Tasakeru

SUPPLEMENTALS #2: Daily Life, Part 2

20 Dec 2011 1 Comment

by BHS in Supplementals Tags: daily life, fox, supplementals, wolf

WOLVES

The daily life of a wolf almost always involves travel. Wolves have a natural instinct to wander the outdoors with their packs; for this reason, barely a fifth of their population elects to live in their territory in Shinboku. Too many walls and ceilings make them uncomfortable, so even those that do choose city life tend to live in very large, open group homes, a form of communal housing.

Most of the wolves live in traveling groups among the Raikaa mountain range that makes up Sankami’s northern border. For a wolf to focus on one single occupation (such as farming or goat-breeding) is uncommon; wolves specialize in learning as many skills as possible and being at least competent in every possible field, to better support their pack.

Needless to say, a wolf’s pack is the center of his or her existence. One week after birth, a wolf pup will be given their first tattoos in a sacred ritual. The tattoos, based on the night sky on their birth week and applied with enchanted ink, will serve to identify their pack for the rest of their lives. Therefore, being stripped of one’s markings is a punishment only reserved for the most heinous of crimes.

The wolves have no formal schooling system. From birth to maturity, a wolf will be raised and educated not only by his or her parents but by the rest of the pack as well, with each individual taking part in the pup’s development. Once the pup is matured and is ready to start a family, he or she will be given their second set of tattoos, marking them as full-grown and ready to start their own pack. The new markings will be comprised of a mixture of the old and the new, thus it is possible to tell a wolf’s entire history if one knows how to read their markings correctly.

Due to their unique needs and lifestyles, wolves consume far more meat than the other sentient species. In fact, almost every pack travels with at least a few domestic animals used purely for food purposes. This largely-carnivorous diet is one of the reasons wolves are still seen as “savages” by many… an echo of the fears of the distant, pre-sentient past, perhaps.

One final note: the outbreak of the Frothing Blight one hundred thirty years ago hit the wolves the hardest, leading to the loss of at least one-third of their population. After the Blight was controlled, a gradual shift became apparent in wolf culture… the packs began to slowly drift, living farther and farther apart with each passing generation. This development is understandable, given that the Blight spread fastest through the packs living closest together. It is only in recent years (circa 1430) that the spaces between pack territories have started to shrink again. What this means for their future is unknown.

FOXES

Foxes live bohemian, hedonistic lives that strike some as envy-inducing and others as wildly irresponsible. Nearly every facet of fox life is based around self-expression and creativity. They leave logistics and concrete thinking to the rabbits and badgers; to a fox, living isn’t living if you’re not doing what you love.

To that end, the fox society is filled with artists, writers, dancers, musicians, architects, poets, philosophers, and dreamers. “Grunt work”, such as physical labor, is delegated to whoever is willing to put up with it… this tends to be the poorest and lowest on the social ladder.

A fox’s upbringing is seen as a means to an end: parents teach their children to read and write so that they may better appreciate the works their culture produces, and hopefully someday contribute works of their own. This system shows considerable bias towards the rich and well-to-do, again leading to the lowest classes being stuck with the least desirable jobs. Young foxes are expected to start helping with chores at a very young age in order to facilitate their parents’ lifestyles. A fox pup is given very little leeway in terms of making mistakes; if one should fall on hard times, life tends to move on around them, with little sympathy expended upon them.

All this ties into the common perception of foxes as self-centered and lacking in empathy, but it’s really a question of perspective. Foxes believe in either solving problems for themselves or passing them on for someone else to deal with. If neither approach works, the problem will simply be ignored, in hopes that it will resolve itself. Such a way of living may be short-sighted, but somehow, incredibly, it works for the species as a whole. This practice was called into question concerning wolfoxes, especially after the Wolfox Rebellion.  The vulpine response to these criticisms has yet to be delivered.

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