151 A Vulpine Variety The Foxloft didn't gain its name by chance - though filled with all manner of beasts, oddities, and insects, an unusual concentration of foxes and fox-like things call the reach their home. The most notable of these are... Snow-Collars One of the most distinctive vulpine beasts of the Foxloft, the pure white fur of their heads and necks standing out amid the green and gold foliage. Snow-collars tend to make their dens by burrowing into the stonework of the Seven Walls, and some fear that their accidental efforts may one day bring the entire edifice crashing down. Pocketfoxes Unique to the Foxloft, these miniature vulpine scavengers are no bigger than the average locket. Though treated by some as vermin they're actually incredibly useful, especially when trained - a pocketfox is a natural filcher, able to steal small but valuable items from unattended places. Wild pocketfoxes use these things to decorate their dens, but a trained specimen will bring such spoils straight to their owner. Red-Tailed Gliders The main aerial predator of the reach, despite being unable to truly fly; red-tailed gliders rely on updraughts and tallshank launching-points to hunt, soaring through the skies on billowing flaps of aerodynamic fur. Much like the snow-collars, these gliders are named for their unusual colouration, their tails lacking the black or white 'tip' common to most of the region's foxes. Springfoxes Found all over the wildsea but rarely in such concentration, springfoxes are to ships of the wilds what dolphins were to ships of the old salt. They travel in packs, leaping through the thrash in a ship's wake or alongside its hull to snap at insects disturbed by its passage. Some sailors even feed them, throwing food over the side as a gesture of affection or good luck. Djagva Named after the Low Sour word for 'blade', djagva foxes are aggressively territorial denizens of the deeper sink. Though resembling ordinary foxes in every way, every part of their fur is razor sharp. For some hunters, djagva are the only foxes it can be honourable to choose as a quarry - they move in packs of several hundred, leaving swathes of torn leaves and bark-stripped branches behind them. Luckily for sailors and settlers, djagva rarely make their way up to the surface, though their movements sometimes drive other creatures from the sink upwards (which can be a problem in itself). Robichek's Follies Not foxes at all, though they do a passable job of imitating them when luring prey - a good enough job that they fooled the infamous Robichek, a Writling dissident that ran off to join the Hunting Families. His story has become something of a myth in the Foxloft, so the truth of it is questionable, but the tale goes that he set his sights on a 'modest' creature for his inaugural feast. The creature he ended up hunting (which he mistook for a snow-collar) gave little reaction as he crept closer, and he only realized his mistake when the white and russet fur split apart to reveal acid-dripping mandibles, the folly discarding its disguise and revealing itself as a shiplength centipede with an especially effective method of camouflage. Robichek would probably be less than enthused to know that the creature was named after him.
152 Omercan Cirit Character Artist Pierre Demet Ship & Environment Artist Shmeckerel Hazards Artist Leo ??? Layout Artist Felix Isaacs Writer & Designer Kyllian Guillart Concept Artist
153 Mon Interstitial Artist Ellan Aldryc Editor Ray Chou Mythopoeia Publisher Vincenzo Ferriero Mythopoeia Founder Ryan Khan Sensitivity Reader & Contributor Ric Heise Head of Playtesting & Contributor
154 ◊ Website: thewildsea.co.uk ◊ Twitter: @isaacs_felix ◊ Reddit: r/thewildsea ◊ E-Mail: [email protected] Adapted from the Wildsea Core Book The Wildsea & QuillHound Studios: © Felix Isaacs 2023 The Mythopoeia Logo is © Mythopoeia, Inc., and is used with permissio Artworks used are © copyright their respective artists: © Kyllian Guillart 2023, © Omercan Cirit 2023, © Pierre Demet 2023, © Shmeckerel 2023 & © BlueTwoDays 2023
155