Hunters of Alrugard: A Hunt into Darkness

[Shimmerene]

:: Hunters of Alrugard: The OOC ::

Alrugard. The frozen world.

Current Player Count: 3(4)

It is a world covered in a perpetual winter, nothing stays warm here. Through the ice and snow vicious predators pick off the weak and dying, for this is a land without mercy. Those humans that live here in the wastes of Alrugard do so in vast mobile colonies floating high above the frigid wastes. Death takes many forms here on Alrugard, however, and not even the skies are safe. Giant predatory birds wander the skies looking for anything to eat, sometimes even picking people off the streets of their floating towns. Lithe cat-like beings stalk the tundra looking for an easy kill. Even below ground predators lurk around every bend in the tunnel. Such a world is a harsh place to live, yet through antiquated science the humans stay above the harsh surface for as long as their fuel survives. And so it is that two groups have equal importance here, those who keep the machines running, and those who hunt the surface.

Those who dare to call themselves hunters are those who venture to the surface with little more than torch and spear. These are the men and women of the colonies who brave the hoarfrost blizzards, and the deadly landscape to hunt the packs of herd animals. They are those who keep the colonies fed, the ones who guard the machinists on fuel outings. They are the Hunters of Alrugard. This is their story, a story of bitter isolation in the unforgiving wastes of Alrugard. It is also a story of how they conquered the Galruvian Horror...


It is through our deeds that we can truly call ourselves worthy, for only through action can our valor be determined. This is the way we of the hunters live, this is our choice. We men and women of the colonies make the decision to provide for humanity by daily risking our lives on the surface of Alrugard. The life of a hunter is rough, everyday our life is in danger, be it the landscape of the creatures which call it home. Yet, even though we may die upon the surface of this cruel world, we choose to live there rather than within the safety of the colonies. We choose to separate ourselves from the possibility of becoming part of the society we support because of the society we support. The hunter cannot be loved intimately by one of the colonists because of the fact that we do not truly know if we will survive the night. Even when one of us has earned his stay within the colonies, we are still attached to Alrugard, choosing to go on what is known as The Great Journey. It is on this Great Journey that the hunters become fully one with Alrugard, the one thing that we of the hunters strive for. Yes, we choose to live within the natural laws of Alrugard, and in doing so we become the hunters of those who have stalked these lands for millennia. We keep the Alrugardian cycle as close to us as possible, hunting in accordance to our ancient terran ancestors. The only weapons we use are those we can make from the dead, spears from the teeth of ancient carnivores, clubs from the femurs of large bipeds, and anything the mind can imagine. We frown upon the weapons which kill from afar, choosing to go in and see our prey, and of course killing with those who have been killed. This is our life, a life we chose. Do not look down upon us as savages, for we bring food to humanity, and we do so with the skill of one who loves the very animal they kill. Do not look up to us, for we stand upon the brink of death at every moment, with but a breeze between us and a terrifying death.


For the last few thousand years humanity had struggled to survive on a planet so hostile to them that early colonists had declared it a death world. Humanity took root upon Alrugard on the verge of extinction, faced with being wiped out from within or a bleak existence upon Alrugard. While the records of the colonies do not have much from before Alrugard, they make it clear that all of humanity did not take to the frozen wastes. A great schism formed between those who took to Alrugard and those who chose to continue their travels, vowing to one day come back with proof of their success. Those who fled to Alrugard did so without remorse, as the people they left to the stars were no more their brothers than Alrugard their home. Alrugard, however, decided to make sure that the humans were very aware of what awaited them. As the massive vessels descended from orbit, a blizzard wracked the landing areas with such force that the vessels crashed into the mountains, destroying their hope of hitting the ground running. With their technology all but destroyed humanity was on the verge of extinction. Alrugard had proven to be a cold unfeeling bitch, and now faced with the unfeeling hostile environment, and the remorseless native animal-life, humanity rushed to find a way to stay off the ground. Risking only short trips into the wastelands, the first hunters were born. Forced to become one with the planet, they made do with what they had, creating weapons out of what they killed, and eating whatever they could kill.

It was because of this that when the other humans had been able to convert their orbital colonies into floating cities, the hunters were already too far distant from the humans they had protected and fed. While the years may have passed, the animosity hasn't, keeping the hunters mostly on what has been referred to Great Hunts. The rest of humanity doesn't seem to care that the hunters spend more time on the surface, as when they do return, they bring large amounts of flesh. So, while both groups may be content with their tenuous situation, it couldn't last for long. Just before the last moon cycle of the second era of humanity, disaster struck. A beast had been awoken from humanity's attempts to gather fuel for their floating cities, and the devastation it had wrought spread for miles around. Word got around to the other colonies by the hunters who had seen the devastation, provoking an order from the governors of each city to kill the beast. So it was that the hunters were gathered, and a Great Hunt was rallied for the beast that killed the city of Galruvia. So it was that they hunted a creature whose only knowledge they had of it was what it could do. So it was that they hunted the Galruvian Horror...

******

The Northern Border of the Equatorial Tundras

The Moot had finished, many volunteers had been gathered, and their blood was up. The Hunt-Priests had told them of the rumors of a massive beast capable of taking down an entire city of Sky-Dwellers, and that glory was theirs for the taking. These Hunters did not know what it looked like, how it killed, or if it even truly existed, all they knew is that the northern-most city of Galruvia had been found in the Northern Peaks, devoid of all life. It was more than enough for some of the Hunters, and they were the ones who gathered about the border to the Northern Peaks, distrust in the others vibrant in the cold air between them. For a few, this distrust would lead to their violent deaths, and for others, the distrust would vanish in the face of the unknown regions they have been tasked with journeying to. This also drew some to the Hunt, for very few had ever made it to the farthest Northern reaches. Rumor also told of a great Legendary-Hunter who had taken up his spear for the Hunt, a man said to have been born on the surface of Alrugard to two Hunters who had braved the North's most furious winters. He was a man foretold to hunt the most dangerous hours, the only Hunter to successfully take a kill at night. These are of course, rumor, and most Hunters take them as such, but Hunters have always been a superstitious lot and take to certain rumors as truth. In the end, whether it be a beast like no other, a journey into the unexplored, or the famed Night-Hunter, these Hunters have gathered here to embark on a Hunt that will take them into the darkness of the human soul, and will surely be the last hunt for many, if not all of them...

::All Hunters begin at the Northern Post, and have been given information that the next gathering point is a Shrine to Alrugard in the Northern Peaks region, approximately 50KM north of their current position. Each player has the choice to either embark on their own, or with other players. Players who have not joined yet will be assumed to have embarked on their own, and assumed to have survived thus far. There are 12 Hunters from this Moot who have chosen to take up the Hunt, and once either the Player-Cap has been reached, or the Players have reached the second Way-Point, then no new Players are allowed entry. Players who choose a path of their own will be given challenges more difficult than the group challenges, as more predators will be drawn to the stragglers and cast-offs. Good Hunting to all, and be sure to give Alrugard her due::

[Shienvien]

Rahena stood a short distance from the dozen of others, in part waiting, in part scanning the terrain ahead. The ground nearby was fairly flat, dark-splotched with the sparse turndra-moss and the occasional yellowing clusters of low, coarse weeds, farther away becoming first increasingly gray-toned with light snow and darker partially-frozen eyes of water, and then starting to rise and fall in broken snow-covered hills. On the very horizon the nearest of the Northern Peaks were barely discernible, darker than the hills before those with the mountainsides being too steep for gathering snow, and giving the line where sky and land met a fanged look. Towards the east, the line was blurred - chances were that it was snowing there.
Strange as it might have sounded to a sky-dweller, but those mountains were far closer to being her home than the tundras or - let alone - the civilization, cities. She had barely spent any more time in the cities than had been necessary to grant the sky-dwellers a share of her kills, and as for the tundra... She did not like the plains' openness, or the wet sponge-like ground tundras had during the short period of warmth...
She did not like the herbivores, either, nor hunting them - and the tundras were the only region where plant-eaters could be occasionally encountered. Herbivores killed unchoosingly, slaughtering anyone not of their own kind, since almost any other being in existence was either a competitor for the meager vegetation they needed to eat for surviving, or possibly a predator that might come to desire their flesh. And thusly it was that predators only killed those which they would eat or in self-defense, and herbivores simply killed everyone they could kill... Herbivores were opportunistic killers, not killers of need, like predators were.

For a moment, the female hunter's eyes flickered onto something off the horizon, in the sky, tracking it - a tiny black speck in the distance, visible for a few moments, and then disappearing entirely as it drifted yet farther. Too far away to be of any concern to them, but had it been much closer, it would have been more than enough of a reason to pay attention, for this being - an enormous bird of prey with its wings spanning almost six meters from one tip to another - was more than capable of slicing a human to bloody ribbons or, alternatively, simply throwing someone into air and letting the gravity do the rest. Their beaks were terrifying, but during hunting, they generally did not use those - they used their talons instead, and left their beaks for cracking bones and surgically extracting every scrap of flesh from their kills. No doubt the specimen she had spotted in the distance was likewise on lookout for a prey.
Rahena herself almost took pride in knowing how different creatures hunted - and simultaneously, it was the kind of knowledge that had let her survive to this day, and make her own kills. Now, with the quest she was about to undertake, it was entirely possible she would come to encounter creatures she had never seen before, reach places not even she had visited during her life - which was already longer than that of many, if not most hunters. Thirty-four... To think that the sky-dwellers could reach eighty and above if they were lucky enough. A wry smile wanted to creep back onto her scarred and weathered face in where only the eyes seemed to have been untouched by the harsh conditions, and even those seemed oddly wary.
"And may the most skilled predator win," she muttered in a low, rasped tone, slowly and fumblingly, as if she had a hard time recalling how speaking was supposed to be done. Hearing her own voice was strange, as normally she barely spoke, even to herself. Especially to herself.

After a short while, she turned to look back at the outpost, and the people still there.
"Who wants to come with me, come," she stated, bluntly, much louder, the vapor in her breath immediately condensing into white mist as she exhaled. It was nowhere as cold as during the winters, but Alrugard had never been a warm place, not even on the equator and at the peak of the summer. At most, it was just slightly less cold.
She was already prepared; she was always as prepared as she could make herself. She did not mind people traveling with her - it might even stave off a few lesser predators -, but she felt no need for company. Solitude was a natural state for her. If someone wanted to come, they could, but if no one chose the option, she would embark on her own. And if they took too long to prepare, and were not ready yet, she did not even need them... Being slowed down did not belong into her plans, and if she could avoid having to constantly wait for someone, she would.
Whether someone had taken up her offer or not, Rahena soon took to facing the north again, and pulled the hood over her dark hair as she set off. On the background of snow, her light gray speckled white coat became barely visible, and even then only due to the fact that she was moving, and snow was currently not falling. She moved low and quick, watching both the sky and land. She knew where she was going.