Hurtikō, goddess of the Hunt
Feckless Kunon, artless and carefree
Is yet the deer-park of dread Hurtikō
Kunon is barely a city at all. Twelve hundred souls in buckskin dwell in scattered staff-built lodges among the trees, eking out a savages' existence on a diet of venison, pork, small game, and nuts. Their goddess forbids them to clear land for fields, and thus they are denied the healthful benefits of drinking beer. Traders who dare the wrath of their goddess Hurtikō can buy hounds and hides and supple leathers very cheap by exchanging beer and barley with the simple Kunino. Cedar may be cut, but the goddess is prone to visit her wrath very dreadfully on people who fell any trees that bear nuts.
Hurtikō has the form of a lean woman, moderately tall, and goes in leather stockings, buskins, loincloth, and cloak like her folk. Apparently for comfort, she binds up her bosom in a bandeau of supple doeskin suede. As a matter of some perplexity to all, Hurtikō has the appearance of a women in early middle age, once very handsome but now growing lean and weathered and inclining to be stringy. This has been the case for as long as anyone whom anyone can remember could remember, but no-one dares to ask Hurtikō whether she was once a fair and strapping maiden: she might not like the implication that she is not.
Hurtikō's house is cluttered with trophies of the hunt, notably bear-skulls and furnishings of beautifully-tanned bear skins. Old people remember being told that her service used to involve the annual sacrifice and eating of a bear, but no-one remembers why. Her main pre-occupation now is with breeding and training dogs. She has established three lines: a vast and powerful liver-coloured staghound; a swift and dainty pale-coloured coursing hound; and a versatile black setter/retriever sort of thing. Diligently trained by the goddess herself, the dogs from Hurtikō's kennels are marvels of obedience and skill. Her culls she changes into pikas.
The gift of Hurtikō is to change people (and dogs, apparently — other animals possibly) into lagomorphs. This is not much of a gift for those who obey and please her; she 'gives' it to those who disobey and annoy. The extent of this power is perhaps untested; the Kunino are free of all tyranny but their goddess', their lands are un-annexed by more powerful neighbours, their forests un-despoiled, because on two occasions Hurtikō changed entire armies into swarms of rabbits and set her dogs on them. Timber-poachers who set axe to her trees, and whom she catches, she turns into hares.
There is no indication that Hurtikō can turn her victims back. Stories tell of her transforming favourite servitors into hares in passing anger and much regretting it afterwards. Each year the most beautiful unmarried youth and unmarried maiden in Kunon are chosen to attend the goddess for a year. They serve with a diligence and utter obedience born of trepidation.
To eat a rabbit, hare, or pika is distasteful to the people of Kunon, they abstain from such food except when it is served at the goddess's board, and use rabbits, pikas, and hares as dog-food.
Hurtikō has not born a child to her servant (nor to anyone else, for that matter) since times of legend: her youngest son is an ancient man of sixty-three.