Hillhopper and Rockrunner

Prey and predator locked in the ancient competition of strength, speed, and skill, the hillhopper and rockrunner constantly seek to outplay their opponent in a game where the stakes are always life and death.

As rumbling helmetheads moved to higher ground to avoid the growing, angry herds of soggobblers that spread across the soglands, they competed with their own smaller relative which had adapted to life on the upland plain first. Battering helmetheads, living in far smaller groups and being littler in body size, responded in turn to this intrusion by moving to places that their bulky cousins were less able to bother them: spire forests, and steep hillsides. Those that took refuge in the former became the spiresprinter. Those which moved onto the slopes, meanwhile, became the hillhopper.

This thorngrazer is puny. Indeed, standing only two and a half feet high, it is the littlest thorngrazer species to have ever lived. This species of helmethead is shy and flighty, for not only is it very small indeed, but it lives in only very small family groups of one male and two to four females - and such modest herds provide hardly any protection from predators at all. They make their homes on the remnant volcanic hills of the uplands, where they dart between patches of cover in scrubby areas and open cementree savannahs, browsing selectively on weeds and shrubs, sticking to steep ground and dense cover. The bone casque of their predecessor is reduced to a flat shield over the snout while the nasal crests below it now extend a few inches above the forehead.

The ring of tooth-horns, situated around their casque, is also much smaller than in their predecessor, but several such weapons are still present on the face, and along with the hardened face are still used by males in rut to fight over females by ramming their heads together. As in many other crested thorngrazers though, these animals have begun to show more reliance on display and vocalizations in their social behavior - a reversion of form from the battering helmethead. Males exhibit fluffy white beards around their throats, which as in related spiresprinters is attached to a skin membrane that connects to their ears, so that it can be fanned out during courtship with their movement upward or retracted when they pull down. The the front of the head is also now a pleasant shade of light blue with yellow highlights, as the colorful skin formerly around the eye has spread across the face. Calls of this species are mainly high-pitched squeaks and trills, but males - with larger crests - are capable of louder bugle calls that can carry as far as two miles on the wind, and are used to proclaim control of a territory and deter rival males from approaching.

By trading the power and armor of early thorngrazers such as the nimicorn for speed and agility, hillhoppers have all but given up facing their predators in combat. They have embraced flight over fight, and bolt far and fast if danger arises, reaching speeds of up to 35 miles per hour even over the uneven terrain thanks to their sturdy gripping hooves which have become concave on their lower surface, preventing slippage. And being this little, they have many enemies indeed. Large birds can easily swoop down and pick them off from above if they are caught out of cover - even smaller winged assasins too small to carry them away - aeracudas - can succeed in swooping upon them and dragging them off cliff edges to their deaths. But the most common hunter that stalks the hillhopper is a fellow terrestrial, and another tribbethere. It isn't a sawjaw, like hunts the lowlands. It is a cat-like predator that is just as nimble over steep terrain and as sneaky as a fox - the rockrunner repanthor.

In the soggy lowlands, it is sawjaws which menace the thorngrazers, picking off the sick and the weak. Yet most of these bipeds are not the best climbers on steep terrain. Foxtrotters exhibit an advantage in stability, and adapt into new, more intimidating forms from their long-successful skulking scavenger and mesopredatory role in the environment. Repanthors are a newly evolved genus of larger, feline-like predators of smaller thorngrazers. A close relative of the spireclimber repanthor, the rockrunner utilizes uneven hilly terrain to their advantage to ambush and trip up their quarry. With sturdy, stocky legs to endure the shocks of repeated jumps and occasional falls, and strong grasping fingers to cling to rock faces, these solitary but cunning foxtrotters pounce and grapple one-on-one with prey, aiming to get a killing bite to the throat with their sturdy crushing jaws and enlarged upper and lower canine teeth.

Rockrunner repanthors, a generalized predator of mid-size animal prey, love to eat the tiny hillhoppers, and are fast enough to easily catch and subdue them in a straight chase. But on these hills, there is rarely such an easy opportunity. When threatened by enemies, the hillhoppers instinctively want to flee upwards. They are very athletic and can not only run up steep ground, but can even scale vertical cementree trunks with rapid switch-back jumps back and forth between two adjacent spires, until they find purchase on an elevated branch out of reach of more strictly grounded hunters like carnackles - unfortunately, repanthors too can climb, so this particular strategy is best used against other hunters. To escape the rockrunner, which is just as good at climbing as themselves, they will instead go against their first instincts and run downhill, and then at the very last minute before the repanthor pounces, they will use their smaller mass to quickly stop, turn around, and double back on their tracks again, shooting back uphill. Their larger pursuers are often unable to stop their greater momentum and turn around in time to follow this clever, tiny prey as it races to safety back up and over the hill and dashes away to cover. The rockrunner is left in the dust, often having lost track of its quarry by the time it gets to the top. Repanthors are thus most likely to win if they can remain hidden in vegetation, or behind boulders, until almost directly atop their prey and able to strike without a prolonged chase. The hillhopper must always be wary, for it quickly loses any advantage it might carry if it doesn't get a head start first.

Rockrunner repanthors are slightly sexually dimorphic, as males have brighter red fur on their faces and manes and are slightly larger. Their colorful hair is a signal, letting them see one another at a far enough distance to avoid a fight and to judge one another's sex, as male territories encompass those of several females while never overlapping another males, and females likewise never overlapping one another's land. From an outside perspective, it would seem that males spend their lives patrolling by themselves and only female rockrunners actively raise their cubs, usually in an underground den in dense boulder fields on a slope, but males are not entirely out of the picture. Though they do not den with their mates as earlier foxtrotters did, nor they do form monogamous pairs, they keep a watch at a distance, keeping away predators, and leave out food for their young's benefit. Males seem able to recognize their own offspring and as they grow may visit occasionally and even play with them, and in the event one of his partners dies or is injured while with young cubs, he may even adopt a much more proactive role in her stead, delivering food directly and even taking over leadership of his young and teaching them to hunt. Foxtrotter social behavior is often more complicated than it first appears, with subtleties all too easy to miss.