Project Azu-nah: Stabbity Death

Kohric wasn’t kidding when he said I could get left behind yesterday. Well, he was kidding, but D’Keda has been all hustle-bustle since before dawn today. My lessons yesterday are apparently going to be the last for nearly a week. Or, as their saying goes “a hand of days.” I haven’t quite figured out their number system (Another thing for my list. Bah. I keep adding to my ‘to learn’ list. Each new thing goes right on top. I should just cross off the whole list, write “everything” and be done with it). Anyway, they have four fingers on one hand. So I’m assuming all this prep and fuss is going to last at least that long.

Today’s activity seems to be mostly focused on packing non-essentials (what few there are) and gathering supplies. Less active folk are busy making water skins and the pannier carry baskets. Just about everyone else seems to be busy today with going out and finding food.

Oreeaht is apparently a hunter as well as a gatherer. I guess this isn’t the type of society to have males as the exclusive hunters. They don’t seem to use a whole lot of tools or weapons for hunting either. No knives for example. That really surprised me. I thought about asking how they cut things, until I watched one hunter easily slice away the peel of a piece of fruit he was eating with one fore claw. Dur. The knives are built in.

The only weapon they seem to use is a variant on an atlatl. Atlatls look a bit like the freakish lovechild of a javelin and a bow and arrow set. Basically it’s a spear launcher. And the cool thing is it doesn’t have any mechanical parts, just the basic physics of extending your throwing “arm”. Except the Azu-nah don’t hold their atlatls in their hands.

Azu-nah hunters actually strap them to their tails.

It kinda makes sense now that I think about it. Their arms aren’t attached to their bodies the same way ours are. They don’t have the ability, physically, to reach their arms up over their heads like we can (an Azu-nah depiction of the YMCA dance would be pretty lame). So they attach the atlatl to their tail, and use their entire hind end to launch little spears.

It looked goofy when I first saw it. I mean, they have a stick tied to their tail. But then I watched as a group of hunters testing their aim on a fallen tree trunk.

Damn.

They had a fat round leaf that ways maybe the size of my palm stuck to the tree trunk with a bit of sap, and used it as the target. In less than two minutes, and a cacophony of choonk choonks later, that leaf looked like it had been hit by a couple rounds of buckshot. I would not care to be on the receiving end of one of those spears. They’re just little sticks, yeah. But they’re also pretty pointy, and moving at mach elevntymillion or something. I'd prefer my death to not be the stabbidy kind, thanks. Yeegh. Those chestha I saw when Kohric brought me to D’Keda don’t seem so fast anymore.

Oreeaht let me watch as she tied her atlatl (they call them “m’kek”) in place. There’s a hole at the base for the prehensile end of her tail tip to fit, and she uses her tail to hold the spear in place until she launches it. She carries her extra spears in a thin, woven quiver that rests across her hip. It’s all very simplistic, light, and minimal. I’m impressed with how effective such a simple weapon can be.