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jaxsteamblog · 6 years

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Avatar Katara- 3: Katara

They had run for a year. During the spring and summer months, they moved frequently from village to village. It seemed like any time they stopped for more than a few days, there came a notice that the Fire Nation was raiding closeby. While they were probably not looking for Katara, at least not each time, it was still enough to push them onward. Their plan had been to get as far into the interior as possible. Anytime they tried to head toward the pole, however, something stopped them. A pathway had melted more than expected in the summer, or the only available team of dogs were too ill to pull their sled, and more than once they had been stymied by moving Fire Nation raiders.

When the sun started its descent toward winter, the family found themselves back on the coastline, but more north than they had ever been. The village even had a small farm scratched out and other woolly mammals that chewed the rough grass that grew on the tundra.

As with all of the other villages, this one accepted them readily. They were all one tribe after all, no matter how far away they each had lived. They shared a hut with a widower and his son, two hard eyed men with fingers leathered and split by the tanning they did. As was their custom, everyone was hospitable and they each had their own skin and shared a lice free mattress between the four of them. Katara had found comfort curled against her father’s back as Hakoda took in deep swirling breaths in his sleep.

They had only been there for three nights before the chief pulled them into his hut.

“I think you should go.” Cheif Malitut said as his wife set out the plates for dinner. Katara felt that sour knot begin to form in her stomach, as it always did when they spoke of leaving a village.

“Is that best? With the dark months coming, the ice shelf will grow larger and the Fire Nation raids will lessen.” Hakoda said in reply.

“But they will still come and if they arrive in the middle of the dark season, you will have nowhere to run.” Malitut said.

“We have nowhere to go now.” Hakoda stated and Katara pushed at the meat on her plate.

“Brother, I do not intend to send you to the wilds. You are going on a boat.” Malitut said and Katara glanced over at her brother. Sokka stared back at her with wide eyes.

“A boat to where?” Hakoda asked.

“Not far. The ruins of the Southern Air Temple are nearby. We send our livestock there to graze during the dark season. We intend to send you to graze in greener pastures as well.” Malitut answered.

“Is it safe?” Kanna spoke up now and Malitut regarded her seriously.

“We’ve been fishing in the waters between the two places since before the Airbenders were wiped out. Honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised if a Waterbender had been born there before the war.” Malitut chuckled and scratched the side of his nose. He cleared his throat and sat straighter before he continued. “Ever since the raids started, we made a point to occupy those waters. During the summer, we still fish there. In the days before the dark season, we send out our youngest and oldest to attend to our livestock where it is warmer. They know we send people and animals, and they’ve gotten mostly lazy.”

“Mostly?” Hakoda asked, suspicious. Malitut’s wife sat down next to him and put a hand on her husband’s shoulder.

“They will not allow men of a fighting age to cross. They don’t want us to start an army.” Malitut said. The sour knot finally tightened in Katara’s gut and she winced in pain. Sokka reached over under the table and took her hand, squeezing it gently.

“So I will not be able to join my children?” Hakoda questioned, his voice thick and heavy.

“Your mother will be with them.” Malitut countered. “And if you don’t want to do this, I will not force you. You will always be welcome in my hut and we will defend your daughter till the last man.”

Katara saw the pain in her father’s eyes. He knew Malitut was being honest. In the perpetual ice and forever darkness of the winter months, all of the people in the south pole had learned that the only way to survive is to have the support of the tribe. Without it, they would all die. Whomever had exposed her in the beginning had paid a great price at the hands of the Fire Nation, there was no mistake about that.

And now, Katara saw plainly what that cost could entail. This entire village, even the hard eyed widow and his son, would fight a fully armed raiding party to let her escape. They would die before letting any child, let alone the last Waterbender, come to harm.

“I will not put your village in danger.” Hakoda said softly, shaking his head.

“Brother, danger is the polar bear dog’s teeth, the lying ice on the edge of the shelf, and bad fish not properly salted. There is danger everywhere in our lives, and we will face it together.” Malitut said and Katara felt tears come to her eyes.

“It is best, though, for the children if we go.” Kanna stated and Hakoda looked at his mother. As always, her face was stern and her jaw was set.

“You still want to take her north.” Hakoda said quickly and then flinched. It was something he had not meant to say and Katara seized it immediately.

“North? Where?” She questioned and Hakoda sighed, but did not answer.

“I am from the North Pole. We have kin there, and most likely a proper Waterbending master.” Kanna answered instead and Malitut made a thoughtful hum.

“I don’t think you can make it to the north in one go.” He said. “But the Southern Air Temple is a good start.”

They ate dinner together and then after, Chief Malitut took them to the shore where many of the villagers were loading up the rafts. The vessels were wide and flat, with an army of paddling oars to send them slowly over the choppy sea. Bales of dried grass had already been heaped on and the smaller animals - the woolly ovines and the woolly porcines - had already been herded onto many of the rafts. The woolly bovines didn’t like to be penned in for too long, so they would be pushed on in the morning before they set sail.

It was decided that Sokka would travel on one of the larger rafts with a group of older shepherds. Boys at his age did not often go with their families and it would look less suspicious. Katara and Kanna were assigned to a smaller one with a group of elderly women who were hand-knitting and watching one very pregnant sow.

That night, as they readied for bed, Hakoda took Katara back outside of the hut. They both looked up at the night sky, watching high up clouds drift over the stars, causing them to blink in and out of view.

“We will cross many miles before we see each other again my snowflake.” Hakoda said and Katara immediately clung to her father, weeping. Hakoda laid a heavy hand on her back, neither soothing her nor bidding her to stop.

“Papa, I don’t want to go!” Katara wailed. She pressed her hot face into Hakoda’s coat till her nose began to hurt. “Please don’t make me!”

“Katara.” Hakoda said sternly, but lovingly. Katara sniffled but looked up at him. Hakoda crouched down and put a hand on either of her shoulders.

“Your name comes from ‘atka,’ the spirits. They are the ones who came before us, and the last Katara from our village was once a great angakok. She could put on a whale seal skin and become one, swimming in deep waters to feed the village during a famine. You are the last hope for our people.” Hakoda stopped, abruptly as if he had more to say but could not gather the words. Katara whimpered and Hakoda brought her to his chest, hugging her.

“You are my daughter Katara, and I will love you forever.” He said and kissed her hair.

Katara thought she would never be able to fall asleep, but ultimately, between her father’s even breaths and Sokka’s deep ones, Katara felt tears dry on her cheeks as she drifted.

The next morning, there were more tears. Sokka now, even at ten, still had to have his hands pried away from Hakoda’s coat. The other boys took him gently and tried to cheer him up, mostly by poking the tied up woolly ovines with long pieces of hay. Hakoda also stayed busy by helping the other adults push the woolly bovines up onto the rafts and lashing them down. The animals were massive and the rafts dipped dangerously low in the water. Katara felt the ramping anxiety watching it all, and Kanna had to gently lead her away.

When they were settled and the animals had all been tied down, the rafts began to push away. Some distance don the row, Katara could hear the sudden howling of her brother. She too began to cry and Kanna gathered her into her lap, swaying slowly from side to side.

Just as they pushed off, someone called out.

“Wait!” Hakoda yelled and Katara looked up. Her father came up huffing, and his eyes were red and tight. He held out something in his hands and Katara scrambled over to get it.

“Your parents will never leave you.” Hakoda said. The raft pulled away from the shore and Katara grasped the thing her father had offered. She sank back once the raft fully hit the water looked down at her hands.

It was her mother’s necklace.

A/N This is the last update on Tumblr! I’m going to start posting this on FF and AO3, with the link being the weekly update instead!

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#avatar katara au #zutara #jax writes #fanfiction #atla au

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wanderingmoonsword · 6 years

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Ogren

Ogren are what happens when a hobgoblin and an ogre love each other very much. (Or other, less pleasant variations on that theme that I’d just as soon not think about.) The Tome of Horrors Complete suggests they’re offspring sired on female hobgoblins but there’s no real need to stick to that in your games, and whatever their ancient parentage, as a race, they’ve bred true in the wild. They’re tough, formidable foes, and if ogren lack the full measure of an ogre’s prodigious strength, they have a hobgoblin’s intellect to make up for it. That’s right – most of an ogre’s strength, but far smarter and less consumed by their own vile urges, although these hybrids aren’t the most personable sorts. Ogren are still brutish in society, raiding for the larder and following a totemic god of beasts and stone (they’d fit right in with the adversaries in the Ironfang Invasion Adventure Path), but their stat block doesn’t limit them much mentally. They don’t have to be kin of hobgoblins, either. Ogren can fit in well among your usual range of “savage races” by trading on their strengths and tailoring their subtype, or just on their own savage selves. There’s only one constant with ogren: They’re in it for themselves and their tribes, and the rest of the world is there to be raided, dominated, and preyed on.

Ranging far from their normal hunting grounds to gather in sacrifices for a major ritual feast, ogren raiding parties have begun kidnapping farmers and woodsfolk in the hinterlands of the city of Aeberuthy. The elders of several farming hamlets approach a group of adventurers with the grim news, including the kidnapping of the druid they were seeking, and an opportunity – if the adventurers are fast, they can rescue the captives, but if they dither, the ogren will begin their sacrifices to the gluttonous totem spirit of their tribe.

The ranks of the army following the hobgoblin general Terdrun have swollen as his successes on the battlefield draw in new followers and command the fealty of lesser war leaders. Among them is a group of unusually heavily-built hobgoblins with large tusks and a savage demeanor, howling like berserkers in battle and riding fierce, deadly woolly rhinos from beyond the chain of mountains protecting his Terdun’s northern frontier. These powerful and wild riders are used as cavalry and outriders, breaking insufficiently dug-in infantry and terrorizing settlements into cowing obedience. Their reputation for taking the uncooperative for sacrifice and the larder is not exaggerated, a threat Terdrun uses to extract greater cooperation from his conquests.

Determined to shed their blood before the new moon rises, the ogren hunter Sarket has set her sights on a group of adventurers alongside her styracosaur totem beast companion. Bearing a large steel shield in the stylized shape of her companion’s crest, Sarket is a famed and relentless tracker, swearing her victims as the subjects of a sacred hunt, and she only rarely fails to bring her foes down. Her most prized possession is the obsidian ritual knife she carries with her everywhere she goes, only drawing it to end a life.

- Tome of Horrors Complete 451

If you’re the sort who enjoys Fifth Edition, ogren fit in well there, too, but not quite the same way. Fifth Edition’s more cohesive goblinoids make them more fitting as an outgroup, savage cousins of hobgoblins and ogres both that were seduced away from Maglubiyet to an older, more feral god’s worship. Maybe that’s one of the giant gods, maybe it’s Gruumsh, or maybe it’s the same god of totems, beasts, and stone the ogren follow. For the stat block, I’d treat them basically like half-orcs.

#pathfinder #D&D #dungeons and dragons #dungeons & dragons #frog god games #tome of horrors #humanoid #hobgoblin

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sciencespies · 4 years

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Husky Ancestors Started Hauling Sleds for Humans Nearly 10,000 Years Ago

https://sciencespies.com/nature/husky-ancestors-started-hauling-sleds-for-humans-nearly-10000-years-ago/

Husky Ancestors Started Hauling Sleds for Humans Nearly 10,000 Years Ago

Modern sled dogs from across the Arctic can trace their ancestry back to Siberia, according to a new genetic study that dovetails with archaeological evidence. Today’s familiar breeds such as huskies and malamutes are descended from a lineage that was well-established in Siberia 9,500 years ago and has been critical to human survival in the Arctic ever since.

“We know that modern sled dogs belong to a human cultural group, the Inuit, and that is probably the common origin of the Alaskan and Siberian huskies, Alaskan malamutes, and Greenland sled dogs because those dogs are closely related,” says Mikkel-Holder Sinding, co-author of new research published in the journal Science and a population geneticist at Trinty College, Dublin.

The team sequenced the genomes of 10 modern Greenland sled dogs and compared them to not only a 9,500-year-old sled dog (represented by a mandible found on Zokhov Island, Siberia) but also a 33,000-year-old wolf from Siberia’s Taimyr Peninsula. Their analysis shows that the majority of the modern Arctic sled dogs ancestry is descended from the same distinct lineage as the 9,500-year-old Siberian dog. This is especially true of the Greenland sled dog, which, given the relative isolation of their home island, has the least mixture with other dog groups and most closely represents the original ancestry.

Evidence of ancient genes from the 33,000-year-old Siberian wolf also appeared in the modern dogs. Surprisingly, however evidence of North American wolf ancestry was absent in the modern sled dogs sampled, although the two species have lived in proximity across the Arctic for thousands of years and share familiar physical features and howling cries. The lack of North American wolf genes in modern sled dogs is a puzzle, particularly because Arctic people know sled dogs do mix with their wild relatives. Perhaps, Sinding says, dog ancestors might lie among the many North American wolf populations that were eradicated.

“These Pleistocene wolves are very old, predating the domestication of dogs, so they are not a perfect match at all for this signature we are picking up,” Sinding says. “Who really knows what kind of wolf diversity there was around even just a few hundred years ago? There’s more to this story for sure.”

Greenland sled dogs

(Carsten Egevang / Qimmeq)

A long lineage

The site at Zokhov Island that yielded the 9,500-year-old sled dog genome also includes physical evidence of sleds and harness materials. Bone analysis has led one team of scientists to suggest that the site may represent the earliest-known evidence for dog breeding, with sledding as a goal, and that the process may have started as long as 15,000 years ago.

The sled dogs’ genetic history aligns with archaeological evidence. Together, the findings suggest the dogs have been established for nearly 10,000 years and have spent those many millennia doing the same things they do today.

“For me, one of the most important aspects of this study is how it shows the importance of utilizing all available data from the archaeological record alongside the analysis of ancient genetics,” says Carly Ameen, a zooarchaeologist at the University of Exeter. Ameen wasn’t involved in the study but last year co-authored a study how sledge dogs accompanied Inuit dispersal across the North American Arctic.

The site’s inhabitants would have had good reason to want sled dogs. The remains of polar bears and reindeer found on Zokhov show that hunters had a wide range and somehow transported large animal kills to their camp. Tools suggest even wider travel. Obsidian implements found here have been sourced to more than 900 miles away. For ancient Arctic peoples to cover such distances, the authors theorize, dog sledding might have been essential.

Greenland sled dogs

(Carsten Egevang / Qimmeq)

Shared with the polar bears

Sinding and colleagues also found genes that appear to be unique among sled dogs when compared to their canine relatives. Perhaps not surprisingly, many of the standout adaptations have to do with food.

Sled dogs, like the Arctic peoples they live with, have eaten a steady diet of unusual fare, including fatty seal and whale blubber. The Inuit and their dogs have evolved an ability to eat huge amounts of fat but avoid cardiovascular disease. Their genetic solutions to this problem are entirely different; the sled dog’s method matches another Arctic icon, the polar bear.

“The polar bear has a very specific gene that’s selected to help it eat unlimited amounts of blubber without getting cardiovascular disease,” Sinding says. “We see almost exactly the same gene being very highly selected in the dogs.”

Other adaptions found in sled dog genes seem to show coevolution with species that are not similar yet share the same problems. The woolly mammoth genome features highly selected thermal receptors that helped these animals sense changes in temperature, and the features mark a major difference between them and their elephant kin. That same group of proteins is selected in sled dogs, according to the study. “We have no clue why,” Sinding says. “But given that we see it in the mammoth and now in the sled dog, it seems to mean that this temperature sensation has some really important role in the Arctic.”

Ameen stresses that a genetic study like this can help to illuminate different, interesting aspects of ancient dogs—even if it hasn’t entirely put to rest the question of how much wolf ancestry is in their bloodlines.

“Recent attempts to discover the origins of the first domestic dogs have been stalled by a sole focus on genetic and morphological difference between dogs and wolves,” she says. “But when incorporated with archaeological evidence for sledding, as well as investigating dogs’ adaptation to new human-provided diets, a much clearer picture of those early domestic dogs emerges.”

#Nature

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