- Oct 22, 2022
- 714
- 261
- 63
Look intently and at length upon a wild creature from the wider marsh. Say, a rat, or a frog, or perhaps one of the songbirds dallying freely amongst the treetops.
What might you see, then? An animal witless as it is unpredictable, operating on impulse and driven by inherent urges? A pair of bulbous black eyes, deprived of the sentience and sensibility found in the cats of the warrior clans? The longer you look, the more questions claw at the ridges of your skull. What divides their mind from your own, and why? Could there be a whisper of thought beneath their brutish actions?
As per Smogmaw's perception, there stands little distinction between the clans' dealings and those of the animals they hunt for sustenance. Both are equally fierce, equally capricious, and equally prone to primal violence. The one true boundary lies in the common tongue shared by all felines, used to rationalise their barbarity and uphold hierarchies. This fact steeps his veins with a strange envy for the wild animals of the swamp. They are bound by one pecking order, and one alone, that being the raw order of nature itself. No morals. No traditions. No ranks, or leaders, or StarClan. Just the dance of survival, precarious and bloody as it is.
Smogmaw tarries at the margin of camp, eyes pinned to the skies and fastening to every bird that passes overhead. He's as stiff as a boulder, solidified into a state of silent contemplation. The wind pushes through rustling reeds and carries with it the distant cries of unseen creatures—songbirds, mostly. There is something else, though. A disturbance which tears him from his reverie. A twig-snap, then a rumble amid the underbrush, both causing the deputy's brows to narrow and setting his ears atwitch. His head swivels in the noise's trajectory and he'd painstakingly rise to his paws, before an astonishing spectacle stupefies his nerves.
"Prey in camp! Kill it!" he cries whilst breaking into a sprint, as a swamp hare penetrates through the pine tree barrier and shoots wildly towards the hollow's opposite end. Its movements are unpredictable and nigh impossible to gauge, and no amount of adrenaline can route Smogmaw in its path. He draws close to the unexpected quarry, muscles tense, and when it becomes painfully clear that he's being outpaced, the tom lunges.
He misses, unfortunately, and by virtue of momentum, he's propelled into a feverish tumble in the hare's dust.
// roll a 17 or higher on a d20, and the hare is caught :3
What might you see, then? An animal witless as it is unpredictable, operating on impulse and driven by inherent urges? A pair of bulbous black eyes, deprived of the sentience and sensibility found in the cats of the warrior clans? The longer you look, the more questions claw at the ridges of your skull. What divides their mind from your own, and why? Could there be a whisper of thought beneath their brutish actions?
As per Smogmaw's perception, there stands little distinction between the clans' dealings and those of the animals they hunt for sustenance. Both are equally fierce, equally capricious, and equally prone to primal violence. The one true boundary lies in the common tongue shared by all felines, used to rationalise their barbarity and uphold hierarchies. This fact steeps his veins with a strange envy for the wild animals of the swamp. They are bound by one pecking order, and one alone, that being the raw order of nature itself. No morals. No traditions. No ranks, or leaders, or StarClan. Just the dance of survival, precarious and bloody as it is.
Smogmaw tarries at the margin of camp, eyes pinned to the skies and fastening to every bird that passes overhead. He's as stiff as a boulder, solidified into a state of silent contemplation. The wind pushes through rustling reeds and carries with it the distant cries of unseen creatures—songbirds, mostly. There is something else, though. A disturbance which tears him from his reverie. A twig-snap, then a rumble amid the underbrush, both causing the deputy's brows to narrow and setting his ears atwitch. His head swivels in the noise's trajectory and he'd painstakingly rise to his paws, before an astonishing spectacle stupefies his nerves.
"Prey in camp! Kill it!" he cries whilst breaking into a sprint, as a swamp hare penetrates through the pine tree barrier and shoots wildly towards the hollow's opposite end. Its movements are unpredictable and nigh impossible to gauge, and no amount of adrenaline can route Smogmaw in its path. He draws close to the unexpected quarry, muscles tense, and when it becomes painfully clear that he's being outpaced, the tom lunges.
He misses, unfortunately, and by virtue of momentum, he's propelled into a feverish tumble in the hare's dust.
// roll a 17 or higher on a d20, and the hare is caught :3
