Grændels Stalk the Sunken River - The Journal of Anther Strein
The Journal of Anther Strein
Observations from a Travelling Naturalist in a Fantasy World
Written by Lachlan Marnoch
with Illustrations by Nayoung Lee
Previous: Familiar Faces: My Kin, the Paluchard
1st of Rewis, 787 AoC
Sunken River, North of Taraizan Village, Clearleaf Plateau
Grændels Stalk the Sunken River
This morning I found a leech on Prentis' back, with characteristics of the genus Sanguinus. There are a few species listed in the archive under this name, but if I remember correctly each preys only on vertebrate blood. I have it sealed away in a specimen bag, and am resolved to name it Sanguinus taragosii should it turn out to be a new discovery. Prentis agrees most enthusiastically with this choice.
After returning to the boat with our two Paluchard escorts, the four of us continued our journey down-river. It became dreadfully clear when we were approaching the village. Large patches of forest by the river were suddenly absent, replaced either with low grassland, felled trees, rows of dryland crops such as cloudwheat, or a coat of black soot, each representing a different stage of a now-widespread agricultural technique: slash-and-burn. Away from the river, there was visible a sky-choking column of smoke rising above the treetops. This would be a patch of forest that has been cut down and left to dry out over the past couple of months. Normally, the slashes are not put to the torch until well into the dry season, which according to the calendar has only just begun. Perhaps the villagers grew impatient, or believed the season to have arrived early. It is true, and unusual, that we haven't encountered any significant rainfall on our journey inward. The nutrient-rich ash will sink into the soil and make the patch temporarily fertile. This practice pays off in the short term, but the field will be useful for only a handful of years before the nutrients leach away, leaving it almost barren for a dozen years or more. This might be sustainable on a small scale, but as the dryland crops become more popular here it is growing out of control. More of the forest is left barren each year.
There is substantial evidence that the ancient Paluchard helped build the forest to its current state, expanding and tending it with a fertile, artificially earth known as ‘blacksoil’. Some would claim that the villagers are continuing its propagation by burning the forest, but the two practices are quite distinct. Although once considered to be caused by ashfall from the volcano in Sanctuary, blacksoil is far too extensive and inhomogeneous to be explained in this fashion. The component responsible for its blackness is charcoal, created only by burning organic material1. Alchemical testing has also found dung (both animal and Paluchard), bone meal, and remains from composting diffused throughout the blacksoil, with the particular proportions varying by region - indicating that it must have been mixed studiously in homestead kilns. These ingredients make the soil very fertile compared to that found by default throughout the forest, and patches of it correspond to ancient Paluchard settlements. It can only have been spread deliberately, apparently to expedite tree-growth.
Unfortunately, we seem to have forgotten these practices some centuries or millennia ago, and now do more harm than good to the rainforest. The production of blacksoil would have required a great deal more care and forethought than is invested here. The care taken with these woods by my ancestors is in stark contrast to the negligence we treat them with today. What's more, fire is a fickle friend - in an exceptional dry season, these 'controlled' burns might easily transform into wildfires. Slash-and-burn is expanding in scale to meet the increasing demands of the feudal lords, and farmland is abandoned, sometimes permanently, once it has been leached of its nutrients. Partly, this has been in response to the adoption of cereal crops such as cloudwheat; these do provide greater sustenance for the effort invested than our ancestral crops, but require cleared land; our former staples can exist perfectly well in the rainforest2. Little regard is given now to the forest’s wellbeing3. I find this trend most distressing, but this is a minority opinion.
Before rounding the final turn to the village, the friendly Paluchard couple ran their boat ashore for a brief but intense discussion. At one point it seemed about to erupt into full-fledged argument, with both tails waving expressively. It concluded, however, with the two rubbing their heads together – a gesture of intimacy, in my species – and with the female turning to me. With some gestures and sentence fragments, she communicated that Prentis should wait here, out of sight of the village. I could guess only too well the reason for this, although the cordiality displayed toward us by our escorts had given me hope that it might be otherwise. Tolerance has never been a common virtue in far-flung reaches such as this; in my species, even less so.
I discussed the situation with Prentis, and he agreed that their plan was for the best. I fear, though, that I have let him down. I am starting to believe that I have been quite thoughtless in convincing Prentis to come here; the hostility my homeland presents toward foreigners had faded in my memory, I suppose – and I had never, of course, experienced it from the perspective of the repressed. I may have placed him in grave danger4.
As I climbed back into the boat, I was surprised to see the male Paluchard remain on the shore. The female handed me his oar, ears twitching cheerfully. I was apprehensive about this further development – we had only just met these people, after all, and the male was quite strong enough to kill Prentis even without his spear – but Prentis reassured me that he would be fine.
The village, named Taraizan from what I can gather, lies within the domain of Clearleaf Kingdom. Half the houses are built on stilts and the other half with the support of still-living trees. As the boat slid into the wharf, we were greeted by the hails of a dozen or so Paluchard, more than I’ve seen together in some time. I’m not sure what my companion's story for her partner’s absence was, but the other villagers seemed to accept it without issue. With her help, I was able to negotiate the purchase of a boat, a pair of oars, and a replenishment of our supplies before we paddled upstream again, new boat in tow. I was afraid the villagers would question this development, but they seemed to care little. Most of them were absent, out in their fields, and the rest had their own business to be getting on with - among it addressing the haul of fish we brought with us.
After retrieving Prentis and the male, we re-sorted ourselves into the correct vessels and doubled back again. The two Paluchard accompanied us past the village - putting their boat between us and it, a tense moment that involved Prentis lying flat in our new boat – and a little further downstream before we said our farewells. I touched tails with the young child, who emerged from his mother’s pouch to say goodbye. All three of them waved with their tails as we swept away downriver. An odd encounter indeed.
We paddled all day before making camp. Our differing limb structures and strengths, along with general inexperience in rowing from Prentis, have proved unwieldy – producing a path that oscillates from bank to bank - but we are steadily becoming more coordinated. No capsizes so far, and a good thing too, considering our wildlife encounters today. We hiked a little from the river before establishing our campsite; I have reason to believe that there are grændels (Cennestre eofora) in the area, and this is another animal with which one should not take chances. Although a female grændal is more than capable of crossing the distance if provoked, they prefer to remain in the water. A male may prove more cause for concern, but I have methods for dealing with one.
The grændel is a very large carnivorous amphibian, possessing both gills and lungs. We encountered two females today, one not that far upstream of here. She was floating along at the surface, a long, muscled body covered in thick grey skin lined with ridges, and ending in a thick, powerful tail - idle enough to be mistaken for a log. I turned to get Prentis’ attention so that I could point her out – by the time I looked back, she had disappeared, not a ripple to mark where she had been. I couldn't shake the feeling that she was now lurking below us, watching our silhouette carve through the water. Although grændels don’t often attack boats, this was still an unsettling experience. An enormous5 predator that can disappear at will is a terrifying thing.
Our first encounter was even more alarming. We had paused in an eddy by the bank for lunch when she emerged from the murk, not a height from our boat. Had I not chanced to be looking in that direction I might have missed her entirely. She lurked just below the surface, the eyes pointed toward me from the centre of her wide, spade-shaped head. She was utterly still - until she raised her head, ever so slightly, for her slitted nostrils – the nostrils only – to breach the surface. They opened slowly, took our scent, and then closed, for her to recede out of sight once more. She had not made a single movement that, if I hadn't already been aware of her, would have betrayed her presence. That deadly stillness, if one has witnessed the speed and ferocious power with which the female can erupt from the water, is as menacing as any roar. We elected to take our lunch on the move.
The grændel is unique in the animal world for the extent of the disparity between its two sexes. Adult males and females differ substantially in both behaviour and physical makeup. The filamentous gills, located at the back of the wide, flattened head, are much more developed in the females than in the males; the males, conversely, have much greater lungs. The splay-legged female can move on land only by dragging her body across the ground, and is more comfortable swimming. The male adopts a stance more like that of large mammalian predators, with limbs positioned directly beneath to hold the body high. Males hence prowl between the trees of Veduka, while females patrol its numerous rivers and water holes.
The hunting strategies of the two sexes diverge to match their physiques. The female is an ambush predator; she will wait patiently, hidden below the surface at the water's edge, for prey to venture within range. When they do, she lunges suddenly, seizing the victim in her powerful, razor-toothed jaws and dragging it to drown. The male grændel is smaller, but much better-formed for walking about on land, and does all of his hunting there. Although not nearly so swift on his feet as a grubdog or a vanha over short distances, he is tireless in pursuit, often running prey down from simple exhaustion. Although generally considered less dangerous than the female, he is like her in that once his jaws have closed on a neck or limb, there is little against his will that can be done to pry them open.
Adult males return to the water infrequently, except to mate; females, on the other hand, live there almost exclusively. They do occasionally venture onto land but prefer to do so at night, and usually never far - unless seized by the spirit of vengeance. It is common knowledge in these parts that should you kill a male grændel of any size - no matter if in self-defence or a hunt - you would do well to vacate the area before nightfall. Many legends of my people tell of mother grændels creeping from their lairs in the dead of night, to take revenge on the hunters who killed their sons. How much credit can be given to these stories, as biological record, is uncertain, but it is certain that grændel mothers are fiercely protective of their broods, and that grændel males often remain near their pools of birth.
Such a tale, involving a mother-son pair of monstrous9 size, is the centrepiece of the founding myth of the twin Swampland Houses Heeney and Chikkering – the Heeney crest bearing a male grændel, and the Chikkering crest a female. The two have an ongoing history of alliance and intermarriage, along with House Torgien, and together the three form the power complex at the top of the Swampland government. House Torgien - the royal house of the Swamplands - is also tangled up somehow in this origin story, now that I think about it, although I can’t quite recall how.
The 'sport' of hunting is considered of vital importance by the noble Paluchard houses, being an ancient pastime of the upper crust. Trophies of dangerous animals are valued as status symbols throughout Veduka, but especially in the Swamplands. Members of the noble houses will often travel great distances in search of more exotic victims. The crest of every Swampland house, and many besides, features an animal that was at some point hunted and killed by a member of the family. The more powerful the house, the more dangerous or far-flung the poor beast tends to be. For example, the powerful Swamplander House Oniax claims the dread spider (Colossus formido), a widely-feared arachnid found nowhere near Veduka; one of the lesser houses sports a swarming piranha, a commonplace fish in the Swamplands that poses little threat (except in numbers - a deliberate symbolic choice at one point, perhaps?). The tradition also varies by region, with the houses of some Kingdoms hewing to a particular theme. Several kraken species adorn the emblems of the coastal Farcri houses, with the ruling House Mael sporting a giant kraken (Leviathana gigantus). The Houses of Katho, on the coast north of Delta, tend to have other marine beasts - a kelogana, a fathom chirek, a conrit. Those of the Delta prefer estuarine or transitional animals - I recall an intrusive shark (Hospes indecorum) being on the banner of a middling house, while in Delta City we are sure to see banners bearing the diacrus (Diacrus moga) of the ruling house.
Members of House Zalof (crest of a glasp, Raptorus amethystus), generally recognised as the most prolific hunting family in Proesus, like to joke that every other noble house should be vassal to them, as they have in their trophy rooms taxidermied victims representing the crest of every other house (a task they have made a point of completing). New houses occasionally form, as offshoots of the old, around a particularly impressive kill - or, at least, such a feat is required to solidify the standing of a new house. Even a peasant may attain nobility through a sufficiently bold hunt, or so it is said. Such ascensions have occurred in legend, although they are rare - the successful killing of such a beast requires specialised equipment, affordable only with considerable means. Therefore, to attain further status, one must usually have considerable wealth to begin with. This doesn't prevent the occasional ambitious peasant from getting killed while hunting a beast far beyond their skill or arsenal. I might even go as far as to speculate that such tales, alongside other myths of vertical mobility, is dangled before the lower classes to keep them from questioning the power structure they toil at the foundation of, burning away their natural heritage one patch of rainforest at a time - in the hopelessly optimistic belief that they will one day be the count or earl or duke robbing the serfs of their labour and profiting from the slow massacre of their environment.
Grændel mating takes place in calm pools, away from the river if possible or else adjoined. The eggs, in clutches hundreds strong, are fertilised directly while being laid, and the mother then remains in this pool to carefully guard her spawn. The eggs hatch as tadpoles, large among amphibians but still small when considering what they become. Despite the mother’s vigilance, many of the tadpoles are taken by birds or other small predators, but they are only brave enough to do so while she is away hunting. Although the number of eggs is great, very few endure successfully to adulthood.
When in her state of brooding, the female drags her prey back to the pool to share with the tadpoles. The waterlogged and half-chewed corpse of a mirga, teeming with so many waving tadpole tails as to make it seem almost animate, is among the more chilling memories from my childhood.
It is not until metamorphosis that the young grændels begin to differentiate by sex – when they appear, the males’ legs are elongated and directed downward. Meanwhile, the females’ remain fairly short and protrude horizontally, with webbing between the claws. Grændel tadpoles, while metamorphosing, are able to regenerate their burgeoning limbs6, just like frog tadpoles, although the adults do not seem to have this ability7.
The metamorphosis undergone by amphibians numbers among the greatest miracles of the natural world. That a being might exist in so fish-like a form and function, but is to one day sprout legs and march onto land, has never failed to amaze me whenever I have given it thought. Grændels are no different. One wonders if this is an analogy to some stage of life's deep history… some faiths claim that life began in the ocean8. If the beings of the living world can indeed change themselves generation by generation, this seems not quite so far-fetched, especially with the amphibians as an example of the possible intermediate steps.
Once their limbs have emerged fully, both sexes leave the home pool; the females crawl immediately to the river, while the males remain on land. Both sexes are still quite small at this point. With many animals, and certainly all other amphibians, this is where the bonds of parenthood end. But with grændels, the female remains deeply protective of her offspring even into adulthood. She remains in the spawning pool for a time, protecting the young males, which usually remain nearby until they are fully-grown. Even once mature, one or two of the males will usually make their territories near their pool of birth, and they will enjoy the benefit of matriarchal fierceness until they or their mother dies. She will return to the river, but the territoriality of the species ensures that she never strays far.
Although not a close encounter, I also spotted a male of the species prowling the banks today. The presence of one grændel usually indicates more, for although generally solitary, the territories of family members tend to overlap. Although territorial, both sexes of grændel are tolerant of relatives within their boundaries and seem able to distinguish their siblings from strangers. A hierarchy emerges among those with overlapping ranges, with the larger specimens taking dominance over the smaller. If there are males nearby, and likely there are, camping away from the river will not prevent them. I have established - we shall call them, I think, deterrents - around our campsite, and we will keep the fire lit as long as we can. This should suffice, but I doubt I will sleep well in any case.
1 Not commonly found in volcanoes.
2 Bogvine, the staple crop of early Paluchard civilization and an important one still today, grows only on large trees.
3 Of course, our ancient actions were not without self-interest, since our wellbeing – in the food we consumed and the lives we led – was entwined with that of the forest. It still is, but this seems to have been forgotten by most. Greed and desperation - the greed of the lords and the desperation of the serfs under them - are powerful tools for shortening one's foresight.
4 Well, yes, I suppose our encounters with deadly wildlife would also qualify, but the threat of my own kind seems somehow far more severe. Perhaps this is merely a product of shame and not of the actual danger posed.
5 She was not much shorter than our boat, at just shy of two heightsA; the larger females can exceed two and a halfB.
6 Do not ask how I know this – I will say only that the the curiosity of a child may on occasion overcome her developing sense of empathy (and her even less developed sense of danger - only Febregon knows how I survived my own inquisitiveness if I was willing to scoop grændel tadpoles from their spawning pools).
7 Many adult grændels, especially females, have a pale stump marking where a foot was twisted off by the clamp-like jaws of a territorial rival. They seem quite able to compensate for the loss, and if anything it lends them an even more fearsome appearance.
8 Not the Order of Febregon, mind, and musings on such beliefs are another heresy to add to my growing list.
9 Record-breaking, if the measurements quoted in The Ballad of the Blackmarsh Beasts, the widely-told poetic adaptation of the tale, are to be believed.