It always bugs me the way Gridanians talk about poaching. They mention it in the same breath as primals and imperial invaders, the dreaded poachers, one of the great threats to our fair city in this dark time.
I don’t know what they actually mean by poaching, because nobody owns the black shroud. In english at least the concept of poaching comes from a long history of the commons, once public lands where anyone could hunt and graze livestock, being claimed by royalty or nobility and fenced off as private land. Robin hood is a poacher because sherwood forest is property of the crown. Feeding the merry men is a crime. In modern day Britain to kill a swan is forbidden not because it’s sad to kill swans but because the king of England officially owns all commonwealth swans.
So where does that leave gridania? They farm and hunt in the twelves wood liberally, its the basis of their economy. There are no permits handed out that we see. Every combat class in the city revolves around killing wildlife from the woods.
Is it more of a conservation thing like fish and game wardens enforce, your salmon must be this big or you have to throw it back and you can only hunt antelope in the allotted season? Do we ever see any hunters being inspected for exceeding the limits? We see duskwights being harassed, and there’s npcs in the woods called poachers, but what makes them poachers? Where’s the line? Who drew it and who does it apply to? Does gridania have total jurisdiction over the entire forest? According to who?
Dunno, it feels most suspicious to say the independent tribes and lone hunter gatherers out in the woods are taking too much from the Forest, unlike the major metropolitan centre in the middle of it. That’s actually fine, the elementals who you can’t talk to said so.
