How creatures behave
Prey bolts, predators weigh you up, territorial beasts warn you off, and packs answer for each other.
Creatures are not all out to kill you. Each kind has a temperament, and reading it keeps you alive:
| Temperament | What it does |
|---|---|
| Prey | Runs the moment it sees you, and again when hit. A startled animal spreads the alarm: a whole flock or herd bolts together. |
| Docile | Farm stock. Ignores you, and bolts for a few seconds if hurt. |
| Territorial | Stops and bluffs for a few seconds when you come near. Back off and it lets you go. Come closer and it charges. |
| Predator | Attacks only when it thinks it can win: its own strength plus its pack, weighed against you. Something much bigger than it makes it back away. |
| Mindless | Always attacks and never runs. |
- Anything that is not mindless runs when struck by something four times as dangerous as itself.
- Badly hurt, a creature breaks and runs for a while, then may come back.
- Hurt one member of a pack and the rest answer. Predators close in; prey scatters.
- Creatures come in sizes. A big one of its kind is tougher and hits harder; a small one is quicker to kill.
- Outside the towns some forty creatures roam within two hundred paces of you, from a short walk past the last house; more around a group, and a traveller meets them on the road ahead. What lives where depends on the land and the hour: by day about half will start a fight, after dark nearly two in three, and some beasts are far commoner then.