Caeran
The Caeran is a stocky, endurance-built quadruped standing 140 to 160 cm at the withers, its broad shoulders and wide splayed claws suited to the moist floodbanks and fern-grass plains of Northland. Its skin is covered in scales so fine they read as wrinkled hide at a distance, giving a moving herd the uncanny appearance of stones marching under their own will. Patient, cautious, and almost impossible to panic, Caerans are the primary beast of burden and riding animal for the plains peoples of Northland.
Key traits
- Scales protect against sunburn on open bramble plains and resist fungal rot in the humid river lowlands the Caeran calls home.
- Wide, splayed claws distribute weight across marshy or sandy ground, allowing tireless travel where heavier animals would sink and falter.
- Caerans endure hour after hour of relentless travel through sheer stubborn resilience, refusing to sprint but never ceasing to move.
- Lone Caerans tend toward melancholy without a travelling companion, reflecting the deep herd instinct that underlies their calm temperament.
- Fitted with leather saddles or twin-pannier harnesses, they serve the Maan People Maan The most numerous people of Elshore and the baseline cultural reference of the age., Erg, and Iru People Iru The progenitors, and the only naturally evolved people of Elshore. peoples on long-distance trade routes and slow troop movements.
- Among merchant clans, a well-trained Caeran is regarded as a sign that fortune will follow wherever the trail bends.