So, this isn't last months patreon lore doodle, this is the one from JULY
yep I fell behind a bit but lets get chattin!


What is hunting and gathering anyways?

Its perhaps one of the most easiest to explain ways people make a living. People head out and get food. Be it by hunting animals, foraging wild fruits and vegetables, fishing, or some other means of getting food. It requires no farming, no animal domestication, you just go out there and get yourself some food. For drekir throughout the Awakening and the Broader Quiet Age, it is perhaps the most common mode of subsistence that the average drek lives through in some point.

But many, possibly a majority, of drekir are pure hunter gatherers. IE no pastoralism, no agriculture, no aquaculture, no inseculture, they get all their calories from hunting and gathering. Which means every day most of a given den will head out to Hunt, Trap, Forage, Harvest, Fish, or otherwise get food from wild sources.

Now for drekir more specifically, they're mesocarnivores so a lot of that has to be meat

At least 50%of a dreks calories need to come from meat, though the reality is hunter gatherers tend to on average eat a far larger portion of meat amongst drek populations, with sometimes over 70% of their diet being some sort of meat. In some cases, particularly in places with scant edible plant sources of food, that can be as high as over 90% of a dreks day to day diet is meat. Now that isn't a problem for them, their digestive systems are built to digest meat efficiently, with them even being able to produce carbohydrates from the meat.

but regardless, even amongst drek hunter gatherers who only eat a minimum amount of meat, a 50% meat diet, they have to source meat from somewhere.

Thankfully that can be from a variety of means. Hunting big or small game, trapping animals, fishing, gathering shellfish, eating small insects and grubs. The rest of the average hunter gatherers diet tends to come from wild plants. Fruits, Tubers, Vegetables, Fungi, etc. And a small portion often is taken from more specific things like honey or particular regional foods

And that "regionalism" makes hunting and gathering difficult to get detailed on... but I am gonna try here

Just like on our world, a Hunter Gatherer in one region may live a very different life from one in another.

Hunter Gatherers can exhibit an immense variety of lifestyles. There are many that are more common than others but pretty much anything is feasible


As some examples, lets start with the nomads

Its most common to see nomadic and seminomadic hunter gatherers. Such as the Dakoner in the comic or such as First Nations folks on the Great Plains or like the Hadza in Tanzania. Folks who remain mobile to keep pace with specific animals.

Often this is high nomadism, where a den may only spend a few days to a few weeks in one area, spending their days hunting and foraging wild resources, living in very simple, quick to build shelters. They travel light and live light and, once a region is exhausted they move along.

As such you will certainly find simple but effective and expedient architecture such as simple huts made of sticks, leaves, etc. Simple A frames or dome huts that are built with materials on site that may only need to last a few weeks at most before they are taken down or abandoned. If the climate permits however you often see nomadic hunter gatherers build a minimum of buildings. Or of course where possible you may see them use natural features like rock formations, caves, banks, or other features to live in as simple temporary shelters.

So usually there isn't much left when they move onto the next hunting grounds. They don't often build massive structures

take that with salt the moundbuilders existed as real world hunter gatherers who built complex, massive structures, talking generally

Their tools are usually designed to be highly mobile, easy to carry long distances and not too big or at least not too heavy

This isn't to say they don't have places they're familiar with, in fact often nomadic hunter gatherers travel throughout specific ranges of land that they become used to, places where they can learn the ins and outs of the local flora and fauna and how best to hunt and gather them to keep themselves going. In fact its pretty normal for a den of hunter gatherers to return to a place a year or two after last stopping by to hunt and gather

This sort of Highly Nomadic lifestyle is the most common amongst hunter gatherers, as the reality is not many regions can support 30 hungry drekir for too long before the regions meat sources become exhausted and the den has to move along.

Methods like Animal herding and inseculture or aquaculture counter this of course. But hunter gatherers don't do any of those. When they eat out the region thats that

so you see nomadic hunter gatherers in all sorts of environnments. From Deserts and forests to tundras and taigas, from tropical savannas to alpine mountaintops. Nomadic hunter gatherers are a very widespread sort of lifestyle amongst drekir

And there are also seminomadic hunter gatherers

Which much like other Semi nomadic folks, tend to arrive in a place and stay there for a longer period of time, instead of weeks they may stay there for months. Rather than heading to warmer regions on colder seasons, they may choose to build stronger shelters to withstand worse weather.

Of course the difference here between a seminomadic pastoralist and a seminomadic hunter gatherer is mostly in lifestyle. Both tend to carry and build more complex buildings and infrastructure that is meant to last somewhat longer. Though its rarely truly permanent. Likewise they tend to have more specific and established sites they prefer to build on rather than more general nomadic ranges, with each specific site left to recover for longer on average.

As of course if you're gonna be fishing, hunting, trapping, and gathering natural resources for months, it either best be abundant or you'd best not exhaust it too much.

Its these sorts of environments where you find seasonal villages. Built of things like Hide tents, pit homes, earthen lodges, wickiups, small mud huts. Structures that aren't meant to last forever, but can be quickly rebuilt and reinhabited once the den returns. Or alternatively structures that can be taken down and set back up quickly and provide solid protection from the climate for more medium term living situations

or at least be built upon with local resources

But of course after a few months, that den is apt to pack up and move along. Leaving post holes, perhaps some structures that are left to fall apart and be rebuilt later, and the remnants of hearths and small ditches and mounds that organized their community while they were there

This sort of more seminomadic lifestyle is most common in places where the wildlife is far more abundant than average. Think Wetlands, Coastlines, Rainforests, Amongst other sorts of places that have a lot of biodiversity and, for a hunter gatherer, a lot of food options that can take a while for any one den of more or less 30 drekir to put a dent into

So a lot less common than the more mobile of huntergatherer peoples but still something you can find on most planar where wildlife is abundant

And the most rare, are sedentary hunter gatherers

Sedentary, long term villages that are built purely off of hunting and gathering are rare. As by its very nature people are at the whims of nature and, when they have to work around it, that means its hard to keep a steady village going on without exhausting local food sources and being forced to move elsewhere

the most common form this takes are fishing villages, though as always its not the ONLY form.

Usually along the coasts of oceans or massive lakes, places that have an absurd abundance of fish that can be exploited over a very large swath of water via the use of boats. Some of the oldest sedentary communities in our history were oceanside fishing villages and its likely to be the same for drekir. As due to the sheer size of an ocean and the sheer amount of sealife moving around in that ocean, usually fisherdrakes do not need to sail too far into the sea to get good catches. Especially seeing how sparse populations are in the Quiet Age, an ocean of fish is almost impossible for any one tribe to exhaust and its usual for collective populations to never get so big as to create a risk of overfishing.

Likewise, combined with land plants and animals to hunt and forage along with seafood and seaplants or seafruits, its common for fishing villages to be lived in for generations, usually only being abandoned due to catastrophes like natural disasters or other tragedies

Hurricanes, fires, violence, etc.

Now there could be other environments in which a sedentary village of hunter gatherers can exist/ A great real world example that isn't necessarily coastal are the various cultures of the Cascades in the PNW rainforests of North America. Where food was so abundant that sedentary chiefdoms were built up and fed on hunting and gathering. Particularly in their case the gathering of acorns. Though fishing and whaling was and is a huge part of PNW indigenous communities and did a lot for feeding

If the food sources are abundant and reproduceable enough, and as long as at least half of the diet those drekir have is meat, you can definitely have long term settlements of hunter gatherers

Usually with the works

Buildings built out of sturdier materials that can be maintained and remain standing for generations, usually that more sedentary life allows for more complex infrastructure, equipment, and often larger scales of material culture that aren't suitable for mobile lifestyles. As well as (If the food allows) larger populations and chiefdoms instead of band and tribes (more on that in a sec)

As for social organization

Hunter gatherers do run the gambit as said above. But most are either bands or tribes

Which is really true of most draconic societies in the setting. Tribes are the most common overall but a lot of hunter gatherers live in band societies

Band societies Are societies built of dens that are not politically affiliated nor socially linked together. Each den is their own politically and socially autonomous unit.

Hunter gatherers are the most common sort to be band societies, particularly the most highly mobile. Its common in these societies that, once a den hits adolescence, to be given the boot out into the world with some few basic lessons, some basic supplies and a "Don't hunt in our territory too much please we need that"

So no den ever really builds up the complex links of kinship, reciprocity, or strings that you see amongst tribal societies This isn't bad or good mind you, its just you don't see a political unity like seen in tribes. To a den in a society of bands, each other den is just another group of folks who happen to believe the same culture and speak the same language. They aren't allies or enemies, just another group who may help or cause problems. but either way your den isn't really linked to their den. It does allow for very flexible societies, as each den is its own independent social unit that can react to a crisis, but it also is not very stable. Its flexibility is what creates its instability. Band societies aren't chaotic, but often different dens in a region may clack horns as the interests of one den may not suit another and vice versa. So politically its an ever shifting sea of promises made and promises broken. Usually its not enough to spark bloodshed but in a lot of band societies there is a real sense of "My den or the other way then" For better and for worse

You don't usually see band societies that aren't pure hunter gatherers for this specific reason, its not bad! Its just very very specific in what these sorts of societies do well and what they struggle with. But for adaptability and flexibility, band societies are great

Tribal societies are also very common amongst hunter gatherers, really tribes are the most common (and also immensely varied) mode of social organization in the DragonScape as a whole. Tribes are simply informally united groups of dens who build positive political bonds through informal systems of reciprocity, kinship, shared homelands, culture, beliefs and language. I've talked a lot about tribes in the past so I won't go too in depth here.

But the short of it is that dens work together and form close bonds, those dens informally become clans of dens working together, and one or more clans can be considered a tribe. Its essentially a big, informalized network of different dens coordinating to manage the resources of their part of the world, resolve conflicts and disagreements between dens and clans, and to share larger resources and infrastructure and land. While most band hunter gatherers tend to be highly nomadic, Tribal hunter gatherers really do exist across the spectrum. Tribes can be built of highly mobile dens that may only see other dens in their tribe every year or so, but still make sure to coordinate and stay on good terms. They can also be found in a lot of seminomadic dens, where seasonal camps attract hundreds of drekir who work together to withstand the winters, and also use that time to figure out who is going where so noone steps on anyone elses toes, and of course they can exist amongst sedentary villages. With different villages grouping into larger clans or, as the Seattlens do it, urbanizing clans into single larger settlements

and lastly Chiefdoms!

Chiefdoms to be brief are not too unlike Tribes. However unlike tribes, which are generally egalitarian and lacking in real leadership, Chiefdoms often have leaders and social stratification

Chiefdoms are dens that unite into clans, with one or more clans forming a tribe, but that tribe has a concrete leadership. Be it a Denarch like the Cydonian chiefdom, or some sort of republic or democratic system that assigns leadership of some sort.

they have a chief! Or more commonly a den of chiefs of some sort

Pure hunter gatherer chiefdoms do exist but are rare

In the real world chiefdoms have been built involving communities that are hunter gatherers, but the majority of food usually comes from things like Agriculture or Pastoralism. In the Realm of the Quiet Age therefore its often similar. Usually there has to be some sort of centralized power and so usually chiefdoms built a lot of infrastructre and specialized roles around it. If you have a warrior class then thats fewer people getting food on the regular, so usually the people getting food turn to means that aren't usually hunting and gathering, like inseculture or pastoralism

But they can exist, hunting and gathering is so incredibly regional that their could be some sort of place in which its feasible! I just haven't thought of one yet and I would consider them quite unusual amongst chiefdoms which themselves are uncommon

So... What does hunting and gathering actually look like?

Its really the hardest part of this ramble as frankly, it can look like anything and everything region to region.

As when your whole living is wrought from local wildlife, it means the way your den and broader tribe hunts animals and finds plants to eat is going to look entirely different from the way a tribe in another region hunts and finds plants to eat.

The Maímor of Southwest logáu for example are hunter gatherers who are very specialized in big game hunting. They dig up tubers and soil berries sure, but their big paydays are mostly from taking down the megafauna of the region

The Gemaga on the other side of the continent mostly live off of hunting small game, eating the pith of a local starchy bamboo, and the occasional bit of fruit.

The Dorer of the western arid coasts spend their warm years eating cacti, foraging termites and small game, and sometimes if needed hunt larger animals

And all of their lives look remarkably different from one another as there is no one hunter gatherer lifestyle

The coastal peoples living off of netting rock crabs and eating shellfish are just as much hunter gatherers as the mountain dwellers who hunt wyrms and large bugs, who are also just as much hunter gatherers as the savanna folk digging for giant worms and tubers in dry riverbeds

Now to me it makes hunting and gathering exciting as the specifics of what it is is so highly regional. But it also makes it hard to talk about generally

If there is any one specific advantage hunter gatherers have, its flexibility.

Your typical drek, who is typically a hunter gatherer, is usually something of a jack of all trades but a master of one thing and one thing only.

They know their environment well

Not just in that they know whats edible and what isn't, nor in that they know how to get food. But in that they know how to deal with and identify destabilizing factors. If this years rains weren't strong and there is a drought, it may destabilize the den but they can rotate to other sources of food as need be, or pack up and move elsewhere. If there is an overabundance of an animal that is driving the biodiversity down, generally those hunter gatherers will likely hunt it down provided they can eat it. Less for environmentalism and more because an overabundance of an animal means a usually easy thing to eat in abundance. In effect keeping populations in check.

Hunter gatherers are not really "one with nature", but they are a lot more subject to the chaos and instability of the natural world than others and, while that means their lives are anything but stable they are usually highly adaptive

If something in their region is edible, you bet they've figured out how to identify it, what to make and use to hunt or forage it, and how best to eat it. It makes them very tenacious compared to pastoralists or inseculturalists who tend to produce more consistent food in optimal environments, but have issues in adapting to sudden shifts in the situation. And region to region, you can see that sort of adaptability game take place everywhere. As again, a hunter gatherer in one place is often living a very different lifestyle than a hunter gatherer in another and they are all constantly shifting.

Which leads to an overall view of life in any given plana a lot like TV static. There are some consistent aspects here and there but things are always willing and often purposefully changing

So when I write for hunter gatherers, or if you want to. I would keep in mind both the variety and the way hunter gatherers change in culture and subsistence methods and "tactics" as the environment shifts around them. An important reason why hunting and gathering has been so persistent in our history and in the dragonscape is because hunter gatherers are perhaps some of the most flexible and adaptable cultures and styles of living in the world. It can be molded to work with any environment

and in a place as chaotic as the DragonScape, hunting and gathering never really goes away

And to wrap up on some side notes

1) To be honest even cultures I wouldn't call hunter gatherers also hunt and gather At the end of the day drekir and ormer need or at least want meat and extra food so its typical to see dragons who are mostly pastoralists, agriculturalists, or inseculturalists etc. to have people go out and hunt or forage food.

So hunter gatherer really is more a term to refer to people who don't engage in other subsistence styles

2) Ormer are almost never pure hunter gatherers. The reality is they are omnivores who above all else need a boatload of calories just to keep moving. Which tends to mean in most contexts and regions, they tend to focus on farming high carbohydrate staple foods, vegetables and fruits to keep afloat. Though it wouldn't be impossible given the right context, I just don't think Ormer usually would be able to keep themselves going on hunting and gathering alone

3) Even in the end of the timeline, the Thalmvaric Age, hunter gatherers are still extremely common!

though aren't the main dominant sort of lifestyle but are rather more evently distributed amongst herdrakes, fisherdrakes, bug farmers, and other sorts of ways of making a living

mostly again, they are resiliant and flexible in the face of unstable worlds

So yeah

Hunting and Gathering is both very simple to explain and very difficult to go into detail on, but I think the variety of hunter gatherers really speaks to the variety of people and places in our world and in the DS

I just hope I did such a deceptively difficult topic justice here, be well!