Is that red the stain you dorf left on impact?
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As Num Muddyboots hasn't populated his map with lairs and isn't using "ask for directions to," he's discovered both sasquatch recruits (RampagedLute and Sparkvandals) by coincidence. Hunting a historical animal only through slow travel is random as you don't have much info to go on. You check a vision field and you find the creature, but that's by chance. You could find tracks and that's also by chance. You could cross into the area of a site and get an announcement and that's again by chance.
So to have less chance, you're forced to pop into fast travel to check for asterisks. If I'm remembering correctly (probably a false memory), presuming the asterisk is a historical animal, then it's a recruit that's out and about. Otherwise it's only a historical animal hanging out in its lair.
There are two giant wolves in sighted The Field of Insight and The Steppe of Spires. When checking fast travel map, the only asterisk Num finds is another named sasquatch who he skips. So now the thinking is neither are recruits and they won't be asterisks on the map, and we're back to either: slow travel randomness; play around with fast travel to trigger the zoom-in; or get lazy and directional and ask an NPC to populate the quest map with their lair(s).
Slow travel randomness is a waste of time here. Though it limits what will be exposed, lazy and directional means there's no discovery work. Moving around in fast travel to trigger the zoom-in has the side effect of finding not the site you're looking for, but possibly others. So Num enters fast travel to break those eggs.
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He find the lairs of the sasquatches he's slain, and manages to trigger grizzly bear and wolf pack encounters.
When Num returns to Rainylabor, he finds his group has waited out the insurrection. But better than that is the horse recruit who's now living amongst dwaves.
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A one-sided conversation: