4087.280 · October 7, 1767 AD
The Birth of the Hunters
In the fifth year of New Edinburgh's existence, Elspeth Stewart and Captain Angus MacTavish create something new — a unit of warriors trained not for the formations and siegecraft of European warfare, but for the stalking patience of Highland hunters and the absolute darkness of Clivilius nights. The Chewbathian Hunters will become legend, but legend is built from blood and failure and the hard lessons that only survival can teach. These are the years when the methods are forged, when the traditions begin, and when young warriors learn what it means to hunt creatures that hunt back.
The shadow panthers have haunted Clivilius for three thousand years, their coordinated pack attacks destroying settlements that could not adapt to predators unlike anything Earth has known. New Edinburgh cannot afford to be another name on that list of failures. Elspeth Stewart has studied the accounts of those who survived panther encounters — traders from distant settlements, refugees from communities that did not survive, the accumulated wisdom of millennia condensed into fragments of hard-won knowledge. Captain MacTavish brings military discipline and the tactical mind necessary to transform that knowledge into method. Together, they will build a unit that fights as the panthers fight — in small packs, in absolute darkness, with patience measured in days rather than minutes. The first Hunters are volunteers who understand that their training may kill them before any panther has the chance. Some will not survive to see their methods proven. Those who do will become the foundation of something that endures.
