The Hunter's Guide to: The Horker

By Flavius Flonius, Grand Venator of the Tamrielic Hunter’s Lodge, 4E 201

FORWARD

Greetings fellow hunter! This series serves as a guide for the successful hunting of all the beasts across Tamriel. I, Flavius Flonius, famed tracker of prey and killer of predators, will be your guide! I have traveled through the sands of the Alik’r, the forests of Valenwood, and the waters of the Eltheric, always taking down the mightiest of game wherever I travel. Through this series, you may become the penultimate hunter on Tamriel!

THE HORKER

In this installment, I shall instruct you on the proper way to take down a horker. Everything I have learned in these pages comes from my own hunting expertise or from lesser hunters such as yourself. Horkers are semi-aquatic mammals that inhabit the coasts of Northern Skyrim and the various islands that dot the Sea of Ghosts. The primitive Skaal of Solstheim are some of the most famous horker hunters, using simple spears to take on the beast.

BIOLOGY

To have a successful hunt, you must understand the biology of your prey. Horkers have a pretty straightforward layout. Their entire body is covered in a waterproof skin with a leathery texture. A horker’s head contains a very thick skull with three tusks of ivory protruding outward around the mouth. Also surrounding the mouth are the horker’s sensitive whiskers, which it uses to detect movement in the water. Moving downward, the horker has four flippers, which it uses to swim with great speed through the cold waters of the Sea of Ghosts.

BEHAVIOR

Horkers are often found in packs of three or four. They can be spotted sunbathing on the coast or on large floes of ice. Horkers are territorial creatures, and don’t appreciate when an unfamiliar being approaches them. If the horker deems you a potential predator, he and his pack will chase after you for an extraordinary amount of time. Horkers are well known to chase threats unrelentlessly, with some reports of horker victims being found miles away from the water. However, if a horker has deemed you a threat, keeping your distance is not difficult at all, for the horker flops along with a sluggish pace. Woe to the hunter that has to face a horker underwater, however. When submerged, the horker uses its strong flippers and bodily motions to swim with lightning speed. Swimming horkers have been known to cause serious damage to ships as mighty as the Imperial galleons.

To properly hunt a horker, there are a number of strategies. One such strategy is to use your sharpest arrows and spears to take them down from afar. Another strategy is to sneak up on the beast while it is sunbathing or sleeping, and strike its skull with a strong spiked club. If swung with enough force, a hunter can kill a horker in one strike. The final strategy, and by far the riskiest, is used by the Skaal hunters of Solstheim. The Skaal hunting party will silently row their canoes to find a lounging or sleeping horker. They then attack the horker with strong throwing spears that are attached to the canoe by a strong rope. When the horker tries to flee through the water, the hunting canoe is pulled along with it. The hunters stab and throw their other spears at the animal until it finally perishes.

PREPARATION AND HARVESTING

Now that you have killed your prey and hauled it back to a nice space to field dress, it’s time to get dirty. First, take your blade and slice open the horker’s belly. The internal organs should be easy to pull out. Next, use a strong blade to sever the head and flippers from the horker’s body. Now it should be easy to butcher the horker as you would a deer or a cow. Be careful to preserve the horker’s leathery hide if you can, and mind the blubber! Once you have finished the butchering process, move on to the head. The head doesn’t contain anything of value besides the horker’s tusks. Use your knife to carefully loose the tusk from the skull, and give it a quick and hard yank. (Think of it as pulling a tooth. A long, ivory tooth.) Do this for the other two tusks.

USES

Now that you have separated the horker’s contents from itself, it’s time to make use of it! First off, the tusks can be polished and sold for good coin. Nordic sailors often carve scrimshaw into the tusks, which can then be sold as works of art. The Skaal often use the tusk for toolmaking, such as fashioning spearheads and fishing hooks out of the tusk.

Next, we’ll discuss the use of the horker in cuisine around Tamriel. Us Cyrodiilics consider horker tongue to be an absolute delicacy when fried, while the flippers are used in certain soups and stews. The body meat of the horker is overly greasy and fat, although it tastes divine when diced and cooked. The less cultured tribes of the Sea of Ghosts, such as the Skaal, prefer to cook all the meat in the same way you would beef or venison, and horker is a central part of the Skaal diet. (Gods only know how they tolerate it!)

Finally, we’ll discuss the most unpleasant part of the horker, the skin. The skin is often discarded by the average citizen of the Empire. However, the Imperial Military makes use of the horker’s blubbery hide in the creation of sleek wetsuits for deep sea operations, and the Nords often do the same, albeit in a less refined manner.

CONCLUSION

Now that you know how to hunt the hardy horker, go out there and prove your knowledge! When your companions ask how you achieved such a feat, you know where to direct them. One day, you may even become a hunter almost as accomplished as me, Flavius Flonius!