FAUN-00653: Masseter

The Guide

Masseter makes a life of shepherding faunids through dangerous Wildwood rivers, forests, and wetlands, and occasionally the taiga of the Cold North. Sometimes they ask only for straightforward payment like provisions or clothing. They do have a great love for garish clothing in all clashing colours, and a deep belief in the importance of layering for the weather. However, in times they're less hard up for business, they may only choose to take travelers who are also willing and able to pay with something more interesting. A lesson, a secret, or a private memory will be accepted if it's juicy enough. 

What's their story?

Most faunids are intially skeptical of trusting that a slight, colorful white-tailed deer can get them through Wildwood or the Cold North. Masseter owes their surprising temperature resilience to a fawnhood in Vinnde, where their interest in exploring extreme environments sparked. Before they started guiding other fauns, exploration was a hobby supported by their work as a guard for the city. Serendipitously, their training in combat and survival, as well as enjoyment of more recreational sparring, lent themselves well to self-defense in the lands of apex predators, territorial megafauna, and hostile strangers. Strange natural blessings of upper incisors and nut-cracking - or, allegedly, bone-crushing - bite force don't hurt, either.

What brings them fulfillment?

While they enjoy meeting new people, protecting and getting to know them over the course of their travels, guiding is really more of an excuse for the exploration. There's a certain competitive spirit that makes continually pushing the boundaries of where they can go and what odds they can beat irresistable. Discovering some hidden beauty that perhaps no other faun has is intoxicating. Overcoming geographical obstacles is exhilarating. There is no greater inner peace than what is won by proving they only have to rely on themself for survival. They will tell anyone all this, but they what they wouldn't admit is that winning a life or death fight might be the best of it all. They fish or hunt only when strictly necessary for survival, and honour any kill with full use and returning what they can't use to creatures who can (feeding bankrunners is one of their greatest little pleasures in life). But that little feeling of domination, of conquest - maybe that's just as much of a motivation. Whatever ultimately drives them, their one expedition into Cervale Forest was their most rewarding experience, and that sentence alone tells you a lot about them. 

What are they afraid of?

Masseter knows they can't live like this forever. Inevitably, they will die far from kin, or they will retire. They don't know how they will bear a life where they can't do any of the things that make them feel proud and happy and alive. That's how they would answer. But a more private anxiety is the most well-worn by rumination. Highly devout by all appearances, they worship Herne but cannot stop worrying they're on the edge of corruption. They've killed only when wild animals attack them or their travelers, or harvested infirm animals when facing dangerous hunger, but did they enjoy the fight too much? Were circumstances necessary enough? They believe they strike a fair bargain for their skilled services, but is it inherently exploitative to ask a high price of a faun whose other option for crossing the Wildwood is striking out alone, likely getting lost and dying? They know these concerns are right to have and everyone should be attentive to staying loyal to Herne, but is there a part of them that resents a God that polices even one's inner thoughts and draws invisible lines with hard consequences of toeing? Is that enough to start the path to corruption? They were born with their upper incisors and logically know this cannot have anything to do with corruption, but they are always conscious of the perceptions of others that don't know that.

#spiritually cancelled for thought crimes #they took a perfectly good deer and gave it moral OCD