Elnuk

The Elnuk is a large, shaggy, buffalo-like beast native to the Freljord and found nowhere else in Runeterra. A four-legged herbivore that grazes the harsh northern mountains, it lives and moves in herds, which makes it one of the few dependable sources of meat and materials in a land where little else survives the cold. Among the peoples of the Freljord, elnuk are less wild game than herded livestock, and the Avarosans in particular keep and manage them. Their drovers lead the mountain herds down to the greener lowlands ahead of the deepest winters, seeking the pasture that the frozen highlands cannot provide. A herd is wealth and survival at once: its meat can be cured against the long winter, and its hide is put to work as well. Frost priests of the Frost Guard write their nightly observations on tanned elnuk leather by candlelight, keeping their reports for the Frost Guard Citadel. Because the herds are so vital, they are also fought over. The Winter's Claw under Sejuani would raid Avarosan elnuk herds to feed their tribe, and in one lean season, when the mountain herds had already been driven south, Svalyek's claw managed to take six elnuk from a drover who had waited too long to move his animals to safer ground. For the tribes that own them, losing a herd can be a death sentence. One band driven north by the Winter's Claw lost its entire elnuk herd on its second night in the wild and lived off the carcasses to reach a third. In telling after telling, the elnuk marks the thin line between survival and starvation in the north.