Wild Animals of the Frontier
What lives in the forests and jungles outside the walls is not all deadly. This list is shorter than it should be, for two reasons: nine centuries of surviving engineered predators has hollowed out the natural world, leaving what is small, fast, flies, or lives close to people and beneath the notice of the big killers; and recording the wild is rarely done, because doing so is dangerous. There may be species surviving that nobody has documented.
What is noticeable about the wild creatures is that they are armored — plates beneath hide, ridges along spines, spurs on wings and legs. It speaks of a natural world that was dangerous before bio-engineering and only more so after. Farm animals lack that protection, and nobody in nine hundred years has tried to reconcile the two facts, because nobody has had a reason to. Nobody has noticed the absence of wildlife either, having nothing to compare it to.
- Roeva
- The wild grazing animal of the Frontier and the moors, and the most common large native animal left. It is what the Draech, the Grimvach, and the Skadh live on. Overlapping dermal plates lie across shoulder and flank beneath the hair, which is why a Skadh that takes one from the side rarely keeps it. Herd-living, quick, constantly on guard — exactly what nine centuries of engineered predators would leave behind. Hunted in small numbers close to the cities; its meat is rich and dark and sold at prices that reflect the danger.
- Waeva
- The wild river animal and untamed counterpart of the Slyva, in families at every river and river mouth in the world — smaller, warier, uninterested in people, with bony plating along the back under coarser fur. Eldershore's keepers say they bred the Slyva from it long ago, and nobody disputes it; the two cannot stand each other.
- Rava
- The small long-eared burrowing animal, kept for meat in the agricultural rings and hunted in the hedgerows. It appears in more fables than any other wild animal.
- Snachi, Froeegei, and Twyrth
- The snake, the small amphibian, and the turtle — small ordinary wildlife of ditches, ponds, and riverbanks, none dangerous, all common in decorative motifs. The Twyrth's shell is the most visible form of the thing most native animals hide beneath hide and fur.