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.

A dire troll is what a cave troll becomes if nothing kills it for a generation — vast, ice-rimed, and contemptuous of pain. The passes it keeps are crossed only by the desperate, and the bones at its den-mouth are not all beasts.