The Hunted

Jackal.

This derogatory term was a spearpoint for the racism and genocide at the town of Trapper's Hill, where human settlers hunted the scant shifter natives who lived in the rocky, mountainous wastes to the south.

The Protagonists first encountered a motley bunch of shifter warriors in the Talon Gap, an ancient riverbed that tore a canyon through the Rocky Wastes. The party was traveling north to Fort Abner.

The shifters were primitively armed and bore a battle standard of the Crest of Suanzi, named after their battle captain and the leader of a geurilla war against hunters in their lands, Suanzi.

Levi intimidated the savages as Nerisora flanked him with her spear as the party cooly confronted them and backed down without a fight, though the party bristled at the shifter's visible use of human skins for armor and clothing.

"We do what must to survive," Suanzi said, backed up by his brothers Mobutu, Pontak and Ipswitch. Pontak was badly scarred. They were the fighters of the freedom movement Suanzhi's Revenge, and admitted to intercepting and slaughtering innocent travelers on this tight, rock-walled path.

Nerisora insisted that her people were able to survive peacefully in the west, without violence.

Scourge: "Will you allow us to pass?"

Suanzi: "That depends on your cause."

As Fayne calmly told Suanzhi "Our cause is our own," Scourge pressed the issue of passage and called the Suanzi down from a fight he may not have wanted to start. Suanzi accused the party of being party of the problem for not pledging to help their "just cause."

"We will alow it... but we will be watching," Suanzi said as the two sides carefully backed away. He then comforted Pontak, who was visibly disappointed.

Trapper's Hill

The party learned of the town's economy based on the systematic, genocidal hunting of the shifters in the wild. Their skins and possessions were sold as tourist goods and baubles in the village, where shifter prey had supplanted smaller game as the hunt of choice.

The party protecter Nerisora from seeing the worst of the shops as they investigated the town for confirmation of what they feared - that the villagers made a living based on shifter hunts. Because of the overwhelming numbers of hunter/trappers in the village, the party vowed to help the cause of Suanhi's Revenge with a peaceful alternative. Scourge was a dissenter to the plan, wishing to continue north and not get involved, but she eventually relented.

The party headed back south to Bearclaw Gap, the north side of the badlands canyon, and followed tracks until they found an encampment of the the shifter natives. The party convinced them to consider a relocation away from an eventual extermination on their ancestral lands, and Fayne told them of his dragon-shit fertilized grove on the eastern coast, to the south. They they were convinced that Suanzi was dead, as they had not seen him in weeks. The shifter natives, after a council meeting, agreed but only if they could locate Suanzi.

The party and the natives headed south on the main canyon, occassionally passing by travellers who pelted the party with racial slurs and threats. Upon locating Suanzi, there was a joyful reunion. The natives convinced Suanzi to lay down armed and lead them to the south to new lands, far from Trapper's Hill.

The party and the shifters parted, and the party headed back north. When they passed through Trapper's Hill, they lied and told the merchants that they were unable to find any savages on their "hunt". The merchant, troubled by this, admitted that he had already heard other reports of the same nature.