— Shellwan Wah, First Order Naturalist and Head of the Guild Department of the Natural Creatures of Tamarran Continent, Naldrin City University
Harmon 28, SP~5,018
Of the most easily recognizable creatures on the Tamarran Continent the hammool are certainly one. They are truly gigantic; adults are about 30 feet tall and as much as 20 feet sideways, and stand on eight sturdy legs that give them enormous strength and speed in open spaces. A ubiquitous presence on the streets of our cities, hammool carry passengers from far-flung areas of the continent and haul great masses of materials on their mighty backs. They are frequently found on the Great Roads of Tamarra, as well as on the highways and local roads that bind together our cities, our communities, and the great regions of the continent.
The common traveler’s understanding of hammool rarely goes beyond their tremendous size and strength. This is a great loss, for they are beings of great subtlety and complexity. They are some of the great communicators of the continent, although they choose carefully when to communicate. This short article will attempt to provide the reader with a deeper understanding of this wonderful fellow traveler in our rich land.
The hammool are, at their core, a highly social creature. From an early age, they are educated by their parents to know the history and genealogy of their immediate family as well as their entire species. The bonds to their family, tribe, and species are very strong, and their loyalty to fellow hammool leads them to do almost anything to protect their brethren when they find them in harm’s way.
Given this interest in genealogy, it is a great gift that hammool are born with a considerable faculty of memory. They can quickly retain an enormous number of facts in great detail. When hammool encounter others they’ve never met, they are very soon able to place each other in the grander scheme of the hammool tribes that live on Tamarra. As the saying goes, “hammool know no strangers.” In addition to family history, hammool retain a considerable amount of information about non-hammool creatures and events that they have collectively witnessed over many years. Our colleagues who are scholars of history have spent considerable time with hammool families to piece together their version of historical events. I will leave that for a separate telling, however 1.
I will conclude this all too brief introduction to the hammool with a comment on their ability to communicate with each other from a great distance. It is common knowledge among those who ride the hammool 2 or work closely with them that they seem to be able to communicate with each other with remarkable clarity even when they are hundreds of miles apart. From a pragmatic viewpoint, this allows hammool to be aware of events that may be taking place many miles away on the Great Roads or in the fields and farmlands. They seem to know, as a species, what is going on across the continent.
The source of this ability is not understood, although there is no shortage of speculation. One theory put forth by our cousins in the Mentarch’s Guild is that the hammool have a powerful natural connection with Mental Energy. Investigations by members of the Guild Department of the Natural Creatures of Tamarran Continent have had mixed results in verifying this. The more credible, though still unproven, theory is that the hammool have great sensitivity to the vibrations of the earth, and that they are able to communicate with each other by pounding the land in particular rhythms using their great bulk. There is no doubt that their great weight combined with their amazing speed and agility create a thunderous noise as they move across the continent. Many scholars and naturalists believe that this seemingly random pounding is not so random after all and is actually a “language” that can be heard (or felt?) by their brethren many miles away. Some scholars go so far as to conjecture that the hammool’s sensitivity to vibrations in the earth gives them the ability to find locations of geoanatomical mouths of the continent 3.
As the reader can see, there is still much we do not know about these magnificent creatures. If I may, I note that this author is currently working on a publication that will go into a full and complete story of the Hammool of the Tamarran Continent.
1 I would recommend “The History of the Middle Years of the Third Age of the Tamarran Continent” by the contemporary historian Belwith Nodwink, who has worked closely with a number hammoolites, those non-hammool beings who speak the hammool language.
2 This includes the well-known hammool rider ushen, who probably know hammool better than any other living being on Tamarra.
3 The Guild’s Division of Geographic and Fexoanatomical Surveys and Research (the DGFSR, or just “Geo”) can provide more information on these “mouths’ of the continent.