TIGERS!

 this is not a rigorously researched historical thing. it's an idea to steal for your game.

"Koreans spend half the year going to the funerals of tiger victims, and the other half hunting tigers"

 -apparently an ancient korean saying¹

    tigers are powerful symbols, guardians against evil spirits. but this was born from the everpresent fear of the thing. it's difficult to overstate the omnipresence of the tiger on the korean peninsula. nowadays that presence is entirely cultural, a mascot. in more ancient times, that presence was very physical.

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i did the drawings for this!

    can you imagine being a woodcutter, traveling over the forested hills at night? travel was done during the day at all cost, and only dire circumstances could have forced you to make this journey. can you imagine how dark, how utterly pitch black the forest to either side is? the path is illuminated by the moon and stars overhead. the forest is not.

    nervously, you light a torch. you know this is a bad idea. everything around can see you now, and the torch can only light the very first row of trees before the light is swallowed up. but it feels better than being in the dark with it.

    the tiger's eyes are much clearer than those of men. it is here.

    you are being hunted! the deep part of your brain that still remembers being a small and scampering creature knows this. you can't know which way it is coming from. you swing your torch from side to side, hoping to catch a glint of light on some, huge, unblinking eye.

    the tiger is all around you now, enveloping you in its sheer presence.

    every stray sound *could be made by the lurking thing--so every sound *is. every shifting bush *could be concealing it--so every bush *is.

    it wouldn't matter whether you were in a tiny room or an open field. you are CORNERED.

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    my parents were talking recently, about a picture my mom had seen--a young tiger and a young dog at some zoo, just sitting next to one another. this type of story is pretty common! they're friends! :D but that wasn't what they were talking about. she was commenting on the difference in paw size between the two--just how much bigger the tiger's paw was than the dogs.

    "i can see why people were so afraid of them," she says. "you get hit once by those things and you'd be dead."

    and yet people hunted tigers! especially after the introduction of guns to the korean peninsula, but even old, old folktales are rife with comic examples of tigers being tricked, being outwitted and punished for their arrogance.

    part of that is because tigers were sometimes a symbol for the aristocracy.

    part of that is because tricking them is how you hunted tigers.

    you trick the thing into showing itself, and you do it so that it cannot get to you.

    you trap the thing in a single location, or force it where you want to go.

    it is not a chase. it is not a sneaking, a tracking. you cannot *find* tigers.

    like the electrons in probability clouds, you COLLAPSE the zone of possibility until finally, the tiger materializes.

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    how do we use this in a game?

    certain monsters are tigers. smart monsters. stealthy monsters. monsters that hunt and feed. maybe even an actual tiger. let the players know they are dealing with a tiger. the locals probably know all about it. they warn the players! that it can't be tracked. that it can't be confronted. that it can only be staved off, by the trickiest kinds of folk.

    and of course, that the players should never travel through the area at night.

    if the players heed the warnings, they never meet the tiger.

    if the players ignore the warnings, the game is afoot. this covers both traveling at night and actively going after the tiger.

    until the tiger is cornered, it does not exist. merely suggestions of it. describe the rustling bushes, the cracking of twigs, the dark impenetrable shadows. if the players check these they will find nothing. the tiger is too smart for that.

    how does the tiger win? it eats. if it can catch out a single character, a single hireling or goon and kill them, it disappears. its hunger is sated. give that lone character a chance for their friends to reach them, but the tiger is monstrously strong on the attack.

    how do the players win? they materialize it. on the offense, the tiger is strong. on the defense, the tiger is weak. classic tiger hunting tricks:

•     set out bait and hide somewhere, usually up a tree.
•     set traps to restrain the tiger--if the trap is sufficiently strong and well thought out, the tiger *will* fall for it.
•     dogs. it must be many dogs-lone dogs just die. dogs find and latch onto the tiger, bark at it, make it extant. it will try to retreat.

the tiger will probably work best as an addition to a local area where there are other things to do--a town and a dungeon, usually. the tiger is there to make travel between things a bit more dangerous. there are no tigers in civilized places except dead ones.

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1. from an article i read while looking stuff up for this post - https://www.koreaexpose.com/search-korean-tiger/