Archivist notes on the cerostim, once plentiful in the Heartlands and believed to be extinct. Unverified reports persist from the northern ranges and eastern passes.
Once the dominant megafauna of the Heartlands basin, the cerostim drew the first human settlers to the plain. Large herds once migrated from the mountain wall in the north to the southern coast and were rumored to have been so plentiful that hunters stacked their skulls into piles higher than a home. Their absence defines the landscape as much as their presence once did.
The cerostim is a large deer, heavier and taller than its forest-dwelling cousins, built for open ground and forest edge rather than dense cover. The body is heavily muscled beneath a coarse, dark brown coat that lightens along the flanks in winter. The legs are long and capable - a cerostim moving at pace crosses ground with a silence that observers consistently note as wrong for something of its size.
The antlers are the defining feature and occur only in mature bulls. They are palmate rather than branching, broad flat spans of bone with tines projecting from the outer edge, extending up to twelve feet tip to tip. The weight of a full rack approaches eighty to ninety pounds. Bulls carry their antlers with a characteristic high-set posture that keeps the span level and readable from a distance. Cows are antlerless and roughly three quarters the size of bulls.
Herds traveled in the hundreds, following established routes across the Heartlands plain that remained consistent across generations. Individual animals are browsers and grazers both, adapting diet to available forage across the migration range.
They are passive toward most animals and humans outside of rut season. A bull in rut is a different animal entirely - territorial, aggressive, and capable of doing serious damage with both antlers and hooves. Hunters are advised to treat a rutting bull as an active threat regardless of provocation.
Historical records noted stone drakes and other large carnivores preyed heavily on cerostim during the migrations, timing their own seasonal activity to the herd movements. The collapse of cerostim populations in the Heartlands correspondingly stressed drake food supplies and altered drake ranging behaviors.