I can understand their symbiotic now.

This arrangement sounds like it's far more beneficial for the bison than the wolves. Not to mention the obvious power imbalance if the Sun can up and destroy any of their pups and worry not about reprisal.

The bison have domesticated these wolves.

The bison also have a lot more power is this - bigger size, strength, and numbers. Sounds like an alliance with the wolves is better insurance for them than a fair exchange for both parties. If the bison wanted to take out the wolves, they probably could easily by trampling them all. They also have the numbers to recover any loss. Maybe it's a "Better the enemy you know, rather than the one you don't" situation. By having the wolves under hoof, they can keep them in check and use them to drive off rival packs.

Dam. : (

Ah well that answer my question of what was going on with the one wolf in the background. I'm guessing that couple are some of the ones who got their pups smashed. (Or not just noticed someone on DA pointed out they mentioned the wolf Swift killed)

More complicated than I thought. Seems the wolves need a way out. Now I wonder if the threads are going to weave together where I think they might down the line.

There is a clear power inbalance here as Mishap just so eloquently tried to talk around and Pivot just flat out told. And I think that is also why The Sun fears those spears so much and fled from the Gazelles wielding them. The Bison have the upper hand in this union as they hold the wolf pups hostage by not killing them outright and the pack follows to keep them safe, but if wolves could get additional teeth that could shift the inbalance in the pack's favor. Only it seems Mishap and the other wolves have not yet realized that.

And proof of that fact is our mid predator Rask who has his own killing tools but could never have bested a wolf until he used Oren's spear to enhance himself. And it seems like the confrontation of our Marten and the Wolf Family comes up next. Now the question will Rask meet Hemlock on his way there or might he overhear the two adorable pups again retelling the story of the mad bunny killing their uncle.

Can not wait how that red string runs.

Ah nature, red in hoof and claw.

So the wolves reasoning here is "Better we kill ourselves before someone else kills us"???
And then Haps is like "Instead of feeding ourselves, which is hard enough as it is already, we must keep the herd fed as well. Because that (for what reason exactly?) is the only way for us to prosper"? That sounds sad!

I mean, am I missing something here? First Hap's pack was introduced as this big, menacing force that tears smaller packs apart and integrates what's left into their own. And now they're just the bison's bitches? Like, what's the upside for the wolves in this symbiosis? They still struggle with feeding themselves, they have to fight other wolf packs, which further decimates their numbers and also creates friction (like her with Ramble) and they STILL get slaughtered by armed prey - in masses - because they 'need to keep new grass under the bison's hooves'. I really don't understand this dynamic.

The wolves reasoning with the pups is more: "if they're going to die one way or another, it's better for us to have control over how and when it happens because the alternative is so much worse". They know from experience that those pups would have been beaten and tortured in the worst way possible by the bison, had they not taken things into their own hands.

The whole idea here is that not too long ago, the symbiosis was much more balanced towards the wolves. In the past the wolves didn't really ever need to actually fight anyone, they would just show up and everything would scatter. There was no big existential threat to them, they had plenty of food and could live their lives in safety without fear of dying or starving. It was only very recently that they actually started losing wolves in large numbers to external threats. It's also likely that the threats that Pivot is talking about from the bison is only a recent thing, and that the bison never really threatened the wolves in the past when the relationship was more balanced.

What Hap is trying to do, is restore that balance and bring things back to the way it used to be, using the technique's she knows has worked in the past. They can't just run away and escape the bison because they would all just starve to death; They don't have the hunting experience that wild wolves have, and even if they did, there's probably not enough prey to sustain them all anyways. Keep in mind, Swifts pack was on the brink of starvation and they only had 8 mouths to feed, not 30.

So realistically, given the knowledge they have, keeping the bison satiated is their only chance at survival. Even if it's not a 'good' relationship in our eyes.

I mean, I kinda get the reasoning to chose the smaller evil. But my point is: If your a wolf, and you witness the bison casually throwing a puppy - a child! one of your kin! - to the young bulls to be kicked to death for fun and a good laugh, you just... look the other way and say "The best you can hope is to stay downwind from the worst of it"?! You just shrug it off? Like, what benefit in their current situation could possibly justify that?! By that logic they could just kill their own pups to solve the hunger problem. Better than letting them starve, right? It's the smaller evil, right? And then they try to sell this off to other wolf packs like Swift's as the only way forward. "You can join us and eat, but you gotta kill your kids first, awright, s' no big deal". Yeah, no wonder that strategy backfires.

Your second paragraph would actually make a lot of sense. I could see the bison seize the opportunity to dominate the wolves and resort to a reign of fear to maintain that imbalance in their favor. But if this is the case, then why would Haps foster this by making the herd grow? Wouldn't it be wiser to let them hunger and thus grow weak to shift the balance back into the wolves favor?

Sorry, but the third paragraph doesn't make sense to me. By themselves Hap's pack would starve because they don't have able hunters, but with the bison the won't? Why? Are the bison hunting for them? I don't think so. And besides that, Hap's wolves seemed able enough to confront and prevail Swift's pack. And if there is not enough prey without the bison, then there wouldn't be enough prey with the bison either.

No matter what, the wolves position is unfavorable. Which again begs my question: What is the selling point to stay with the bison? Why not leave? Why not do -anything- if you're on the brink of ruin anyway? Heck, if they hypothetically teamed up with the antelopes instead, they probably could take down the bison herd! But no, no, fighting pointless battles against other packs, risking what few good hunters they've left to win a dork like Ramble and his gramps, seems like the way to go!

So its kind of only been implied in the pages, but there was a huge conversation about this on the patreon when this page was released a couple months ago, and Teagan confirmed some details. (There's also some more context in the Run mini comic that's not publicly available)

In short, the bison (specifically the mothers) are actively choosing a set number of their own who are going to die and be fed to the wolves. It isnt clear yet how they choose, or who they choose, but the wolf pack is being mostly or entirely sustained by bison meat. This is what Hap is referring to when she says "on the zenith, we only take what the mothers choose to give". Without the bison, the wolves would die off from starvation.

This whole relationship isn't just wolves being relentlessly bullied by bison for no reason. The relationship relies on the wolves being able to adequately protect the mothers and calves from predation. With most of the adult wolves dead, the bison are left making huge sacrifices to sustain the wolves and all their pups, without receiving what they see as equitable benefit in return.

You're right in that if the bison wanted to use their power to force the imbalance in their favor, that Hap and all the wolves would start looking for alternatives. But that's not quite what's happening. The bison want the relationship to be fair and balanced just as the wolves do, their goal isn't to dominate the wolves with power and fear. That's why Hap is working so hard to appease the bison, since the wolves are the ones currently not holding up their end of the bargain. She's trying to bring her side of the equation back in line.

Okay, NOW that finally all makes sense!

I got the initial situation wrong. I thought the imbalance meant that there were too many bison and too few wolves due to their losses, and that the wolves wanted to shift the balance by taking more wolves in to prevent the bison from overpowering them in some way. But the actual imbalance was too many wolves (namely the pups who can't fight and hunt, but still need to eat), while there were too few adult wolves to keep the bison herd safe. So the wolves were falling short on their end of the deal: The bison were feeding them from their own ranks, but the wolves were too few to protect the herd. That's why Hap tried both to take in new hunters AND make the herd grow. To protect the herd she needs able wolves and to feed them the herd must grow. Makes perfect sense now! Even the killing of new pups makes a lot more sense now, considering the bison offer themselves as food.

I'm kinda baffled that this hasn't been portrayed in the comic yet (especially during this particular scene where we learned who and what the Zenith is). It's such a crucial information to understand the different parties motifs!

In any case, thank you a lot for clearing this up for me! Now I can finally understand the story better.

Actually just remembered this page where Hap says that the herd isn't food, but stability. Kinda an unlucky wording that might have furthered my confusion. Like, why would she say that, explain it to a newcomer even, when the herd indeed IS food to them?

I think she chose those words as a direct response to what Ramble said and implied. She's explaining that they don't treat the herd itself as food like Ramble does, but rather as something that provides food

If you were to try to explain to a fox not to eat the chickens, but rather to wait for them to provide eggs, you'd probably say something similar; chickens aren't food.

It's also easy to get lost since this comic is written with the intent that it's going to be read all in one go over the course of a couple hours instead of one page every week. There's a ton of time for us to speculate on the unknown, where's a future reader just wouldn't have the time to fully question everything before they get to the part of the story that provides the answers. We're still super early into the story; at this point in volume 2 Swift and Ramble were just leaving to go into the bears forest. There's still a lot of plot setup happening.

Sigh. Looks like we have to wait to learn Hap's solution for sharp animals.