Stalking the Great Green Stag

The primary seasons of the northern realms—winter, spring, summer, autumn—are personified in four hierophanic beings: the Blue Wolf, the White Frog, the Red Hawk, and the Green Stag. Among the northern peoples, autumnal festivals and rites often involve great hunts under the light of the moons. However, none are as sacred or significant as the stalking of the Great Green Stag. Often simply referred to the Autumn Hunt, the Great Stalking, or the like, it is understood that it refers to the mythological experience that would come from seeing the Great Green Stag.
Capturing and bringing down the stag would mark its hunter as beloved of the gods and guarantee a life of fecundity, prosperity, and longevity.
It is said the goddess Qo herself partakes in the Stalking of the Great Green Stag in the form of her semidivine aspect, Rāenth. If the Great Green Stag is not captured by mortals, Qo-as-Rāenth triumphantly brings it down ensuring the yearly cycle is sustained. Things are in balance.
Should the Stag escape the avatar and the stalking by mortals, the account is neutral. It is neither an ill omen or a fortunate one.
However, more ominous lunar signs can warn of a harsh winter if the signs are inauspicious. In this case, should mortals and semi-divine Rāenth be unsuccessful in the stalking, the Great Green Stag will escape only to be felled by the Blue Wolf of Winter. Long, cold, famishing, winter will come to pass and there will be many deaths. Thus, among the smallfolk of the north, the Stalking of the Great Green Stag is not merely about the acquisition of personal glory and prosperity: it is a necessary act to ensure the survival of the collective.
The Great Green Stag is monstrously large. It exudes power and primal magics. When it manifests in the material world it is accompanied by scintillating motes of colour that tremble and hover around it like a moving halo. Yellow-gold, indigo and blue, mauve-amethyst in orbit around its body and head like a nimbus or halo. Its fur shifts from jade to emerald to moss to deep forest; its horns in massive rack appear in shades and hues of yellows, golds, and ochres.

the Great Green Stag [sm] by 包德強