Uncanny Hunters
Uncanny Hunters
By Eric de Roulet (2023). This story also appears in Issue 49 of Alien Buddha Zine.
By Eric de Roulet (2023). This story also appears in Issue 49 of Alien Buddha Zine.
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By Eric de Roulet (2023). This story also appears in Issue 49 of Alien Buddha Zine.
© Eric de Roulet and E.M. White, 2021-2025. All rights reserved.
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by
Lydia0730
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Author's Notes
In the Grim Era that followed the Crusade and Reconquest, the fall of the Reborn Theocracy resulted in a wave of dissidents and refugees fleeing to the Southfold Badlands. The now-nomadic Southfold herders grew to be a xenophobic, paranoid people, scarred by the ravages of war and the upheaval of their old lives. But if one managed to earn their trust, one might hear strange tales of nomads who met grisly, unnatural fates at the hands of uncanny hunters. Some hapless individuals, it is said, were even chased beyond the badlands into the highlands of the Cloaked Vale, a realm wholly unknown to the people of Andaen and the Haifatneh Basin. Little is known about the natures of their hunters, cryptid beings at once uncannily similar to yet quite unlike human beings, nor can storytellers say for certain what motivated them to hunt the wanderers who already struggled to eke out an existence in some of Tahuum Itaqiin's least hospitable environs. Explorers, beware: Whoever or whatever these uncanny hunters were—or are, if they still wander the hinterlands of the Continent—may be just one example of the horrors that lurk beyond the protection that civilization offers.