Aren Bestiary: Of The Oulurse

This paragraph written by Sardun of Fahistar in "Of Animals" was for long presumed to be the oldest description of the animal that became known as oulurse in Ordosia. He mentions it while describing animals from Erdasia, but no works of Erdasian scholars translated to Debarian mention it at all. For this reason it was assumed that he had a separate source of information. Some even assumed that the oulurse was Masharan, because the animal he described after it was the camel, though the context and description clearly linked it to Erdasia. 

Thelmar certainly had no sources beyond Sardun, though he made some interesting additions to the description of the animal in the Thelquam Bestiary. "The ulalorso is so called because it has the head of an owl (ulalo) and the body of a bear (orso). For this reason it is confused about its nature and will hunt all manner of animals from the smallest mouse to beasts greater than itself. [...] When it fights it wraps its forearms around its prey and embraces it to death." He also thought that it was the product of "some manner of magic" rather than being a naturally occurring beast.

It was the Thelquam Bestiary that defined how the animal came to be known in Ordosian works that followed. The uwalourse or oulurse was an unnatural union of owl and bear with strange ferocity that caused it to hunt anything that moved, and kill its victims by hugging them. While this may seem humorous for the modern reader, the oulurse was a feared creature, and often used as an example of where the use of magic might lead if practiced without proper limits and discipiline. One folk tale had it that the mage responsible for the creation of the first oulurse had been killed by the raging beast, and from that sprung the saying "to breed oulurses", used of magical pursuits perceived as being of questionable nature.

Emperor Peleorom was keen to obtain any strange and foreign beast he could for his Imperial Menegarie, and the fearsome oulurse was no exception. It however proved to be exceptionally difficult to find. Though many bestiaries falsely claimed it to be found in Ardasea, no one on the subcontinent had seen such a beast. While many were of the mind that Sardun's "southern lands" referred to Erdasia, others maintained it lived in Khadasia instead. A new translation of a Masharasin manuscript of Sardun's "Of Animals" hinted that the oulurse might be Erdasian after all, but the closest thing to proof was found when Azaios' "Classification of Animals" was translated to Velanneic.

Azaios had reported that sailors had brought stories of strange animal living in Southern Erdasia, and proceeded to describe it in a way that had been copied almost verbatim by Sardun. Unlike the latter, Azaios expressed skepticism about the validity of these stories and followed them up with his ideas of what the creature might possibly be and how it could have evolved. When the Debarian translators had removed all direct references to evolution from the heavily edited Debarian version of "Classification of Animals", they had ended up removing the entire description of the oulurse, and with it every detail not mentioned by Sardun.

Azaios had clearly been curious about the 'owl-bear', tentatively classifying it in gryphon-kin, but was frustrated with the lack of reliable sources of information: "Whether it is covered by feathers or by fur depends on the person describing it, as does its colour. None who speak of it have seen one, nor have they heard of it directly from someone who has. It is therefore unclear to what degree these descriptions are accurate, if at all." It is known from Azaios's funerary book that he paid sailors heading for Southern Erdasia to bring him skins of unknown animals, so it appears he never received an oulurse pelt.

His frustration was to be shared with everyone seeking the fabled animal in Imperial times. While the search had been narrowed down to one continent and the Atal natives recognized the beast, referring to it as kohitloncul or 'bear-owl' in their tongue, all they had to offer was folklore. It was as if everoyne had heard about the oulurse, but no one had actually seen one. Some would say that the animal had once lived in South Erdasia but was now hunted to extinction, while others maintained that it still lived, but only in remote areas far from human habitation. All of the stories suggesting recent run-ins with the beast came from small villages close to or situated in rainforest areas.

The closest any scholar has ever got to a living oulurse so far is a tuft of feathers and a claw necklace acquired from a village near the Middle Erdasian Dardjangul rainforest. A Thalannean explorer bought them off a native man who had told the following story: when the man was still a child, a great bear-owl had come out of the forest one night, drawn to the cries of a woman who was giving birth. The beast had torn down the wall of the birthing-house in and killed the midwife before the men of the village came to drive it away with their spears. It had ignored the spear wounds and slashed one man dead with a single swipe of its claws but was eventually driven back into the forest using torches. The brother of the dead man tracked down the bear-owl and killed it, bringing its claws and its skin back to the village. This man had been the father of the man telling the story. The only thing left of the skin was a handful of coarse hair-like feathers, but the necklace was still fully intact.

While many scholars have expressed skepticism about this story, believing that the Darjangulian man was simply taking advantage of the foreign traveller to earn some easy gold, the fact remains that the unusually large claws do not match any known Erdasian animal. The long dark brown feathers are reminiscent of those of several gryphids living in or around Dardjangul, though closest to those of a simurgh. While the evidence is inconclusive, the possibility remains that the oulurse does indeed exist, roaming the deep rainforests of Middle Erdasia.