Kinma Handlers

The Kinma Handlers are a group among the Ahfal Oma who hunt wolves with dogs, moving between mountains and plains. Their distinctive horsehide clothing, specialized hunting practice, and association with rochai connect local knowledge of animals to the investigation of mittsual. When Hohsalle considers whether the handlers may have taken refuge among Makokan’s people after the Ahfal Oma were driven from the Yukata Plains, the group becomes a possible link in the disease’s history—but not a proven source or culprit.

Identity and Hunting Practice

The Kinma Handlers are described as a band of men who specialize in hunting wolves. Makokan remembers them from childhood as people who traveled between the mountains and plains with a pack of dogs, stalking wolves. Their work distinguishes them from the northern Ahfal Oma, whom Tomasolle says are better known as hunters than as herders in part because they have exceptionally good hunting dogs.

Makokan’s childhood impression also preserves the group’s striking appearance: handlers wore a horsehide outfit that slipped over the head and covered the wearer from head to toe. Seeing one had frightened him enough that he clung to his father. That memory does not supply a formal account of the group’s organization, but it shows how unusual their clothing and presence seemed to a child outside the group.

Dogs and Kinma Tradition

The handlers’ dogs are identified as rochai, a cross between black wolves and ossam. Cheehana asks whether these are the same dogs the Ahfal Oma call a gift from Kinma. Her knowledge comes from an old story, not from a claim that she has directly witnessed the handlers’ practices.

In the story she recites, Kinma gives instructions for disposing of a dead horse: burn it if it did not die of sickness, so wolves will not dig it up and learn the taste of horse flesh; bury it if it died of sickness, so that a wolf that eats it will suffer and avoid horses. The account places wolves, horses, and the handling of animal remains within a sacred tradition. It offers cultural context for the handlers’ association with dogs and wolves, while the evidence does not explain precisely how the story relates to the rochai’s origin or to the handlers’ methods.

Possible Presence After Exile

Hohsalle connects the handlers’ history to the displacement of the Ahfal Oma. He has heard that the People of the Fire Horse and the People of the Mountains share roots, and learns that the small Yusula Oma clan serves the Ahfal Oma. On that basis, he suggests that when the Ahfal Oma were driven from the Yukata Plains, the handlers may have hidden among Makokan’s clan.

Makokan cannot confirm this. He had left his homeland before the Ahfal Oma were driven from the plains and says he knew nothing of the event when Taya, the settlement’s chief, later asked him about it. He does not know whether handlers sought refuge with his people. The possibility is therefore an inference in Hohsalle’s investigation, not a remembered fact or a confirmed account of migration.

Connection to the Mittsual Investigation

The question of refuge matters because Hohsalle considers whether handlers could have been living among Makokan’s people when the first case of mittsual occurred. This places the group within an inquiry into the disease’s origins, but does not establish that any handler transmitted it. Hohsalle explicitly warns Makokan that they have not come to convict anyone. Even if a handler had used mittsual as a weapon of revenge against Zol, Hohsalle says, the Sacred Territory of Otawalle would not treat that as a crime requiring intervention.

That distinction shapes the handlers’ narrative role: they are a plausible subject of inquiry because of their movement, their ties to the Ahfal Oma, and their wolf-hunting dogs, yet the investigation does not turn suspicion into proof. The surrounding conflict also complicates the meaning of the disease. Makokan had assumed that anyone responsible for an attack should be caught to prevent further harm, but Hohsalle points out that the illness is widely rumored to be a curse on Zolians who defiled Aquafa, and that many victims were enslaved eastern people or Zolian immigrants. The Kinma Handlers thus enter the account at the intersection of local history, animal knowledge, and politically charged explanations of disease; their actual involvement remains unresolved.