Aidan
Colony wilderness · Beyond the camps
"Take a guess."
The hunter's trade
Aidan is a hunter who works beyond the camps, selling the animals he brings down for their meat, skins, and teeth. He is not interested in dressing the work up as adventure; when the Hero asks how he is doing, he answers with the same dry impatience he brings to most questions: Take a guess.
Skinning and trophies
Aidan can teach the Hero how to harvest useful parts, provided he is paid in ore and has not already taught the lesson. He starts with the practical sequence: cut from the front and work toward the back when taking fur, use a light cut along both sides of a reptile, snap claws from the pincer without pulling them too far, and lift teeth carefully from their roots instead of forcing them.
Shadowbeasts and wolves give the best hides, lurkers and lizards the best claws, and wolves, shadowstalkers, and snappers the most valuable teeth.
A hunter outside the camps
Aidan keeps his distance from the camps' politics. He dislikes Lares robbing Old Camp convoys and thinks a camp war would only make an already miserable place worse.
Even when the Hero suggests he wanted to escape the Colony's troubles, Aidan reduces the explanation to its simplest form: mostly, he hunts.
What other NPCs say
Mordrag and Wolf bring Aidan up while giving directions through the countryside. Wolf specifically uses Aidan's camp as the place where a beginner can learn to skin animals, while Mordrag identifies him as one of the New Camp's hunters, combining a practical lesson with a map of the camp's people.