Pan Hyenas
Pan hyenas are the striped scavengers of the Glassbelt. They follow every crossing at a distance, eat whatever the crossing leaves, and dig at shallow graves, which is why those who cross bury their dead under stone however tired they are. On their own ground at night they will take the weak, the sick, or a sleeper who has strayed from the fire.
Appearance
A pan hyena is the size of a large dog but built lower behind than in front, with a heavy head, massive jaws, and a sloping back. Its coat is long, coarse, and pale grey-buff with dark stripes across the flanks and legs, and a long, bristling mane runs from the back of the head down the spine; when it is angry or afraid the mane stands up and the animal looks twice its size. Its ears are big and pointed, its eyes dark. It walks with a limping, shambling gait that hides how far it can travel in a night. Pan hyenas are mostly silent, but they growl, chatter, and give a cackling yelp over a carcass. A den smells of rotten bone.
Habitat and Range
They live across the Glassbelt Interior, wherever there is anything to scavenge: along the crossing routes, around caravan wells and shade sanctuaries, in the ruin fields, and on the old sea floor, and they come up onto the floors of the Rimward Basins near the Lastwater Wells. They den in ruins, old cisterns, and burrows in the shoreline steps.
Behaviour and Temperament
They forage alone or in pairs at night, ranging very far, and live on carrion, bones, the rubbish of camps, lizards, insects, eggs, and whatever they can catch that cannot fight back. Their jaws crack bones no other beast can open. They are cautious, patient, and clever: a hyena will follow a crossing for days, keeping a long way back, and come in only when the party is asleep, sick, or scattered. A guarded fire keeps them off; an untended grave does not.
Life Cycle
A female bears two to four cubs in a den in a ruin or a burrow and nurses them a long time, carrying bones back for them. They breed slowly and live twelve to fifteen years.
Uses and Dangers
Pan hyenas take the dying beasts of a crossing, the stores of a careless camp, and the dead. Crossers bury under heaped stone, and the cairns along the routes are partly their doing. A lone sleeper, a child, or a sick traveller left behind is in real danger. Salvagers trap them near wells and shade sanctuaries, and their manes and hides are worn by some as a boast.
Lore and Belief
Desert lore says the pan hyena remembers every crossing that ever went wrong and waits along its line for the next. Goblin salvagers say they can smell old fire and will not den in furnace ruins; Troll crossing houses say a hyena that comes close in daylight has been sent by the dead whose grave was left unstoned. Ogre burden orders carry the stones for a grave cairn before they carry anything else.
Crossing escorts tell of a pack that followed a sick caravan for nine days across the pans and took one straggler a night, and of the escort who turned back alone with a spear and a torch to stand over the ninth.