Macropod
Wurming - the act of hunting wurms, those moluscine behemoths of the desert, myriad in form - has always been a part of the Korashi way of life. The carcasses of these huge creatures provide many useful products, especially meat, oil, leather, and - in the case of those with shells - mineral tsalts.
Though alongside the wurming industry exists the more peaceable trade of wurm husbandry - the raising and domestication of wurms. In Korash's western expanse, the tribe best known for both these practices is Hu'Rai, or 'Brass Serpent,' whose people have been breeding, corralling, and hunting the beasts for longer than even the tribe's dusty archives record.
Within the family of desert wurms is a wild variety of diversity of types, which each thought to have their ancestral roots in creatures that lived in Korash long, long ago, when the great deserts where, if certain scholars are to be believed, underwater. If true, it would means these majestic creatures had always lived in sand, but that that sand had once been at the bottom of a long-forgotten ocean.
Some wurms are grand leviathans, like titanic, boneless snakes - tubes of crushing muscle one hundred meters long. Others - known as 'hydras' - more resemble living trees: writhing masses of tentacles that sprout from a single thick stump of a body. A third still are commonly known as 'snails', and are ponderous shelled entities whose size varies from the small - merely the length of a human hand, and dwelling around common oasis sites - up to the formidable size of a large motorvehicle.
Of the latter group, a wurm that has earned particular renown with the tribes of Dust Flag is the macropod. Large, friendly, loyal and surprisingly trainable, these gentle shelled giants serve many tribes as slow, yet reliable, transports. Drawing moisture from the air with their mucosal excretions, and feeding largely off of the invisible planktons within dunes as it slowly traverses them, it can survive for long, long periods of time away from more bounteous sources of food and water.
The humble macropod is also often used to provide mobile waystations for travellers - build on top of its shell, and you have a mobile base of fuel and supplies that can make for a vital rest stop for travelling convoys, and perhaps a profitable business for an enterprising nomad merchant.
Though alongside the wurming industry exists the more peaceable trade of wurm husbandry - the raising and domestication of wurms. In Korash's western expanse, the tribe best known for both these practices is Hu'Rai, or 'Brass Serpent,' whose people have been breeding, corralling, and hunting the beasts for longer than even the tribe's dusty archives record.
Within the family of desert wurms is a wild variety of diversity of types, which each thought to have their ancestral roots in creatures that lived in Korash long, long ago, when the great deserts where, if certain scholars are to be believed, underwater. If true, it would means these majestic creatures had always lived in sand, but that that sand had once been at the bottom of a long-forgotten ocean.
Some wurms are grand leviathans, like titanic, boneless snakes - tubes of crushing muscle one hundred meters long. Others - known as 'hydras' - more resemble living trees: writhing masses of tentacles that sprout from a single thick stump of a body. A third still are commonly known as 'snails', and are ponderous shelled entities whose size varies from the small - merely the length of a human hand, and dwelling around common oasis sites - up to the formidable size of a large motorvehicle.
Of the latter group, a wurm that has earned particular renown with the tribes of Dust Flag is the macropod. Large, friendly, loyal and surprisingly trainable, these gentle shelled giants serve many tribes as slow, yet reliable, transports. Drawing moisture from the air with their mucosal excretions, and feeding largely off of the invisible planktons within dunes as it slowly traverses them, it can survive for long, long periods of time away from more bounteous sources of food and water.
The humble macropod is also often used to provide mobile waystations for travellers - build on top of its shell, and you have a mobile base of fuel and supplies that can make for a vital rest stop for travelling convoys, and perhaps a profitable business for an enterprising nomad merchant.
Image by Dattan Porto
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