Creatures of the Sundering Basin

Sea and Shore

Deep Kraken

Found in: the deep ocean

Nobody has measured one. The body alone is longer than a large trading ship, and the whole animal outweighs several ships together. Its hide is dark slate to black, thick and slick, and blades barely mark it. It has eight arms, each as thick as a man's body where it meets the head, and two longer arms for feeding. The suckers are ringed with hooked horn. The beak sits hidden in the middle of the arms and can shear through ship's timber and bone.

Krakens attack from below. One will follow a ship from deep water, rise straight up under the hull, wrap it, and pull it down whole. Wreckage turns up days later. Bodies almost never do. The only warning is a faint stir in the water above it.

Sailors call the deep water past the shelf "kraken water" and keep passengers off the rail there. Most of them work the crossing their whole lives and never see one. Nobody knows a sure way to kill one.

Reef Serpent

Found in: harbor mouths, coastal narrows, tight saltwater channels

The name is the townsfolk's, and it's wrong. A reef serpent is built like a crocodile. The big ones run about fifty feet, deep through the chest, with a long tail that makes up most of that length. Its back is crust instead of scale: grey and knuckled, grown over with coral, shell and weed, with a row of crusted spines down the middle. Small sea life lives its whole life in the seams. The belly is paler and finer, and even there a sword only cuts shallow. It has two front legs, set low and heavy, ending in four hooked claws as long as a man's forearm. The skull is long and flat, about nine feet, and the jaw keeps opening past where any jaw should stop. The front teeth are daggers over a foot long. The eyes are small for that skull, milky rings set deep under a shelf of bone, and it hunts by sound more than sight.

It hunts from below, in close water where a ship can't turn. A dark shape rises under the hull, and the strike lands before anyone on deck can shout. Spears from above do nothing once it's underneath. Old ones learn the water they hold and never come at a ship the same way twice. One held the Thrymgard narrows for two seasons and sank three trading ships.

Tide Stalker

Found in: shorelines, tidal flats, coastal rock, river mouths

Eight to twelve feet long, low and stretched out, with four widely spaced legs ending in broad gripping claws. Its dark grey-green hide is rough and heavily scaled, always wet, with tall spines down the back and spiked plates across the head. The head is flat and wedge-shaped, and the eyes sit high so it can watch across the surface from just under it. The teeth interlock, made for holding on.

It hunts the line where land meets water, mostly at night and on the turn of the tide. It lies against wet rock or drift and waits for something to come to the edge. The strike is one motion: a surge forward, a grip, and a pull back into the water. It won't fight on land. If the grab misses, it's gone before anyone can hit back.

Camp above the tide line, keep a fire, and keep a watch. Groups that sleep at the water's edge in tide stalker country lose people to something they never get a clear look at.

Razorfin Shoal

Found in: coasts, rivers, crossings, and slow deep water wherever fish are thick

Each fish is eight to fourteen inches, narrow as a blade, dull silver-grey with a dark line down the back. The fins are stiff and edged like knives, and the mouth is packed with rows of small serrated teeth. They run in shoals of dozens to hundreds and move as one mass. The water looks calm right up until it churns.

They hunt. Blood speeds them up, but they don't need it to start. The first bite draws blood, the blood pulls in the fish nearby, and in moments the whole shoal is packed around the prey and biting from every side. They don't latch on. They cycle through, each one taking a piece.

A spear is useless against a full shoal. Get out of the water, stop thrashing, and don't go in bleeding. Anything that goes in bleeding doesn't come back out.

Rivers, Swamps and Fen

River Leviathan

Found in: deep rivers, big inland waterways, river bends and narrows

About half the length of a reef serpent, longer than a river boat, and scaled. Past that, nobody can say what one looks like. The people who saw one clearly didn't live to describe it.

Like the reef serpent, it hunts from below. The water darkens under the hull, and by then the strike is already coming. A river holds one at most. It claims the deep bends and choke points and learns how boats move through them. Young ones are reckless and miss. Old ones are patient and rarely do.

Most of what anyone knows comes from the survivors of capsized boats, when there are any.

Mire Crocodile

Found in: swamps, slow rivers, fen waterways

Old, huge crocodiles. The biggest reach the length of two men laid end to end, though most are smaller. The hide is greenish-black and armored in overlapping plates, and in dark swamp water the animal all but vanishes. The eyes sit high on the skull and are often the only part showing.

It will lie still for hours and take anything that comes to the waterline: deer, people, small boats. Once it has a grip, it drags its prey under and rolls until it drowns. On a grown one, the only sure places to strike are the eyes and the soft spot behind the hinge of the jaw.

Every marsh fisherman knows the sound of a heavy, steady slapping on still water. That's a big one claiming its stretch. The ones that don't slap the water are the ones already waiting.

Bog Fiend

Found in: swamps, marshes, fen and river edges

About the size of a wolf, low and heavy through the chest and shoulders, with short strong back legs. The head is wide and flat like a frog's, with a broad jaw lined with rows of inward-curving teeth made for gripping. The skin is smooth, wet, and mottled dark green-brown, with a pale belly, and a row of tall curved spines runs down its back from skull to tail. The front feet end in long hooked claws.

They're scavengers first. They hunt when something is weak, cornered, or outnumbered, in packs of four to eight. A pack will follow a wounded animal or a worn-out traveler for a long time before it commits. When it does, they come all at once, grabbing limbs and dragging.

At a distance their deep croaking sounds like any other swamp noise. Listen for the rhythm shifting as they move in. Then listen for it stopping. A swamp that goes silent after a long frog chorus means the pack is coming. On dry ground their short legs slow them. In water or deep mud they're faster than you. They won't press an attack against an open flame.

Fenstalker

Found in: swamps and fenland, never far from water

From a distance, a fenstalker looks like a woman standing at the water's edge. Up close, everything is wrong. The skin is pale and waterlogged, the dark hair hangs wet, the tongue is too long, and the fingers end in claws. The eyes are the worst of it. They watch, and they choose.

Each one claims a stretch of swamp and holds it alone. She doesn't chase. She waits on the bank or just under the surface and comes up when you're closest. Her first move is usually to throw a glob of burning, poisoned swamp muck that sickens and blinds whatever it hits. Then she gets her claws in and drags her prey into the water to drown. She does it the same way whether the target is a lone traveler or an armed man.

Bog fiends often share her swamp and pick over what she leaves. She lets them. They keep their distance.

Fleshgnat Swarm

Found in: wetlands, rotting forest, stagnant water

Each one is about the size of a fingernail, thin-bodied, dark red to black, with clear wings that beat too fast to see. The mouth is a needle. Nobody would notice one alone. A swarm looks like a drifting red-black haze, thick enough to blind you and muffle sound.

Blood, rot, and warm bodies draw them, and they gather fast. Left to feed, they strip flesh a layer at a time. Once they've tasted blood on something, they follow it. A cut taken in the morning brings a swarm by midday if you stay in their country. They don't care what's bleeding.

Smoke and fire are the only things that drive them off. Open wind breaks them up.

Aether Serpent

Found in: places where magic runs thick in the land

Ten to twenty feet long and narrow-headed, with scales of deep blue and purple whose highlights seem to slide along the body as it moves. Patches of it go see-through, and around the head and neck a faint glow shows in low light. The eyes are pale, with no pupils, and glow faintly from inside. The air around one bends slightly, like heat rising off sun-baked stone.

Mages feel one before they see it, a pulling pressure inside them where their magic runs. Just being near one can make spells slip or flare out of control. The serpent isn't doing it on purpose. It's simply what the animal is. In a fight it's an ambush predator, and it guards its ground hard, especially when someone disturbs the magic there.

Forests and Hills

Dire Wolf

Found in: northern forests and tundra

Far bigger than a common wolf. A grown one stands as high as a man's hip, with a deep chest, a broad skull, and jaws that crack bone. The coat is thick and coarse, iron-grey to near-black in the deepest forest.

They hunt in packs and run prey down over long distances, swapping out the lead runner so the pack never tires. A big enough, hungry enough pack will take horses and men in armor. A lone dire wolf avoids people. A pack of six or more doesn't.

They hunt the ground as much as the prey. A pack drives whatever it chases toward a cliff edge, deep snow, a riverbank, or anywhere narrow where the pack controls the kill. Running across open ground can be survived. Running toward a ravine or a frozen river usually can't.

Grey Mountain Wolf

Found in: northern forests and mountain ridges

Bigger and heavier than a lowland wolf, though nowhere near a dire wolf. The coat is ash-grey over a pale undercoat that thickens in winter. The ears are a little short for the skull, which helps against frostbite, and the eyes are pale gold or grey-green.

Packs are small, three to five, and warier of people than dire wolves are. Before a hunt the pack makes a pass: one or two wolves cross in plain sight to see how you react. Stand your ground and they often move on. Scatter or panic and the hunt is on. In a fight the danger is flanking, wolves coming from several sides at once.

Beastmasters can bond with them. A bonded grey wolf is a partner with its own mind.

Grey Stalker

Found in: broken forest, rocky hills, ravines and passes, snowfields where you can't see far

A little bigger than a wolf, lean and long-legged, carried low, with the shoulders set below the hips. The skull is narrow, the jaw long, the ears laid flatter than a wolf's. Its ash-grey coat carries faint banding that breaks up its outline in fog, rock shadow and snow glare. The eyes are dull grey to pale amber and barely catch the light, so they're hard to pick out in the dark. It sets its feet down almost without a sound.

Packs run five to ten, and they make no noise during a hunt. They shadow the prey first, close enough to judge it. Then the pack spreads out unseen, gets ahead using the ground, and sets its angles. The attack comes all at once: one shows itself as a distraction, two hit from the blind sides, and the rest have already closed the ways out.

What survivors remember is the order of it. You see one. Then you see there are more. Then you see you're already surrounded. Fire and a tight group break up their angles, and if the first rush fails they pull back fast. Open ground takes away their whole advantage.

Carrion Hound

Found in: battlefields, forest edges, open scrub, anywhere things die, north and south alike

Wolf-sized but leaner in the chest, long in the leg, and hunched. The coat is thin and coarse, mottled grey-brown with dark patches. The head is big for the body, with a wide jaw and heavy back teeth for cracking bone, and the large ears never stop turning. You usually smell them before you see them.

They follow armies, predators and disasters, in packs of four to eight. They'll worry at anything wounded or alone, but they'd rather not face anything healthy. They test, back off, and test again. Show no weakness and they usually give up.

When they close on something wounded, they bay, lower and longer than a wolf's howl. Every hound for miles answers and comes. If a small pack starts baying behind you, expect twice as many within the hour.

Dire Boar

Found in: forests and farmland edges

Huge. A big one stands chest-high to a man, with a coat of coarse dark bristle heaviest along the spine and shoulders. The tusks are serrated along the top edge, so they tear instead of puncture, and the wounds come out ragged and slow to close. The skull is so heavy that a charge hits a standing man about like a horse at full gallop.

They're aggressive and territorial, worst in the rut, and they'll charge without warning if cornered or near their young. One boar can wreck a season's crops in a night.

On foot, the only sure way is to step aside and strike from behind. Watch for the pause. If the first charge doesn't put you down, the boar circles, snorting, head low, building up for the next run. That pause lasts a few seconds at most, and it's your only opening.

Dire Bear

Found in: northern forests and foothills, rarely seen

A brown bear grown to a size no common bear comes near, as much bigger than an ordinary brown bear as a dire wolf is than a common wolf. Its coat is thick and dark brown, its head broad and heavy, and its claws long enough to dig out a den or open a man with one swipe. Old ones wear the scars of every fight they've won.

It lives like any brown bear, only more of everything. It eats whatever it can find or kill, ranges wide, and digs in to sleep through the worst of winter. It's smarter than a common bear and far meaner. It guards a carcass as its own and will bury one to come back to it, and it defends its cubs to the death. Where a common bear might bluff a charge and turn away, a dire bear usually doesn't turn. For all its size it's fast over short ground, faster than any man can run.

Give one a wide berth, never come between a mother and her cubs, and never walk up on a buried kill. Most people who meet a dire bear up close don't get the chance to learn anything else about it.

Shadow Lynx

Found in: forests, especially thick canopy and mixed woods with broken undergrowth

A little bigger than a common lynx and longer in the body, lean and built for economy. The fur is dark grey to near-black with faint markings, and it soaks up light, so in the dark the animal flattens into shadow. The ears are tufted and always moving. The eyes are pale and catch what little light there is. You see one when it wants to be seen.

It hunts alone, mostly at night, and avoids a fight unless it's cornered. Spot it early and it leaves. The danger is failing to spot it early.

Shadow lynx stash their kills, wedged in tree forks or under rock overhangs, half-eaten, and come back to them over days. A fresh cache means the cat is close, has fed recently, and already knows you're there.

Grimcat

Found in: forested ridges, broken rock, mountain foothills, thick canopy, anywhere with high ground and blind angles

Eight to ten feet long without the tail, and a big one stands as high as a man's chest. It's heavier through the shoulders and chest than any natural big cat, with back legs built to launch straight up. The tail is long and thick and never still. The coat is deep charcoal to black-grey, dull rather than glossy, with faint spots you only see up close. Long sabre fangs curve down past the jaw. The eyes are dull amber. In the North it's sometimes called the timber grimcat, to tell it from its sister species on the ice.

It moves three ways. Dead still, on a branch or rock above your line of sight, for as long as it takes. Slow and silent, working for the angle. And the strike, with no wind-up at all. It goes for the throat or the base of the skull, and its weight alone pins most prey before the bite lands.

It's smarter than any natural cat. It watches a camp over time, learns the guard and the fires, and avoids a trap after seeing it once. If a strike misses, it leaves and tries again later. Force one into open ground with a coordinated group and it loses the ambush, but even then it's no fight for anyone unprepared. Most grimcat stories go the same way: something moves, and someone is already dead.

An adult can't be bonded. A cub raised from early on by a beastmaster with the right gift sometimes can, and what grows up is still a grimcat. It has just decided that one person is worth keeping alive.

Wood Wight

Found in: deep forest, old growth, deadfall, broken tree lines

Seven to ten feet tall when it stands all the way up, with arms longer than its legs and joints that bend wrong for anything human-shaped. Its outside looks like bark, a plating over fibrous muscle like roots, but it isn't wood. The hands split into three to five uneven fingers that end in hard, root-like claws. Up close, the face has deep hollows where eyes should be and a mouth that opens up and down. Standing still, it's a dead tree, a snapped trunk, a tangle of roots.

It uses no magic. It holds still, holds its shape, and lets your eyes do the rest. It can wait hours or days for a traveler to stop, a camp to settle, or someone to wander off alone. It learns routes and camp habits and stays away from large groups. When it moves, the first motion is a jerk as it breaks out of the tree shape. Then it's fast, folding forward onto its target with no roar and no sound.

The first contact is everything. Once it's moving, it can't hide anymore. Fire works, slowly, if you keep it on the thing. The weak points are the joints, where the plating meets the muscle. Survivors all say some version of the same thing: it was there the whole time, and they never knew it wasn't a tree.

Troll

Found in: rocky woodland, foothills, cave country, never on open ice

Nine to twelve feet tall and enormous through the gut and chest, fat over dense muscle. The grey skin is thick enough that blades bite shallow. Everything about the face is off: ears and knuckles too big, nose too small, little close-set eyes, and a mouth too wide, packed with huge gapped molars in a jaw that doesn't shut right.

Trolls are smarter than giants, and meaner. They talk among themselves in a rough language with real structure, plan hunts, and argue over ground. They hunt people on purpose. A troll group that knows a road runs through its range will work that road, and they remember who passes, when, and how many.

Cuts close in minutes, and a deep stab heals in about a day. You can't bleed one out, and small wounds don't slow it. Fire slows the healing, and they hate it. Go into a troll fight without fire, without reach, and without a way out, and you likely won't come back whole.

Blood Bats

Found in: caves, ruins, thick forest canopy, north and south alike

Each bat has a wingspan of one to two feet, a lean body, and a long sharp snout full of narrow needle teeth. The fur is dark brown to black and usually matted, and the wings thin out until they're almost see-through at the edges. Small eyes catch the light in the dark. Bunched together, they stop looking like bats and become a moving cloud.

Blood, movement and fear draw them. A swarm circles once, then comes down in a wave, and they go for the face first: eyes, nose, mouth. One bat is nothing. A swarm keeps biting, shallow bite after shallow bite, until you're blind, bleeding and panicking.

Cover your face and keep moving and you can get through a swarm. Freeze, or leave your face bare, and you won't. Fire and smoke drive them off.

Dry Country

Ironback Lizard

Found in: rocky scrub and temperate country, mostly in the south

About the size of a large dog, low and heavy. Thick plates hard as iron run from the back of the skull to the tail. It's dull brown to dark grey, the color of the rock and dirt it lies in. The belly is softer and paler. The jaw is broad and strong, with blunt teeth made for crushing, and the tail is thick enough to throw its weight around.

It lies still among the rocks until something walks close enough. Then it bites and locks. It doesn't shake or tear. It clamps down, keeps clamping harder, and waits for its prey to wear itself out. A locked ironback won't let go, and the only sure way to get free is to kill it while it holds on.

Swinging at its back does almost nothing. Go for the belly, the eyes, or the seams between the plates.

Quill Viper

Found in: dry and temperate country, rocky scrub, dry forest edges, mostly in the south

Four to seven feet long and thick with muscle. Its scales rise into barbed quills along the spine and flanks, darker than the rest of it, nearly black, flexible enough to bend and sharp enough to go through skin. The body is sand-brown to dark rust with broken patterning. The head is heavy and triangular, and the long curved fangs fold back against the roof of the mouth.

It warns you first. Disturbed, it flares its quills with a dry rattle and holds still. Most animals panic and back right into the quills, which is what the snake wants. The bite is a last resort.

The venom paralyzes, and the quills carry it too. Even a glancing touch can leave pieces in the skin that keep poisoning you. A dead one is as dangerous to handle as a live one.

Ash Wyrm

Found in: volcanic country, ash fields, lava fields, rarely anywhere else

A huge burrowing creature, kin to dragons, with no wings. It's built like a giant serpent, dark and scaled, spined along its length, with a broad head full of teeth.

It lies buried under the ash and erupts straight up when something walks overhead. It has no need to see you. It feels you through the ground, so something slow or standing still is harder for it to find than something running. There's always a faint tremor underfoot just before it comes up. That's a second's warning, and a second is rarely enough.

Ice and High Places

Frostfang Bear

Found in: the northern ice ranges and high glacier country

Big white bears, bigger than any common bear. The largest males stand as tall at the shoulder as a draft horse. Their coats are thick enough to shed water, and their wide, furred paws carry them over ice that would drop a man through. The name comes from the canine teeth: long, slightly curved, and tinted a pale grey-blue by the minerals in the glacier water they drink.

A frostfang that isn't hungry or cornered will usually walk away from people. One that is hungry or cornered won't. Spears and arrows can wound one, but they rarely stop a charge, and a single swipe can break a man's back.

The one sign worth knowing: frostfangs bury their kills under the snow and come back to feed for days. If you find a round dip in the snow and it smells, a bear is close by, and it thinks that spot is its own. Find somewhere else to sleep.

Rimecat

Found in: the northern ice ranges, glacier edges, wind-cut passes, high snowfields

The grimcat's sister species, and heavier. Eight and a half to ten feet long, three and a half to four and a half feet at the shoulder, and up to twelve hundred pounds, built low with massive shoulders and heavy hindquarters. The coat is never white. It's storm-grey and iron-brown with dull broken stripes, with frost on the guard hairs along the spine. The ears are small and round, the eyes pale amber, the tail short and thick for balance on ice, and the paws broad and furred between the toes. Its sabre-teeth are long and ivory-amber.

It waits at glacier edges and in the passes and takes whatever comes through. The approach is silent and the grab is sudden: it pins with its weight and drives the sabre-teeth in. Rimecats hunt alone, except mated pairs, which hunt together.

They bury their kills under snow, and a rimecat's mound is easy to mistake for a frostfang bear's. If you see one down in the lowlands or near forest, something drove it there, and that's a worry in itself.

Giants

Found in: frost giants on the far northern glaciers and high ice; hill giants in remote valleys, highland wilds and forest edges far from settled land

Twelve to fifteen feet tall and heavy through the chest and shoulders. Their arms hang a little too long, their hands are too big even for their size, and their skulls are heavy through the brow and jaw. Frost giants have thick, pale grey-white skin and wear layered furs bound with sinew. Hill giants are the same people adapted to lower, warmer country: a little leaner, with grey-brown skin and lighter furs. Most carry trophies, bones, teeth and skulls of what they've killed, bound to their bodies or carried with them, and every giant's collection is its own. They make no tools. They fight with whatever is at hand: tree limbs, big bones, rocks.

They live in twos and threes, and they hold a range for years and remember it. They speak in deep, rhythmic sounds and gestures that you feel in your chest up close. It isn't true language, but it's close enough to be unsettling. The oldest name northerners have for them is the giants' own word for themselves: Jotunn, and Jotnar for more than one.

They don't hunt men. Wander too far into their ground and they warn you, calling out and coming toward you. Back off and it usually ends there. Stay, or come near their young, and the answer is immediate. A charging giant covers ground fast, and a man it hits comes away broken. A prepared group with bows, speed, and the sense to stay out of reach has a chance. A group that lets one close doesn't.

Storm Hawk

Found in: the highest ranges, storm country, cliffs and peaks above the northern ice

A wingspan of thirty-five to fifty feet and a body twelve to fifteen feet from beak to tail, yet light for its size, with hollow bones built for altitude. The plumage is dark slate to charcoal with a faint metallic sheen and lighter edges along the wings. The wings are long and narrow, with a stiffened leading edge made to cut through high wind. The talons are oversized, with a rear killing claw, and the beak is heavy and hooked. In flight it makes almost no sound.

There's no magic in it. A storm hawk reads weather so well it can ride the pressure inside a storm, dive through lightning without losing its way, and hold steady in winds that kill anything else with wings. From the ground it looks like the storm is letting it through. It hunts from high up and dives. It doesn't hover or circle where you can see it. By the time you spot one, it has already committed.

They can't be trained or tamed. Once in a great while one accepts a rider, after long exposure and trust earned by surviving together. They don't submit. They accept. Most people in the North never see a storm hawk at all, let alone one with a rider.

Northern Ridge Hawk

Found in: cliffs, coastal ridges, lake escarpments, northern mountains and forest

A large hawk built for long glides, with broad wings for soaring the strong winds along northern ridges. Mottled ash-grey and dark brown, it disappears against rock faces and winter woods. Its eyesight is exceptional, and it nests on cliffs.

It hunts small animals, fish and other birds, alone or with a partner, and can patrol a ridgeline for hours on the updrafts. Hunters and beastmasters use them as scouts. A trained hawk tells its handler things by how it flies. Circling tight over one spot can mean prey, carrion, or trouble, and a good handler can tell which.

Underground

Blight Spider

Found in: deep caves, damp stone chambers, abandoned mines

Three to five feet across on average, and old ones reach nearly seven feet leg to leg. The abdomen is swollen and lopsided, full of venom sacs that pulse faintly under a half-clear shell. It's mottled black-green, with sickly yellow veins showing where the shell is thin. The legs are long and sharply jointed, with hooked needle tips that grip stone or flesh. Eight eyes sit unevenly across the front. Most are dull, but two larger ones track movement. The fangs are oversized, serrated on the inside, and always leaking a thin string of dark fluid. It's very quiet for its size. Every leg comes down with care.

Its web is thick, rope-like and uneven, and it clings rather than stretches. They string trip lines across the ways in before they move into a chamber, so a web that looks old and abandoned is more likely in use than a fresh one. Break a strand and the spider arrives within moments.

The web slows you down so the spider can get close. The bite is the real danger. The venom rots the flesh outward from the wound.

Cave Scorpion

Found in: caves, ruins, dry places underground

Four to six feet long, low, and heavily plated in matte black or dark brown. The overlapping plates soak up a blow. The claws are oversized, one often bigger than the other, built for crushing. The tail arches high over the back and ends in a swollen stinger that drips clear venom. Its eyes are small and sunk deep, and the hairs on its legs and tail feel vibration better than its eyes see. Holding still, it looks like a rock.

It holds a den and won't leave it unless forced, and it can wait a long time. When it moves, it surges forward and the tail follows at once. The claws pin you. The sting finishes you.

It stings and backs off. The venom paralyzes slowly, and the scorpion waits at a distance until you've stopped moving. If one stings a companion, you'll be fighting it while you watch that person slow down.

Gloom Crawler

Found in: deep caves, mines, tunnels with no light

About as long as a big dog but much thinner, built to squeeze through cracks in the rock. The skin is pale grey to near-white and slick like a frog's. The legs are long and jointed too far back, so it drags itself along in a crouch when it moves slowly, and its spine bends and folds in ways a spine shouldn't. The head is narrow and long, and the jaw splits far wider than it looks like it could, lined with thin teeth angled backward to hold. The eyes are small and weak, and old ones lose them entirely and hunt by vibration and warmth.

It hunts in total dark and makes no sound until it's close enough. It doesn't threaten or posture. If it's in reach, it's already attacking.

And it always drags. It bites, anchors, and hauls its prey toward the nearest gap in the rock. If there isn't one, it makes one, given time. Anything too big to drag, it lets go. Anything it can drag is gone.

Dragons and Their Kin

Dragons

Found in: high, remote country; rare everywhere

Four powerful legs, two great wings, and a long, muscular body built for flight and for short bursts of violence on the ground. The neck is heavy and strong. The head is angular and wolf-like, with two horns sweeping back from the skull and a ridge of smaller spines running from brow to neck like a crown. The eyes face forward under heavy brows and carry the sharp attention of a hunting animal.

At a distance a dragon looks black, charcoal, slate, or deep brown. Its scales are thick and dull, made for stone and shadow. Up close, a color shows underneath where the scales flex, along the joints, in the wing membranes, and around the throat: deep blue, ember red, moss green, bronze, or muted gold, like the sheen on a raven's feather. It doesn't glow. Young dragons show it more, and it fades as they age.

Their hide turns most weapons. Their fire comes out as a roaring stream that lights almost anything it touches, and while they breathe it, the throat behind the jaw glows like iron in a forge. A burning liquid falls from the mouth with it, a little at a time. Where that lands, it melts through iron armor and stone, and water won't put it out. They can't breathe fire forever. A long fight runs them dry. In a straight line a dragon outflies any bird, but a hawk can turn inside it.

Men have hunted dragons for their blood for centuries. There are far fewer now than there were.

Wyverns

Found in: mountains, cliffs, coastal ridges and forests, mostly in the south

Kin to dragons, but a different animal. A wyvern has two legs, and its wings are its front limbs. There are three kinds. Mountain wyverns, the biggest and most dangerous, rule the high country. Cliff wyverns are smaller and are the ones travelers meet most, taking livestock and people off the roads; in some regions they're called cliff drakes. Forest wyverns hunt from ambush in thick woods and are the hardest to find.

All three are territorial, hunt from ambush, fight in the air, and defend their nests hard. Mountain wyverns stash kills on high ledges and come back to feed for days. Drive one off a kill and it will come back. Camp near a fresh carcass on high ground and you've camped in a wyvern's larder.

The Corrupted

Vampires are made, never born. A bite can't pass it on, and they can't breed more of their kind. Only a mage's ritual makes a new one, and the mages who try are chasing a way to live forever.

Lesser Vampire

Found in: caves, ruins, abandoned watchposts and other closed-in places in the wild

The most common kind. Pale blue-white skin with a purple cast, long thin limbs, full black hair, red eyes, black gums, and a mouth crowded with long animal teeth. It moves very fast and low to the ground, and it can drop from a height onto prey below like a spider coming down its thread. It barely thinks and barely speaks.

It likes high hiding places, ruined buildings and old watchposts, and strikes from above. With more than one person in reach, it goes for the smallest or weakest. It's strong enough to lift a child with one hand. It hunts to feed, so once it has what it came for, it would rather carry it off than fight to the death.

It bleeds black and can keep going with a blade through its body. To make sure one is dead, destroy the skull. Fire and bright light hurt it. Snow or dirt smoothed oddly around a cave mouth can mark a lair.

High Vampire

Found in: towns and cities, living among people

To look at, a man or woman like anyone else. They stop aging the day they're made and keep that face forever. No fangs. No marks, at first. Over the years the madness comes, and the signs come with it, behavior first and then the body: reddish or amber flecks in the eyes, veins that darken when it hasn't fed. Bright light grows uncomfortable, so many keep to dim rooms and the night, and people take it for an odd habit.

They're stronger, faster and tougher than the best trained fighters, and a wound that would lay a man up for weeks closes on them in a day. They need blood. In their good years they feed carefully, from the edges, and keep up the look of an ordinary life. As the madness deepens, that gets harder to hide. Some break within seventy years. Some last two hundred. None of them knows which it will be.

Fire hurts them but won't kill them. A clean thrust through the heart will, or a clean cut through the neck. A graze or half a cut isn't enough. Most people don't know they exist at all. The ones living in the world today have been at it for decades, some for over a century, each hiding alone, with no brotherhood behind them.

The Dead and the Spirits

The dead don't come back. When someone dies, the soul is gone for good. What gets up and walks is a demon wearing the body. Priests, scholars, and anyone who has fought them know it, even if common folk call them the walking dead. What a corpse can do depends on the demon in it, never the body. They gather where the dead lie thick and the ground has gone bad: ruins, old battlefields, mass graves. The worst known place is the Dead Forest, south of Blackford.

Shade

Found in: ruins, dead forests, old battlefields

The weakest of the demons, with no body at all. When one shows itself, it looks like a tall dark shape made of hanging black strands, with long clawed hands and pale burning eyes.

It can't touch you, and it doesn't need to. Near a shade the air goes cold, fear comes from nowhere, your thoughts slide, and your feet start going where it wants them to. That's enough to get people killed. Where you find shades, worse things are usually close. A blade does little against something with no body. Fire and strong faith work best.

Sleeper

Found in: tombs, ruins, burial grounds

The most common of the undead, and the reason old tombs make people nervous. A sleeper is a corpse with a demon in it that waits. It doesn't walk or hunt. It lies where it was buried, for years or decades, until someone disturbs it. Then it gets up. It's slow and weak alone. In numbers, or in a tight tomb where it can catch you from the dark, it's dangerous.

The Restless

Found in: battlefields, mass graves, bad country

A corpse that moves and doesn't stop. The demon in it doesn't think. It just drives the body, and the body fights from memory. A restless that was a soldier swings a weapon like a soldier, but it never adapts, never feints, and never flinches. Where a sleeper waits, the restless walk and follow.

It doesn't stop for wounds. Cut off an arm and it keeps coming with the other one. A killing blow means nothing to it. You have to wreck the body until it can't move.

Wight

Found in: deep ruins, fallen strongholds, old forts

Usually an old corpse, well preserved or still in its armor. The demon inside a wight is strong enough to think. It fights with intent, reads a fight, and can lead the lesser dead around it. A stronger demon makes a stronger wight. The farther you are from anyone, the likelier you are to meet a wight instead of something weaker.

Wight Lord

Found in: the heart of the worst places

The worst of the undead. A wight lord can wear any corpse but favors ones that were well kept or powerful in life. What it can do depends on the demon. Some are fighters of terrible strength, some cast magic, and the strongest do both. The most powerful are among the most dangerous things anyone will ever meet, short of a dragon.

A wight lord sits at the center of a bad place, and everything else there serves it or keeps away from it. It doesn't hunt. It doesn't need to. Things come to it.

Demons

Found in: wherever they can find a vessel

Demons are evil spirits with no body of their own. To act in the world they need one, and most often that means a corpse, which is where the undead come from. Taking a living person is rare and usually needs someone weak or willing. Without a body, the most anyone sees of one is a churn of pale smoke and points of red light where eyes would be.

Demons range from the faint presence of a shade to the thing inside a wight lord, and nobody knows how strong the strongest are. People speak of tempters, night hags, and possessors.

Nature Spirits

Found in: old forests, rivers, wild places

Some spirits belong to the world itself and have nothing to do with the dead. A nature spirit is tied to a place or a force: a stretch of forest, a river. When one shows itself, it looks like a slow swirl of pale green light drifting between the trees, flecked with sparks and carrying leaves along with it.

Forest Sprite

Found in: deep, undisturbed forest, ancient groves, mossy glades

The forest spirit people tell stories about. A forest sprite takes the shape of a woman, about as tall as a man, made of soft light woven from mist, leaves and living vine. Her skin is pale and see-through, like fog under the moon, and her face never settles. It shifts like drifting mist, so you can't read anything in it. Her long hair is mist and fine threads of light, and it moves as if a breeze were always passing through. Her whole body gives off a faint green-white glow, brighter in moonlight and deep shade.

She belongs to the forest she lives in, and her strength rises and falls with it. Cut the forest down and she weakens and fades. She's shy and hard to find. She shows herself only when the forest allows it, watches far more than she acts, and keeps away from clearings and settlements. When she does reach out, she speaks in feelings and images instead of words. She can talk with plants, animals and other spirits, make things grow, heal a sick tree, and calm a frightened animal. She can also lead travelers astray, and shape mist and leaves to hide or to defend.

She's no friend and no enemy. Treat the forest with respect and she may watch you pass without ever showing herself. Hurt it and she'll vanish from sight, but she won't forget. She rarely uses force unless the forest itself is in danger, and then she can be dangerous. Loud noise, fire and careless destruction drive her away, and iron can hurt her if it's forced on her.