn't tell but it consisted of four small circles each attached to a narrow based that broke off before a heel print, he assumed. It was odd, but it definitely had a direction he could follow, and follow he would.

Aimlessly he wandered. Without any trail signs, at least not any obvious onces he could find, he traveled in circles trying to find an animal much more well adapted to wilderness survival than he was at tracking. Koran pushed himself through some foliage and into a clearing.

Koran found himself feet away from a bloody scene. A grey, mangy looking dog, for he was much too small to be a wold, had a chunk of rabbit in his mouth. The wild dog, it would seem, at full standing height stood at Koran's knees. Half of a rabbit lay at it's paws. It stared at Koran mid bite, blood on it's teeth as it snarled.

Koran slowly untethered the bow from his back and gripped it in one hand, the other clutched an arrow. He wouldn't fire unless the beast charged, or if he thought he could down the beast. Judging by his early season practice with his bow and then the distance was fifty feet, the beast was slightly closer than fifty feet. If he was going to do it, he would only have one shot and the beast would be on him before he fired another. The beast stood and Koran readied the bow. There was a very small notch in the back of the arrow to accommodate the bowstring. The bowstring slid into the notch at the back of the arrow as it had always done before. He drew back the bowstring with the bow and arrow pointed down, so he didn't have his usual anchor point to go by. The anchor point was a landmark on his body he used as a measure as to how far to draw back the bowstring and to steady his hand.

His nerve shattered as the beast stalked toward him. His hand shook and the arrow clattered against the wood of the bow. He raised the bow and targeted the stone arrow head right between the angry looking animal's two faintly glowing yellow eyes. Before the beast had time to lunge Koran had taken aim. One shot, one shot to live or die. He released the bowstring, and released the arrow after a silent prayer to whatever god or goddess would listen for the arrow to hit its mark.

[Koran Frostfawn]

The beast went down, but as it lay there Koran heard it whimpering. Koran saw the arrow he released dug into the beast's left lef on a point nearest its body. An anatomist would have said that the animals femoral muscle was pierced and that the stone head of the arrow struck bone, shattering it and tearing the muscle causing an inability for locomotive function of the beast's left leg. Koran would have called it a damned lucky shot that he could write a thirty page ballad about easily.

Koran prepared another arrow, because the animal was clearly in pain and would not survive an injury like this one in the wilds. He winced slightly at the sight of the writhing animal and drew back the bowstring in an act of mercy to end the animal's pain and misery. It was one thing to shoot an animal that could defend itself or run away but it was quite another thing to shoot something that had no choice but to sit there and die. “Your death will not be in vain, friend” he said compassionately. Perhaps at the sound of his voice the animal howled and rolled in such a way as to allow it to grab hold of his lower leg.

As the long sharp teeth of the animal grazed Koran's led he panicked. He twisted and kicked the animal in the mouth with his other leg. The dog dislodged itself from Koran's now bleeding leg and just on pure instinct Koran shot the arrow he had readied and held onto, pulling the bowstring back into a full draw he shot it into the head of the small dog. The animal twitched several times before it was still and remained so.

His leg, he thought at least, wasn't too badly damaged. He took off his shirt and tore long strips of fabric from it, cutting it with his knife when it got difficult and wrapped the makeshift bandages around his bleeding calf and tied it quickly. It was crude but it would last him until he got to Lhavit. “Great...now I'm going to have to buy another shirt...” He grumbled to himself. He could still walk on his injured leg, though it was very painful and blood seeped into his makeshift bandages at a steady pace. The dog was of a scrawny sort now that he had a good close look at it.He resigned, after momens of considering other possibilities and solutions, to hoist the animal on his shoulders and carry it back to Lhavit.

Several times he had to stop and rest. The extra weight put that much extra strain on his newly injured leg. He paned and sweated profusely, drenching his now uncovered body, as he walked the treacherous path back to civilization. Step after gruelling agonizing step it felt as if his flesh were peeling from the wound just from the extra exertion. It was agonizing work but after several bells more than it would have taken him to get there he saw the pathway to the Amaranthine Gates.

He laid the wild dog out and looked at it. He would have to skin and field dress the dog soon or the meat would be useless and rotted out. Even in fall it was too hot to keep this sort of kill out for very long at his dog was already exposed to the elements far longer than he would like. He would also have to get his leg looked after but the animal would need to come first, his leg wasn't too bad that he could abandon and spoil his kill, that would be a complete waste of the animal's life. The first problem he faced was that he had never field dressed or skinned an animal, his father used to do that part for him. He watched his father countless times but seeing and doing were two very different things.

He dug out his hunting knife from the medium sized pouch in his backpack. His father, when he dressed a rabbit, always started with the head. Now a dog and a rabbit were two very different animals but it was all he had to go on. He inserted the knife into the base of the skull and started to carve through the neck of the dog. With considerable work the head slipped off and rolled a little bit away. Blood began to drain from the poor animal. This would let the hunted animal bleed out, it was definitely a good thing. The decapitated animal looked as if something chewed it's head off rather than a skilled hunter preparing a kill. Next the feet would have to come off. He broke each of the legs at the knee and used the knife to sever each at the joint. Again this was a sloppy process for him with much blood seeping from every new dismembered limb and the decapitated dog.

Skinning the dog went horribly wrong. He tried to part the fur from the animal but the process was taking far too long to do carefully. He stabbed his knife into the animal and butchered the fur, the knife slipping in his haste to complete his task. The end result of his rushed efforts was a shredded piece of fur and een the dog's meat was butchered shredded and ruined beyond belief. Two useful resources he could obtain from the animal now were left completely defiled and useless.

Now that he utterly destroyed the fruits of his hunt there was but one thing he could attain from it. He could harvest the dog's organs which would make for a few nice meals. He used the knife to crack open the chest and abdominal cavities. He first began work on the kidneys starting to carve them out of the animal and it worked beautifully. He now had two kidneys he could make into some sort of meal or he could sell them though he didn't see the market for dog kidneys. He went back into the animal and again in his rush to carve another organ out of the animal his knife slipped once more and plunged into the urinary sac with a loud, wet, sickening sound. Foul smelling urine pooled into both of the cavities drenching the dog's meat and organs in the disgusting yellow liquid. It saturated the harvestable organs and left every part of the animal useless to him. The final thing he did so the animal wouldn't be a complete waste to him and to it's former life was to take some of it's ribs and stripped the meat and skin from it's legs to take it's hind legs. He would use the bones for something useful. With a heavy and weary sigh he put the bones into his bag along with his charred piece of wood and hobbled up the pathway to Lhavit to seek medical treatment.

[Brandon Blackwing]

KORAN FROSTFAWN


XP:

• Observation +3
• Trapping +1
• Land Navigation+1
• Fletching+2
• Tracking +1
• Composite Shortbow +1
• medicine +1
• Butchering +1

Lore:

• The beauty of the Misty Peaks
• Lhavit: The Misty Peaks
• Where to place snare traps
• How traps work
• Land Navigation: Using a landmark to find your way back
• Making Arrows from a tree branch
• Tracking: A trail of blood and snapped twigs
• Finishing off a helpless animal: an act of mercy
• Animals' survival instinct doesn't like acts of mercy
• Medicine: Bandaging a leg

Notes:
Nice read Koran! I enjoyed Koran's .. sloppy attempts at hunting quite a lot I must admit. Also, his attitude towards the dog was great to read. Well done!

Oh yeah, that wound on Koran's leg should get treated, lest you want it to become infected. It will scar, but the scars will be barely noticable.

Please edit your grade request in the request thread. If you have any concerns, questions or comments regarding your grade, you are free to send me a pm.

credit goes to Adelaide Sitai