Dangerous Fauna and Flora
What lives outside the walls wants to kill you. Twenty-three things are named here. Every city has its list of lesser dangers and every waystation knows what hunts around it, but these twenty-three are known the world over, taught to children, and marked on every chart. They are not evenly spread; each holds its own piece of country, and a traveler knows which ground they are on and what is on it with them.
The Cold North
Draech
The most feared predator in the world. A solitary, near-starved-looking creature, pale gray to white in winter, eight or nine feet tall, that walks on four and rears on two to attack, with hands rather than paws and long clawed fingers for climbing and killing. It attacks from above, and in poor light looks like a tall man standing perfectly still in the tree line; many encounters begin with that mistake. It takes the isolated and alone. See Draech.
Grimvach
A heavy canine-like pack hunter, six to twelve to a pack, on the northern moors and forest edges — mastiff-sized, longer-legged and rangier, charcoal to black, with eyes that reflect firelight in a way Stormharbor folklore takes for the unquiet dead. Not an ambush hunter: it follows for hours until the prey exhausts itself or stops, and its jaw is built for bone. The commonest cause of Baechri loss on open ground. A Vennek cannot beat a pack but makes the herd expensive enough that the pack moves on; a herder without Wysk and a Vennek does not keep a herd long. A native animal — it tests a target and withdraws if the answer is convincing.
The Temperate Forests
Skadh
A huge cat-like predator, the size of a large tiger at four to six hundred pounds, long-limbed for a high stance over undergrowth, with a heavy skull and broad jaw built to crush skull and snap spine rather than hold a throat. Tawny to dark brown with faint striping that fades in the old. It hunts only in failing light and the first gray of morning, silent, solitary, and patient. It takes livestock from unwatched pens and will not take on a Vennek clan, which it knows. A native animal.
Mimra
A mid-sized canid, unremarkable but for a tail far longer than any fox's, sometimes split at the tip in the old, which appears in many folktales. It mimics — bird calls, animal distress, and human voices near enough in cadence and tone to seem real — and hunts in families of four to eight, one or two drawing attention while the rest move in. See Mimra.
Water and Wet Ground
Svaekoil
Serpentine but not a snake — four short powerful legs, twelve to twenty feet, deep green to near black, a broad flat head with a crest that rises when threatened. It waits submerged in murky water and rises to strike, locks its jaw, and rolls to drown what it takes. See Svaekoil.
The Mountain
The high country is the most dangerous ground in the world and was before anything was released into it. Above certain heights the air thins; a person who climbs faster than their body adjusts becomes confused, then still, then dead before they realize. The weather turns in an hour and the cold never rests. More people die on the mountain from carelessness than from anything with teeth, and Clearhold's whole temperament is the result: a place where one small error is fatal breeds a people who cannot tolerate imperfection.
Kollgar
Perhaps the worst thing living in the world: a gray-white, long-limbed runner that hunts in formation and watches settlements until it has learned their schedules. See Kollgar.
Skrafna
Comes up from underneath. A segmented burrower, eight to twelve feet, plated along the back, with broad flat digging blades for forelimbs and a ring of grinding plates for a mouth. It moves at walking pace through worked earth and fast through loose fill; it cannot tunnel rock and ignores moorland, preferring deep turned earth — which on a mountain means a terrace. It comes up without warning and the ground gives as it comes; a person working a row has as long as it takes to notice the soil move. This is why Clearhold's terraces are stone-faced as deep as they are and inspected on a precise schedule. A cracked course cannot wait.
Kammra
A massive lizard-like reptile, fifteen to twenty-five feet with a tail as long again, slate to blue-gray, crested and barbeled, that climbs walls and hunts from cliffs and is the source of most of the world's dragon myths. Cold-blooded and seasonal, which is why the mountain paths are safest in early spring and late autumn. See Kammra.
Stoendh
A bear-built quadruped, twelve to eighteen hundred pounds, with a broader flatter head, shorter snout, heavier forelimbs, and a thick gray-brown hide that in old animals looks like stone; one at rest among rocks is hard to see. It claims a stretch of terrain — a pass, a crossing, a cave by water — and attacks anything that enters; sometimes it claims a stretch of the Brass Road and must be chased off or killed. Its charge from stillness seems impossible for its mass, and a forelimb shatters a wheel or kills a Dorath in one blow. It is not clever: it does not stalk or plan, its territories are known and tracked, the Pass Warden at Ironpass keeps current records, and outriders announce a caravan with drums and horns to give it time to move. Most take the chance. The ones that do not are the dangerous ones.
Glaera
A large arachnid, dog-bodied with legs spanning four or five feet, that webs mountain forests and cave mouths. Its silk is tougher than any other natural thread, its anchor lines hold a grown man, and the web does not stick but tangles, worse with every struggle. The lure: glands on the abdomen make a light compound it paints on certain strands, and at night those strands glow a faint warm gold that reads as a campfire or a settlement in the distance. Its neurotoxin paralyzes over half a Spaen, about three quarters of an hour; the bite hurts without killing at once, so a bitten person can call for help, and alone the encounter is fatal. Mountain travelers learn never to approach unknown lights. The mountain's lanterns lead nowhere good. A native animal that holds caves.
The Tropical South
Vraech
A great bird, fourteen to sixteen feet in span, deep iridescent blue-black that flashes in sun, with wings far stronger than any natural bird's — it can carry eighty or ninety pounds — and thick curved claws that kill by the force of the dive. It hunts alone from altitude in a steep strike prey does not see, and is more active in storms, when everything is distracted; Eldershore calls it a creature of thunder. It selects for what looks small: children, small adults, and anyone bent or crouching with head and spine exposed from above. Eldershore's field workers wear wide hats and carry tall vertical poles, and the rings are worked under netting in the wet season. A Vaelith's ridge protects the Vaelith and not the rider — but a rider is the tallest thing on open ground, and safer for it.
Spynra
A massive reptile, not quite crocodile and not quite serpent, twenty to thirty feet and over two thousand pounds, whose inflated-throat silhouette and miles-carrying bellow justify every dragon story told about it. See Spynra.
The Dry Interior
Stoepva
The largest flying animal in the world: twenty to twenty-four feet across, a hundred and fifty to two hundred pounds, heavy and powerful, with a hooked beak that crushes bone, dark brown to bronze with pale under-wing markings that flash when it banks. It holds the wide arid country between the forests, hunting from great height over ground where nothing can hide, seeing far and stooping from further than a person can reasonably watch. It is the reason the dry interior is crossed quickly and never settled.
The Open Sea
Ramvach
An enormous fish, heavy-bodied and blunt-headed, its skull reinforced, with no visible eyes. It is never seen whole — a shape below the hull, then the strike. It holds particular stretches of deep water rather than roaming; navigators know the zones and route around them, and the direct Long Reach passes through at least two. A clockwork hull monitor picks up the pressure wave about thirty Teich, forty seconds, before impact — time to brace, not to turn. The strike cracks planking and rarely sinks a sound ship outright; what sinks the ship is the damage working open in the next storm.
Rypra
Small individually — a forearm's length, silver, narrow, with jaws that open too far — and in schools of hundreds a terror. They strip a man to the bone in minutes; a man overboard in the southern lanes has exactly as long as it takes his crew to reach him. They are why southern vessels drill recovery and why going overboard is treated as it is. They do not range north; the cold seas kill men overboard by other means.
Nochraem
A huge eel-like creature, twenty-five to thirty-five feet, dark and matte so it reflects no light, with a jaw that unhinges to take prey wider than its head and enormous pale eyes that have never needed daylight. It comes alongside a hull at night, drawn by the vibration of a moving vessel, and reaches over the gunwale for whoever is nearest. Light drives it off. This is why merchant vessels on the Long Reach burn deck lanterns all night even when running dark would be safer against pirates; a captain who douses his lights has traded one predator for another, and every captain on the route makes that calculation.
Kaellwyrm
Long and sinuous in every tale, and beyond that no two accounts agree. Sailors report a call or a light that draws men to the rail and over it. Sightings are too rare and too inconsistent to assess, and the Academy has never settled whether it is a lure, a sound below hearing, or what fear and exhaustion do to a man too long at sea. What is not disputed is that men go over the rail into deep water for no reason they can afterwards give. It is whispered about in port taverns and marked on no chart.
Things that do not move
Vespra
A nest of Vespa and the ground it holds — a place rather than a creature, marked on the charts and never approached. See Vespra.
Slyngra
Grows toward warmth and movement and closes on what it reaches. See Slyngra.
Sygra
A climbing vine thick as a wrist at the base, broad dark leaves, and flowers or fruit that carry a lure — a sweet scent or a soft glow. The needles lie flat along the stems until something moves close enough to trigger them, and then draw blood or inject what dissolves it. A passive trap that neither moves nor pursues. Eldershore clears it from the wall margins and finds it again every season.
Aernthorn
A dense low bramble, gray-brown and hard to notice at a distance, with finger-length backward-hooked thorns hard enough to turn a blade struck square. It grows fast and thick and the thorns catch; every pull drives them deeper, and a person caught alone who cannot cut clear bleeds out over hours. Cutting works slowly. Fire is the only fast answer.
Hwysra
A soft pale-green moss in thick beds on shaded ground, deep enough to lie down in and inviting to look at. The spores lift at the slightest disturbance. A person who settles into a bed of Hwysra does not get up again, and what follows is slow and not worth describing.
Nyfra
A low creeping root of the northern moorland whose sap raises a deep, slow-healing burn — not cold but caustic, and far worse than it first appears.
Iskra
A pale crusting lichen on northern rock, blue-white and faintly translucent, so like frost that people touch it by mistake. Like most native plants it lays down minerals, which makes it brittle; it breaks at a touch and releases shards as fine as glass that work into the skin and stay, causing pain out of all proportion to the injury, for months or years, fading and returning with heat, cold, or a touch. A person with an Iskra burn has one for life. Northern children are shown Nyfra and Iskra as early as possible and told the same thing: do not touch it, do not test it, walk around it. Stormharbor's physicians treat a dozen cases a season, nearly all in people from elsewhere.
What is taken from them
Three of these are harvested and one is farmed. Hwysra spores, carefully gathered, are the anaesthetic every physician in the world uses; every patient who wakes from surgery with no memory of it owes that to a plant that exists to kill them. Nyfra sap yields a controlled paralytic, used where a limb must be held still or a body must stop fighting the surgeon. Glaera silk, cut from abandoned webs, is the strongest fiber anyone has and goes into Forgegate's surgical thread, and the light compound is extracted for paint wherever a faint glow is wanted — watch dials, trail markers, instrument faces, a physician's night light. Telling an abandoned web from an occupied one is a skill, and the people who have it are paid for it. The world's position is that a poison and a medicine differ only by the dose.
What they have in common
There is an observable difference anyone could see and nobody has. The made things do not break off. They weigh no cost; they have a purpose and execute it at any price. The native ones do break off — a Grimvach pack tests and withdraws — because a creature that wants to survive calculates cost, and nothing built to kill people cares about surviving.
The rest of the large predators were not killed by the weapons; they were out-hunted by them. Anything built to hunt people hunts better than anything that merely evolved, and the engineered predators ate everything of their own size out of existence. The small native hunters came through because a Tyvra was never worth a weapon's attention. What is missing is everything in between, and there is no record it was ever there.
The mountain carries more of the made things than anywhere, and two of them exist for no purpose but to make it unlivable. Whoever released them wanted someone off that mountain for good. Nine centuries later people settled it anyway, never knowing the attempt had been made. That is where Clearhold sits.
None of this is known to anyone alive. What is known is that these things exist, that each holds a particular kind of ground, and that a person who learns which is which lives a great deal longer.