Fauna
The Multi-Eyed Grazer is a heavy, bison-sized quadruped standing 1.7–2.0 m at the shoulder and 2.4–3.2 m nose-to-tail, weighing 620–1100 kg. The torso is a low, barrel-shaped drum that hangs between four columnar legs ending in cloven, three-toed hooves of polished obsidian-black keratin. The skull is broad and shield-shaped — wider than it is long — and from this dome bristle six large, glossy eyes set in a perfect equatorial ring around the head: two facing forward above a square muzzle, two on the temples, and two recessed into the rear of the skull behind subtle bony brow-ridges. Each eye is roughly the size of a large peach, with molten-copper irises and vertical jet pupils; the rear pair carry a faint inner amber glow at dusk and dilate to read leyline pulses as shimmering chromatic bands the front eyes cannot perceive. The pelt is short and dense, the dorsal coat a warm amber-tan that fades through rust-ochre flank rosettes into a cream underbelly, with soot-black sock markings on the lower legs and pale ivory rings around each eye. A mane of longer, coarser guard-hairs runs from the crown along the spine to a tufted tail-end, paling to bone-white in older bulls. The muzzle is broad and rubbery, slate-grey, set with wide nostrils and a flexible upper lip used to crop echo-grass and lift fallen seed-pods. Hidden beneath the lip is a paired set of grinding molars and a single rasping tongue plate. The posture is relaxed and head-low when grazing, but the head can rotate independently on a long, supple neck so any of the six eyes may be brought to bear without the body turning. At rest the herd lies in a wagon-wheel formation — bodies inward, the 360-degree eye-ring outward — across the rolling amber savannas of Vathune, beneath the always-pale double-shadow cast by Originis's twin sun and the moon Pale Sister.
Era: The Ascent (era2). The Valari amber-tan plains-clans of Vathune call the Multi-Eyed Grazer 'Sehrun-tha' — 'the one who sees the wheel.' Grazer-herds were among the earliest large fauna the diverging Valari followed out of the eastern foothills, and Valari oral history holds that the species' six-eye ring was a gift from the dying primordial chord so that no Valari rider could ambush the herd from behind without warning. Modern Valari still ride single-file at the herd's blind dorsal seam, an etiquette enforced by song-law. The animal's hide makes the heavy weatherproof tent-panels of the tul-yari clan-camps; the eight molars of an old bull are ground into ritual chalk used to draw harmony-circles before a calving festival; the tail-tuft is bound into divination brushes that diviners dip in echo-grass ink. Three legends are taught to every Valari child: the First Stampede that opened the Bayan Pass during the Ascent, the Bull-of-Twelve-Eyes who served as the steed of the prophet Mehari, and the Quiet Year of 412 ST when an entire Highmane herd lay down in a wheel and refused to graze for forty days, a portent later confirmed when the Pale Sister's tide drowned the lowland salt-flats. Hunting a grazer outside the sanctioned cull is a clan-shame offense punishable by tongue-binding for one full season.
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