Shonshi

dangerous flavour

The shonshi is a strange little creature native to sparse woods and shrublands in Edio and Hanchuu. The largest examples are knee height at best, yet they can be incredibly aggressive and dangerous. Left to themselves, the shonshi are relatively solitary, spending most of their time rooting through the fields for worms or fallen berries, or their favourite food: underground white fungus.
While somewhat rarely seen in the wild, shonshi have been farmed for centuries for their meat. Their horns and spiked carapaces are riddled with toxic bacteria that would deadly to consume, but if killed and butchered properly, the organs of the creature are prized for their rich and exotic flavour, and have become delicasies accross Yatan'aa.

Basic Information

Anatomy

The animals are six-legged like most native life on Tamrakaaz, but they are of a less common quasi-mammalian type. The bravery and aggression of the creatures is backed up by the hard shell-like armour that covers most of their body and the various spikes and horns protruding from their sides and back. Though the shonshi males seem to use the tusks and armour on their head to fight for territory and mates, the females of the species have only slightly smaller tusks and spikes. It is surmised by the Vidyaala of Vitality, that the large roc that hunt the sky's over the nearby Dry Mountains once also hunted around the lowlands that the shonshi now call home, and that the spiked and toxic body armour would have offered significant protection against airborne predators.

Additional Information

Domestication

During a severe drought, early settlers of Hanchu turned to trapping and eating shonshi out of desperation. Though many died, it was discovered that the creatures organ meat was incredibly delicious. When the drought was over, a few farmers managed to capture a few of the animals. Naturally territorial and solitary, the shonshi were incredibly difficult to breed or just keep alive. It took many years for even a few farmers to develop successful strategies, and those few guarded the secrets they learned jealously. Such was the incredibly flavour and even nutritional value shonshi, that it was worth the effort and heartache.
Within a few decades, safely butchering and selling shonshi organ meat to the growing noble class became a highly profitable endeavour, and the few successful shonshi breeders became highly respected and successful.
Over the centuries various efforts were made at selectively breeding the creatures for increased size and decreased armouring and territoriality met with surprising failure. The breeders found that the larger or less armoured the shonshi got, the less flavourful their organs became. As a result, domesticated shonshi look and behave very much like their wild cousins, except tend to be slightly smaller.

A farmer's daughter's depiction of her favorite shonshi.

"After once tasting the shonshi, every other animal food fell off greatly in my estimation. The liver of this animal is the easiest of digestion, and a quantity of it, exceeding that of any other food, can be eaten without experiencing the slightest of inconvenience. This is a stroke of luck as after eating a single bite of it, such was it's incredibly rich and aromatic flavour, that one would want to continue eating it for as long as possible."

- Gyosan Argen of House Yeh (477AS)

Average Height

two hands

Average Weight

two to three stone

Average Length

two to two and a half hands

Average Physique

Shonshin are squat, short and fairly round. They are typically as long as they are tall, and sometimes almost as wide as well. They have no tail whatsover and tiny eyes peak out from under huge overlapping head plates. Despite their proportions, the animals carry very little body fat, and are dense and muscular.