The Lore of Clan Goran - Chapter 6 - The Old Hunting Grounds

[Kane]

After our brief rest we decided to travel to the southeast to some of our old hunting grounds. Meloc believed that we could tell if the Shadow was present by their state. The Shadow had the same needs we had, they had to eat and their numbers were legion. Unlike us, they had no care for leaving enough food for the future; they would strip an area bare. We could use that to our advantage, allowing us to track where they had been.  It was also possible that once an area was despoiled, the Shadow would not return as they wouldn’t be able to feed their troops. We could hide in their wake.

It took us two days to reach the cavern Meloc was looking for. The ground had shifted over the past few years and some trails he remembered were no longer there or if they were, they were impassable. When we finally arrived we were amazed at what we saw.  The cavern was untouched, with fungus grown to enormous size. There was no sign of a harvest and little evidence that animals or vermin had fed here recently.  That was both a good and bad sign.  The lack of harvesting meant that the Shadow had not visited the cavern in years if ever. The lack of grazing by animals or vermin meant that the once rich hunting ground was gone, the prey long since killed or driven off.

With ample amounts of fresh water and food, it seemed a good place to camp and possibly establish a base from which to explore caverns farther east.  We took care, building a small fire that was sheltered by the rocks and fungus to limit the amount of light that seeped out into the rest of the cavern. Bedrolls were placed in a cleft in the wall that could only be approached from one direction. We posted two guards, and even I took my turn on one of the watches. No matter how untouched the area looked, we were not safe here.  Something had driven away the animals, and it might still be lurking nearby.

The following morning the brothers suggested building our food stocks from the local fungus.  It sounded like a good idea as we had no idea when we would have such good access to food in the future.  As they went to cut down one of the fungus strands, the feral dwarf started to screech and ran to get between the brothers and the fungus. He wouldn’t let them approach, so I told them to back away. It was difficult to communicate with him as he could not speak our tongue. From what I could tell the feral dwarves used body language, hand gestures, and noises that mimicked animals to avoid detection. He didn’t want us to cut the fungus and instead picked up mandibles from the carcass of a long dead beetle and used them to roughly chop at the fungus, taking only a little from each strand. It took me a moment but then I realized what he was doing; he was making it look like a herd of beetles had grazed on the fungus.  If the Shadows scouts came through they would be looking for signs of harvesting, not normal grazing. I was beginning to see how the feral dwarves had survived so long.