I've had a few encounters with wild animals in villages, including bears, wolves, elk and reindeer that were just chilling in town when I arrived, as well as a Njerp that came into town and was promptly beaten to death by the villagers. I've also seen a couple of times when a wolf pack has invaded a town, and it wasn't pretty.
My character had travelled down to visit the Reemi for trading, along with his pack of dogs, and I noticed as we entered one particular town to spend the night that there were wolves all around this village. The village had a large pen of pigs on one edge, and the wolves seemed very interested but kept running away whenever I got near. I spent a couple hours trying to hunt a few down at range, but they were very wary and moved out to the trees (the village was surrounded by fields on all sides). Finally I went to sleep, only to be awakened by the sounds of battle and squealing pigs - looking out of the cabin, I saw there were now wolves *everywhere*, all throughout the village. The pigs were mostly dead and the villagers were chasing wolves left and right through town. I of course jumped into the fray with my dogs and managed to save the last surviving pig, though a wolf tore out the throat of one of my dogs in the process, and then helped the villagers fight the rest of the pack. It was a total bloodbath - the ground was littered with dead wolves and torn villagers, and with a couple of villagers shooting randomly into the fight at the unconscious wolves in the midst of their kin, I moved to the edge of the village and picked off the last fleeing wolves there.
In the end, I don't know how many villagers were killed - I counted at least nine dead (several with arrows stuck in them) and eight dead wolves, plus six or seven dead pigs in the pen (and my poor dog). A good number of villagers were left, but only two children had survived the attack, both terribly wounded with one collapsed and unable to walk near the edge of the village and the other barely able to move. In the spirit of good neighbourliness, I skinned and butchered all the pigs and wolves and cooked up the meat for the villagers (the hides I kept for myself), and then went back to bed. In the morning, I went to work on my stack of hides that were tanning beside the village well and found the grisly sight of one of the wounded boys floating dead in the well. It seems he had fallen through the thin ice over it and drowned. The other boy was still lying alive but grievously wounded at the edge of the village, where he remains to this day, three years later in-world. I still bring him food and presents now and then. He tells me things are going pretty good.
Another wolf-in-village encounter I came upon shortly after the fact was when I was raiding Njerp villages - I'd seen wolves in the general area while I was scoping the village out the night before the raid but mostly ignored them. When I attacked the next day, there was a surprising number of pre-wounded Njerps and the fight was over pretty quickly. When I went into the emptied village to gather my spoils, I found a single dead Njerp maiden surrounded by a pile of five dead wolves. There was one seriously wounded wolf still alive, which I killed as well, and then I skinned and butchered the lot. Now that I think of it, most of my wolf pelts came from wolves attacking villages.
I've also had a couple of bear encounters in villages. The most notable was with a newer character - an escaped slave who had finally, after much hard work and deprivation, saved up enough to buy her first cow. I set out to the next village with my cow loaded up with what trade goods I had left, as well as with my faithful dog Kalerva, and on the way happened across a reindeer herd and killed one. Such good luck! We reached the village, noting some bear tracks in the area, and set to roasting reindeer meat, leaving the cow and dog tied up by the well with the tanning reindeer hide. Part way through, Kalerva started barking up a storm and on going outside I saw a bear charging at my newly purchased cow - I quickly intercepted, setting the dog loose, and the bear ran off with Kalerva hot in pursuit.
When Kalerva didn't come back, I tried to call for him and... had no option to call my dog. Following the bear tracks away from the village, I soon found the shredded partially eaten remains of Kalerva, with the bear sleeping peacefully a few metres away. Furious, I went back to the village, used my reindeer meat to hire a woodsman to hunt bear with me, and the two of us went out (leaving the cow tethered in the village, obviously) and slew that dog-eating bear. Skinned and butchered the carcass and returned to the village loaded up with bear meat. Went to roast the bear meat. Heard pained bellowing outside and came out to find *another* bear standing over my freshly torn apart cow. So, off we went again, this time to kill the cow-eating bear, which we did. Skinned and butchered the second bear, skinned and butchered the cow, and then used the masses of bear and cow meat (*cough*and a little dog meat*cough*) to buy a new dog and cow, which I have vowed will *never* be left tethered to a tree on her own!
Finally, in a more peaceful incident, recently my character walked into town and found an entire herd of reindeer hanging out there. I chased them for a little bit but then left them in peace in the village fields. The villagers didn't seem to mind them munching their way through the crops.
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Wild Animals in Villages
Topic: Wild Animals in Villages (Read 33888 times)