Boat Trolls planning thread! (full of spoilers, non-players enter at your own risk)

god can you imagine the human drive to meddle-ship one another combined with the wolfish drive to have just one breeding pair at a time? what if several wolf pals get together and determine which of them would make the best babies, then go for it. condoms and for-funsies humping is a thing! but they don't see why human romance should get in the way of making the best babies possible. if everyone's going to take care of them, they really want to invest in some quality childs.

imagine like six werewolves sitting around with like, hospital bloodwork and DNA tests, science websites open on a dozen computers, thoughtfully circling things in red and blue pencils, notebooks full of scribbled family trees. maybe they'll go in for a really artistic kid this time, and a sport-model in a few years? hmmmmmm....

 

i set it up so probably even a human could run over there and grab it— the main problem humans have, when trying to catch small animals, is we generally want the animals to be unharmed, which makes for really awkward maneuvering. humans who go after rodents and lizards to eat generally do well.

anyway if bel puffs up like YEAH I'M A MIGHTY HUNTER that would be cute. lil pup's first spoonfed kill (nevermind that bel is a lethal fucking monster on two legs). erskin's indulgent condescension might rankle?

 

ahh, adorable, i'll edit that. i had bel get frisky afterwards because Happy Wolf Celebration Times Food Yay.

 

i think we must be sort of going with Special Werewolf Language anyway, at least when it comes to particular words. but that's ok. writing 'erskin twitched his tail particularly enticingly' for sixty pages would get old. I like the idea that it's largely sign-language though.

 

hmmmmm what if bel insists on erskin transforming 'back' to human to come and get burgers with him

 

and maybe they clean off in bel's motel room and erskin borrows A Clothes

 

you make it so! it's your turn. >:P

 

The term "feast or famine diet" refers to wolves and many other large predators. Prey isn't always abundant for these large canines, so they've developed a metabolism that helps them store fat and energy for long periods while prey is scarce. In one sitting, an adult wolf can effectively eat 22 1/2 pounds of meat, although this is the extreme and not the daily average. That would be a great feast, but an adult can go 12 days -- sometimes more -- without food, making up the "famine" part of their diet.

According to Western Wildlife Outreach, an adult grey wolf eats an average of 5 to 14 pounds of meat each day. This is only an average due to their feast-or-famine diet. For an adult wolf to survive, it needs a minimum daily average of about 2 1/2 pounds of meat per day; to breed successfully, however, they need an average of about 7 pounds of meat per day on average. Red wolves, being slightly smaller than their grey wolf cousins, typically eat an average of 2 to 5 pounds of meat per day.​

did some rough number crunching to make sure i wasn't writing erskin as cartoonishly gluttonous. on rough average, humans eat between 3-5 pounds of food a day, though the bulk of that is carbs rather than meat. that's... between six and ten big half-pound hamburgers, so, uh, i think i personally eat something like two pounds of food a day. but i'm a small girl and not very active.

an eastern grey squirrel averages a pound. erskin would want to eat something like five or six squirrels a day because it's good to eat a lot, but he'd be fine with two squirrels, or one squirrel and a few sandwiches. heh. so for today he's on track for Not Starving (12 inch sub + most of a squirrel + whatever else he ate this morning) but he's still going to have an eye out for anything else he can get.

bel's intake as a human is probably five pounds a day or more, because he's big, fit, and active. as a very large wolf he'd probably be very interested in getting his seven pounds of meat.

ultimately i don't think bel would have noticed much of a drive to eat more, just, probably, more meat and less carbs. he might have expected to turn into Ravenous Hungry Meat-seeking Machine but it looks like nah. his tendency to not eat when stressed or busy might actually have increased.

erskin is really food-oriented due to living as a wandering canid and having no food security whatsoever. he's 100% responsible for his next meal, and there's no real guarantee of saving anything for later. even as a human (or a troll), where the next meal's coming from would be a constant concern. he's going fine, not starving, but that's because of how assiduously he looks for meal opportunities. i expect it's really easy to have everything go to shit, as a canid, even a very smart one, if you get too casual about taking care of yourself.