Striped guer

Striped guer are among the largest known guer races. Mar have measured the remains of male striped guer more ten feet tall and fifteen feet long, and the less frequently seen females are nearly twice as large. Striped guer lack manipulating appendages, though they are capable of speech. Their name comes from the vertical stripes of brown, grey, and black that mark their bodies. These striped patterns are unique to each guer and can be used to identify individuals. Striped guer are cold-blooded herbivorous animals that will eat virtually any plants.

Striped guer roam grasslands far north of the Fens of Reur. There are significant differences between the sexes among these guer. Females are larger and have ivory tusks along the sides of their skulls, which they use to drive off enemies. Other Drakes treat female striped guer as equals, and goblin and kobold tribes sometimes even bring them tributes of food or serve these guer as builders and artisans. These guer are extremely proud Drakes and not immune to flattery even when it comes from Mar, and some have even allowed mapmakers and scholars to interview them extensively about their civilization.

Males often serve as beasts of burden and war steeds for other Drake races. Striped guer are fearsome as mounts, acting as walking battlements for kobold and goblin archers while crushing enemies under their heavy feet. They seldom roam south of the Fens of Reur except when the Mass invades. The strongest and most favored males are taken as mates by one or more females.

At one time, there was confusion among scholars as to which sex was which, because these guer have curious mating habits. Males possess an orifice just below the anus, while females have a tube-like member that extends from their abdomens, between their rear legs. Copulation resembles that of large herd mammals, except with the female mounting the male.

It is now known that the female's member is actually an ovipositor, which it uses to inject unfertilized eggs into a specialized organ in the male's abdomen that fertilizes the eggs inserted into the male's body (called a brood chamber). A male often fertilizes and carries the eggs of multiple females, accepting eggs in clutches of 10-12 from each mate until its brood chamber has reached its capacity of about 100 eggs. Once the male receives these eggs, its body undergoes complex changes that cause its brood chamber to generate enough heat to incubate the fertilized eggs.

If its burden of eggs is especially large, a male becomes sluggish and less able to travel in search of food. Its mates sometimes arrange for it to receive food during the incubation period of about a year, after which the eggs hatch, and the male deposits the young sequentially. Males often die from loss of blood during or after this process, especially if depositing more than a couple dozen young. Most males never breed, and it is extremely rare for a male to carry eggs more than once in its life. Females, however, lay clutches of eggs three or four times a year, so long as food is plentiful.

(Introduction contributed by Nightfire Tradition)

Tactics

Striped guer are the cavalry of the Mass, which doesn't seem at all fair, given that no animal suitable for a human rider could possibly traverse the soggy lands of Marrishland. Like insero, striped guer are not so much dangerous themselves as they are because they often serve as mounts for missile-wielding Drakes like kobolds, goblins, and stinger guer. Worse, these riders often build battlements on the backs of these huge guer, limiting the effectiveness of return fire. Striped guer hides are thick, easily turning aside most missiles and rendering even most blades useless.

Most feared of striped guer tactics is the charge over open terrain. These lumbering Drakes can crush a Mar beneath their huge legs, and even an army of low-ranking wizards would have trouble burning or bludgeoning a line of charging striped guer before it can run them down and stomp them flat. Fortunately, striped guer cannot charge through a forest of large trees, though they are heavy enough to plow through underbrush or trample young trees in their wake. Lacking a natural barrier, a hedge wall of sharpened poles is perhaps the only effective artificial defense against a striped guer charge.

If you are alone, you don't want to fight a striped guer even if it is starving and struggling with soft terrain that almost immobilizes it. If you pulled off that feat, you would certainly earn untold bragging rights among Mar, but know that any path to success is paved with the bones of countless mapmakers who tried and failed. Several mundane warriors with war spears (not javelins) and a high tolerance for casualties can bleed a lone striped guer to death, so long as they are careful to pick a wooded ambush spot and flank the target so it doesn't know which threat to eliminate first.

The best way to survive an encounter with a striped guer is to talk to it. Seriously, assuming you speak a language familiar to it, striped guer are remarkably susceptible to flattery and bribes of food. The key is to keep it from perceiving you as a threat. This is actually fairly easy. Striped guer don't generally consider any mundane Mar a threat. Even a small group of Mar can often get away with this, if they clearly are not equipped to take on a striped guer in battle.

This doesn't work for wizards, whom striped guer always consider dangerous, or bands of several mundane warriors clearly armed with heavy spears that could bring down the guer. These beasts certainly aren't stupid, and more than one hunting party has made the mistake of trying to parley with a striped guer as a prelude to a surprise attack. The striped guer is never surprised when the armed men feign an interest in diplomacy, though it may play along so it can gain the element of surprise as it tramples the first few Mar under foot before falling back in preparation for another charge.

A striped guer with Drake riders is less prone to converse with a Mar. If it feels its current companions have not been giving it the respect it deserves, however, a striped guer is actually more likely to welcome conversation with a suitably respectful person. Any rider that objects will either be ignored or, if it becomes too disrespectful, casually killed. Striped guer are loyal to their fellow Drakes, but hurting one's pride sorely is a certain path to a swift death, and even other Drakes don't dare fault a striped guer for carrying out its own justice.

This leads to a final lesson about dealing with striped guer. Don't insult one unless you intend to fight it to the death, and make sure no other Drake finds out you did it. Striped guer matriarchs have been known to send other Drakes to avenge a striped guer who died with a bruised ego. There are stories of mapmakers forced to retire in Domus Palus because Drake assassins had been hunting them like an animal even through more civilized rural areas.

(Tactics contributed by Weard Girdag Langat)

Copyright 2005-2007 Eric Zawadzki and Matthew Schick. All Rights Reserved.
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