THE COMPENDIUM

Creatures

71 entries

A Korl War-Band

Giant-blooded Korl raiders who reckon any unwalled holding fair plunder and any lowlander fair sport.

Ancestor Shade

A mournful tribal ghost bound to the Hollowing Oak, calm so long as the offerings are kept and grieving-violent when they are not.

Ash Hound

A lean grey pack-hunter of the eastern hills, drawn to blood on the wind.

Ash Raider

A territorial ashen scavenger-bird the size of a shield, that mobs travelers on the open wastes.

Ashen Loper

A heavy-bodied pack animal and herd beast kept by the Ashari, docile unless the herd is threatened.

Barrow Wight

A grave-cold revenant risen in the Echo of Vallen to keep the relic from the living.

Bog Grub

A soft, blind mud-grub the length of a hand, dug from the delta banks and eaten when there is nothing better — and in the vale there is often nothing better.

Bone Saint

A spirit-construct assembled in the Sunbleached Hold's deepest room from the remains of those who prayed there and were not answered.

Brine Lurker

An eyeless salt-pale horror that came up the water-table from the drowned south coast and settled in the Throat of the Pan's black brine-pool — patient, cold, and large.

Brine Wight

A drowned sailor risen salt-logged on the narrows, walking the tide-line at night looking for a ship that sank a long time ago.

Broken Lances

Mutineer mercenaries of the Marrow Lances who sold the contract mid-swing — armoured, drilled, and now pointed at you.

Canopy Lurk

A long-armed, leaf-coloured ambush predator of the Drook high canopy — drops onto the trail from the overhead cover and is gone before the body cools.

Carrion Beetle

A chitin-backed scavenger swarm of the red flats that strips a carcass — or a sleeper — to clean bone before the sun is high.

Cave Troll

A hulking, regenerating brute that dens in the deep dark of the greywood and the northern caves, slow to rouse and very hard to put down.

Cinder Crawler

A crab-armoured scavenger in the lava flows — fire-proof shell, slow but hard to kill with anything that is not blunt.

Cinder Moth

A large, flame-attracted night moth whose dust raises blisters and whose swarms reduce travelers to weeping in the eastern hills.

Cliff Stalker

A fanged ambush-predator that drops on travelers from the high ridges.

Crag Bear

The Rampart's apex open-snowfield predator — a white-furred, heavy-limbed crag beast that holds the open snowfields between the tundra belt and the pass, and is the reason hunters count kills rather than make them.

Dire Troll

The frost-scarred apex of its kind, denning in the high northern passes, big enough to break a hold gate and old enough to have done it before.

Drowned Warden

The cold thing that keeps the Drowned Larach's nave — a Greenwake warden who walked into the shrine when the bog was rising and did not come back up, preserved and watchful in the drowned dark.

Echo-Touched Stag

A Greatwood stag infected by the Sundering's ringing — running faster than it should, shedding grey grass where it beds, and the Cullers' quarry before it becomes the next Rotcrown.

Ember Wraith

A riven presence drawn to resonance energy near the Cindervault — half-visible, attracted to carried echo-artefacts.

Emberback

A fire-bellied beetle of the cooling flows, big as a dog, that the Ashari roast over their own coals and call good eating.

Fenlight

A drifting bladder-jelly that floats over the mere at dusk trailing a cold blue glow; harmless unless crushed, when it stings.

Fern-Hollow Cat

A wet-wood ambush predator that hunts the fern hollows of the Greatwood — grey-furred, long-bodied, silent until it moves, and nearly invisible in the green shadow.

Flats Hare

A lean, long-eared hare of the red chaparral — prey for the Reshi and the ash-raiders alike, fast across open ground, invisible in the burn-breaks.

Free-Company Blades

The Marrow Lances' working swords — the Vale's neutral mercenaries, lethal when a contract points their coin at you.

Frost Shrike

A small grey raptor of the high pass that mobs anything wounded and impales what it kills on the thorns to keep.

Goblin

Small, vicious warren-dwellers of the eastern hills who skulk in numbers, cut from ambush, and flee the moment the odds turn against them.

Grave Lurker

A pale, eyeless scavenger that nests in the barrow's outer halls and feeds on what the wights leave behind.

Greatwood Tusker

A heavy, ill-tempered forest boar the size of a cart, that holds a stretch of the Greatwood and dies before it yields it.

Greycloak Raiders

Faceless road-robbers in undyed grey who swarm a caravan from the scrub, take everything, and are gone before a face can be named.

Hedge-Imp

A small, spiteful riven that slips loose from a hedge-conjurer's botched binding and skulks the vale's ruins stealing anything bright.

Hollow Warden

An armored revenant in the barrow's inner hall, older than the barrow-wights, still wearing the sigil of a house that no longer exists.

Issuthra, the Drowned Crown

A primordial Hessk matriarch-serpent grown vast in the flooded dark beneath the Drowned Shrine — the living ancestress the scaled folk descend from, and the slow hymn the Kneeling Drowned mistake for the shrine's own.

Karth Leech

A pale, eyeless thing in the meltwater galleries that fastens on warmth and draws it out until the cold gets in.

Kobold

Scrabbling crag-dwellers smaller even than goblins, denning in the eastern crags and trapping their tunnels against anything larger than themselves.

Korl Wight-Lord

A Korl warrior-lord risen as a barrow wight of exceptional size and fury — held the pass before there was a pass, and has not forgotten the standing order.

Lava Skimmer

A flying predator that hunts the heat-columns above active vents, diving fast and hard to track against a bright volcanic sky.

Mere Gnasher

A long-legged reed-strider that hunts the mere shallows in silent pairs and drags waders down by the ankle.

Mudreavear

The beach's tier-2 scavenger — a low-slung, gill-breathing pack hunter that works the tide-line and the coves, snapping up anything stranded by the ebb.

Obsidian Toad

A poisonous amphibian that lives in the sulfur flats, skin crusted with mineral deposits — the gland inside it is a rare flux component Vurath needs for resonance metalwork.

Ogre

A towering, dim-witted giant of the greatwood that fells trees for clubs and treats anything smaller than itself as food or sport.

Orc

Tusked, slab-shouldered raiders who hold the Sered Spur in war-bands, taking what the stone will not give and pressing the smaller beast-folk off their warrens.

Pine Elk

A large, grey-coated elk of the boreal foothills that grazes the Hollow Vale's sheltered basin — prey for the cookpot, skittish at the smell of the column-fields' resonance.

Reshi Marauders

Caravan-folk turned road-reavers who strike from the dark with gold eyes and are gone before the dust settles.

Rime Stalker

The cliff-stalker's white cousin of the high pass — patient, frost-furred, and the reason the Karth road is run by day and in numbers.

Saltpan Alpaca

Shaggy desert alpaca herded by the Reshi through the burn-breaks — skittish, sure-footed on the ribs, and the best early-warning for sand-lurkers in the area.

Sand Lurker

A buried ambusher of the flats that lies under a hand's-breadth of red dust and takes the leg of whatever walks over it.

Scorched Shade

An undead remnant of whatever died on the Lava Shore during the Sundering — moves through smoke and is made of it, thickest where the lava meets the sea.

Shard-Haunt

A lesser riven that gathers where the broken god's echo is strong, drawn to fragments of the Sundering like a moth to a guttering coal.

Silt Crab

A salt-flat crustacean the size of a dog, common at Tidewrack Cove, bad-tempered and inedible.

Silt Pike

A finned ambush-fish of the drowned steps, long as a man's arm, that takes the legs of pilgrims who wade too far.

Silver Rat

Pale, fat vermin grown bold in the flooded silver shafts under the town, fed on what the dying mine no longer guards.

Spur Feral Dog

The guard-dogs of the Spur's abandoned steadings, gone feral since the silver failed and the families walked away — still territorial, still pack-hunting, and meaner for the hunger.

Stoneborn Reavers

Exile Stoneborn clans who quarry the dead Imperium's barrows for bronze and kill any who would stop them.

The Ash Covenant

Asheni zealots who hold that the broken god's fire must be fed, never sealed — they raid the wastes for fuel, ore, and captives to throw on the pyres.

The Bog-Thing of the Seeps

The unnamed shapeless predator in the seep bogs below Stocktarn that the Hollowfold shepherds blame for the missing ewes — moist, patient, and best left alone in the soft ground.

The Cold Keeper

The thing in the Karth Deep's unmapped dark — older than the wights, older than the Imperium, the reason the cold echo does not dissipate and the Meltwardens believe it is fading correctly.

The Drowned Fangs

Hessk raiders of the sunken valley who drag the drowned-water's cold onto the shore — and the unwary down into it.

The Redhook Crew

Human road-thieves of the Vale — deserters and debt-jumpers who fall on carts and stragglers and drag the takings back to a ring of hide tents.

The Rotcrown Stag

The dying lord-stag of the eastern wood, its antlers crowned with a crystallized echo — too strong to die, too wrong to live, dragging the wild into its slow ruin.

The Saltkept Dead

The barrow-interred sea-dead of the Saltsung rite, preserved upright in salt above the tide-mark — unlike the soft drowned faithful below, these reach and remember their duty.

The Vyr Discord

A cabal of Vyr who chase the broken chord past reason, trading flesh and sanity for raw magicka.

Tide Gripper

A barnacled deep-crawler that hauls itself up the cove at low tide on too many legs and goes back down with whatever it caught.

Tide-Reaver

A broad-shouldered, pale-shelled crustacean that nests in flooded Imperial ruins and bonding-cellars, armored enough to turn a light blade and territorial enough to try.

Vale Outlaws

The road-rabble the Greycloaks recruit from — desperate men with stolen steel who try their luck on a lone traveller.

Vallen Revenant

An Imperial legionary of the lost Vallen Imperium, still at his post in the shattered seat, killed in the hour the god broke and never told to stand down.

Vallen Sentinel

A bronze war-construct of the Imperium, taller than two men, still pacing its patrol through the seat on legs that have not stopped in an age.

Vandahl Wight

A ranked ancestor of House Vandahl that has rung long enough to walk — proud, territorial, and obsessed with the counting and precedence of bloodline above all else.

Vault-Weeper

The thing the Weeping Vault was sealed to keep — a great riven that weeps a brine that burns the stone, which is why the stone is always wet.