Trail Sign

As members of the Lodge of Imperial Hunters spend so much time away from their nearest Provincial Headquarters, they may spend months, years perhaps without seeing another one of their comrades. This means that members do not have a lot of opportunities to share information face to face, and any information shared by letter may either never reach a member, or may spend months languishing unread in a Provincial Headquarter.
In order to mitigate this, Imperial Hunters have developed what they refer to as Trail Sign, which is a system of writing rooted in symbology that is used to communicate basic information. All of these symbols have been designed so that they can be replicated with items commonly at hand in the wilderness, sticks, rocks, leaves and the like.
Common ideas that are expressed in this code are:
When an Imperial Hunter last approached a village or town - represented through the use of rocks intended to denote the month and year that the Hunter who left them passed through. The idea behind this being that the closer the date of its leaving to its discovery by another Hunter, the less likely that the community will have work for them.
Where and Imperial Hunter made a kill - denoted through an ‘X’ made with sticks weighed down by rocks, generally with a recognisable piece of the creature killed, generally fur, scales, feathers etc. The idea here is that if two Hunters end up tracking the same beast, the slower one knows that a beast of the type that they were looking for has been slain and that they can likely give up the hunt themselves.
When there are a lot of hostile creatures in an area – represented by a small cairn of stones, with recognisable parts of the creatures weighed down beneath the topmost stone. The idea here is to warn other Imperial Hunters that there are a lot of dangerous creatures in the area, and that they need to be on their guard.

Geographical Distribution

For those who know what to look for, Trail Sign can be found wherever a member of the Lodge of Imperial Hunters has been within Kelbonnar. Generally one would expect to find it in wilderness areas, but Imperial Hunters who operate in more urban environments will often mark-up walls, pavements and whatever discreet surface that they can find with their Trail Sign.