Gathering

Hunter

In use

Catching rather than fighting — intelligence applied in advance.

What it governs

  • Not a combat skill. The whole of it is thinking ahead of an animal instead of meeting it.Charter, Part III — Gathering group
  • Traps work while nobody is watching them. That makes this the first automation in the world — and a trap checked late feeds a scavenger instead.
  • Furs are the other half of the warmth economy: in the far south a traveller wears Hunter's product or freezes.
  • Taking an animal alive opens the road to keeping animals. There is no taming — the discovery is the idea of keeping the beast instead of eating it, and the first herd will be a chronicle entry.

The order it goes in

The method ladder. How many traps a citizen can run at once rises with the level.

  1. Snares.Charter, Part III — Gathering group
  2. Deadfalls.
  3. Box traps.
  4. Nets.
  5. Pitfalls.
  6. Tracking — reading sign, which is teachable and can be written down.
Not yet

The traps. Every animal in the world is met by walking up to it and swinging — twelve species, taken for meat, hide, feather, sinew, horn and venom, and Hunter is what the swing teaches whether or not it comes off. Nothing works unattended, nothing is taken alive, and there is no snare, deadfall or pitfall to set.