Copsestalker /kŏp-stȯ-kər/ • informal
Referring to the woodland-dwelling, humanoid genus, having a slender and rangy build and variegated hair markings. Copsestalkers keep deep-forest homesteads and rarely travel but to trade at hubs of commerce and local waterways. While their numbers and spead of their populace is not known, no Copsestalker province has been established outside of the deep wood. Copsestalker communities have no formal governance nor diplomatic ties outside of their locale, due in part to their remote dwelling, and ill-studied are the politics of their complex matriarchal social stratum.
Copsestalkers cultivate some naturally ascendant magic from their surrounding forests, but are schooled little in the way of spells and bookcraft. Though they practice no organized religion, they do perform ritualistic earth-marking and herd-culling to ward off wasting sickness. Copsestalkers make some of the earliest appearances in the written histories of demonology, though their role in these accounts is oft contradictory, depicting the Copsestalker as both sanctifier and perpetuator of ill.
Copsestalkers maintain unique family structures featuring decentralized child-rearing and communal attachments based on dissemination of skills, stories, schooling. Playing a significant role in the fostering of young is the fieldwarden, a figure of provincial authority and servitude. Though the fieldwarden, conscripted for life, is obliged to prepare its successors, few of those trained will ascend to service. As it grants some this traditional distinction, it imparts all its children with deference to the deep wood and its many sojourners.