Fould

Body

"Resembling a lion-wolf, the Fould are large, muscular and instead of fur have thick orange-green grass covering their bodies. Their yellow-gold eyes beneath tough looking, yet soft mossy skin, paint a welcoming, but threatening creature. Having pointed canine facial features, with small rooted spikes building off of their bone structure, these four legged creatures only walk on two legs when in private, preferring to be deemed feral animals by any and all they wish to not converse with." Six feet at the shoulder on four legs, nine feet standing, fifteen hundred to two thousand pounds, one to two hundred years.

The grass is a working organ and not a coat: it photosynthesises across the back and flanks and feeds perhaps a third of the animal, which is why a Fould can run down a stag on a diet that would leave a wolf hollow, and why a Fould that has been kept indoors goes yellow along the spine and loses condition before it loses weight. The rooted spikes are anchor points where the vaan has driven growth into the frame, and they ache before rain. A Fould on four legs has its nose to the ground and is reading soil chemistry through the pads as well as scent through the snout; standing up takes the nose off the ground and costs it half of what it knows, which is one honest reason standing is reserved for occasions. They "can speak various common and ancient languages" and mostly choose not to. A Fould that stands up in front of you has decided you are worth the trouble.

Society

They are ruled as a hunting pack is ruled, with one turn of the screw: the Fould are led by whoever stands. To rise onto two legs in front of the fold is to claim the next hunt and to answer for it, to the fold and to Irus, and a Fould who stands and then loses the quarry goes back down onto four legs and is not spoken to as a person for a season. Most of the fold never stands at all and is content. The standing Fould names the quarry, sets the line, takes the first wound and eats last, and stays standing only as long as the hunts go well, which in the Greener Fold is rarely more than a decade. Standing at all is rare enough to be counted, and in the Greener Fold it has happened twice in three hundred years. Both are remembered.

Life

They eat meat, run down on four legs and eaten on the ground: deer, boar, the wild cattle of the Fold, and the horses of anyone who camps in it. They do not eat carrion, they do not eat what talks, and the offal of every kill is carried to a tree and hung, which is the blood-due paid without being asked, and which is why the Camelot treaty reads to a Fould like a foreigner being charged for something a Fould does for free.

The Foulen, the canine people built on Fould stock, are kin of a kind, and the Fould do not acknowledge them.

Harvest

Taken from them: the grass-pelt, thick, warm, orange-green, which does not rot even when soaked, and which was the original trophy the Boalden were bred to bring back; the rooted bone-spikes, which are set into gauntlets and mauls; the great teeth; and the mossy hide beneath the grass, which tans into the toughest leather any Irugaine yields. A Fould pelt on a Nu'uman's shoulders in a border town is a statement, and it is usually the last one he makes in that town.