Cold Forest

Wandering alone or in packs, wolves sit at the top of the food chain. Ferociously territorial and exceptionally wide-ranging in their hunting, wolf packs cover broad areas. A wolf ’s wide paws contain slight webbing between the toes that assists in moving over snow, and its fur is a thick, water-resistant coat ranging in color from gray to brown and even black in some species. Its paws contain scent glands that mark the ground as it travels, assisting in navigation as well as broadcasting its whereabouts to fellow pack members. Generally, a wolf stands from 2-1/2 to 3 feet tall at the shoulder and weighs between 45 and 150 pounds, with females being slightly smaller.

The elusive sasquatches earn their mysterious reputation rightly; they live in unpopulated forests and avoid confrontations with humanoids, only becoming violent when they feel threatened, when their territory is encroached upon, or when they feel they must protect their young. Left to their own devices, sasquatch families are perfectly content to live their lives in the deep woods, leaving behind little to no trace of their passing save for the periodic big footprint in the ground. Despite their considerable bulk, sasquatches are incredibly stealthy creatures, capable of moving through forests in particular with astonishing grace and efficiency. The one trait that somewhat undermines sasquatches’ stealth is their distinctive odor—a pungent, musky scent that is often noticeable even when the hidden sasquatches themselves are not apparent. The elusiveness of sasquatches is such that even in a world where dragons and sea monsters are real, many urban scholars doubt the existence of the creatures, citing the lack of evidence of sasquatch lairs or remains as proof of their nonexistence. In truth, sasquatches are simply far more efficient at living in harmony with nature than most humanoids could ever hope to be. To a sasquatch, a deadfall in a forest makes a perfectly fine home. When a sasquatch dies, its kin take pains to bury the body deep and hide all trace of the gravesite to protect the remains from scavengers and evil spirits alike. The sasquatch tongue is a relatively complex language that mixes vocalizations, howls, and “knocking”—the act of striking a solid surface (like a tree or boulder) with a club or stone—and thus tends to blend in with the ambient sounds of a forest. A sasquatch is 8 feet tall and weighs 570 pounds. Rural populaces often have fond nicknames for these creatures, such as wild men, skunk apes, and perhaps most popularly, simply bigfoot.

Wolverines are territorial, especially when it comes to food, and have been known to defend their kills against much larger predators, such as black bears. They are fearsome opponents, launching into a frenzy when wounded. They tend to give off a very strong, unpleasant musk smell when angry. Armed with powerful jaws, strong legs, and a thick hide, wolverines are remarkably strong for their size. They are reckless in battle and throw themselves at their foes, clawing and biting furiously.

An enormous version of a normal wolf, dire wolves represent the wolf in its most primal form. These creatures follow the same basic behaviors of regular wolves, but are much more aggressive. Dire wolves often serve giants as hunting companions and vicious guard animals. Some ferocious humanoids and woodsmen use trained dire wolves as mounts. Darker than normal wolves, dire wolves’ coats tend toward blacks and deep mottled grays. An adult dire wolf is typically about 9 feet long and weighs roughly 800 pounds.

Moss trolls are bent and gangly creatures. They are smaller and thinner than normal trolls, yet their arms are unusually long and spindly for the creatures’ size. Their flesh supports the growth of moss and mold as surely as tree bark. Although their appetites are notoriously powerful, moss trolls are sly killers rather than simple brutes. They travel in the trees, singing, climbing, and jumping with unnerving ease. When a moss troll spots prey, it reaches or leaps down from above, heedless of dropping great distances in its eagerness to sate its ravenous appetite. Moss trolls are fearless except in the face of fire, which does not stop a hungry moss troll from attacking, but can often cause a wounded one to retreat. However, those who fight moss trolls may be unpleasantly surprised to learn that acid has no special effect on a moss troll’s regeneration. Moss trolls not only hunt from the trees, but also live, breed, and hide their treasure among the branches. Their weirdly long arms allow them to attack foes on the ground without ever needing to set foot on the earth themselves. Young moss trolls are adept at climbing and acrobatics, as much as they are at eating and killing. Like other trolls, adult moss trolls often drive juveniles away after training them to hunt and fight. Gangs and troops of moss trolls exist only where food is plentiful. While moss trolls can digest almost any organic material, they prefer fresh meat—particularly when said meat is served still alive and squirming after a particularly invigorating session of stalking and torture. A moss troll is 9 feet tall and weighs 550 pounds.

Dire wolverines tend to be even more territorial than their smaller wolverine cousins, and they defend to the death the areas where they choose to live, often selecting humanoid-settled regions as their own and then fearlessly tearing the settlements apart. Dire wolverines grow to about 12 feet in length and can weigh as much as 2,000 pounds.

large, powerful omnivore, the grizzly bear inhabits many of the world’s forested hills. Equally happy consuming nuts, berries, f ish, or small mammals, the grizzly is nonetheless fiercely territorial, and will chase off—or, failing that, kill and eat—any intruders it views as competition. When faced with a foe or small group of threats, the grizzly attempts to subdue or kill with its claws. When it can, the bear tries to grab a single target to deal continual damage until that target is dead, unconscious, or escapes. To generate stats for a smaller bear (like a black bear), you can apply the young simple template to the grizzly bear’s stat block. To generate stats for a larger grizzly or a polar bear, apply the advanced simple template to the grizzly’s stats.

Huldras are fey creatures that legend claims were originally created by troll witches to lure humans into their clutches. Every huldra is aware of this tale, finds it insulting, and denies it at length—yet the legend persists. There’s no greater way to inflame a huldra to anger than to speak about this myth (especially while expressing distrust or contempt for the huldra), and the huldras’ hatred of all things trollish is well known among scholars of the fey and those who regularly encounter the less common fey creatures. From the front, a huldra appears to be a beautiful human woman, yet two distinctive features mark the huldra as something supernatural: her long, foxlike tail, and the fact that she doesn’t have a solid back—merely a hole that reveals her body to be a hollow, bark-lined shell. Most huldras wear their hair long to mask the hole in their backs, and they prefer long gowns to hide their tails when interacting with humanoids. Though huldras are not ashamed of their status as fey, they react rather negatively when someone points out their tails. So long as humanoids are respectful, however, huldras tend to be curious about other races, and may aid those who pass through their territories by telling them the best places for hunting or fishing. Huldras sometimes become enamored of woodcutters or others who adventure outdoors, and invite these paramours to share their beds, but such romances usually end in disappointment and misunderstanding on both sides. Despite their relatively lithe frames, huldras are deceptively strong, and stories abound of them performing astonishing feats of strength such as straightening horseshoes and tossing aside attackers, and their natural weapons are quite potent.

A mandragora rises spontaneously from a mandrake root that has drawn nutrition from the corpse or ichor of a demon. A typical mandragora stands at just over 3 feet tall and only weighs 30 pounds. However, its size hides the creature’s fantastic strength and brutality. When a mandragora attacks, its fingers grow into whipping, thorny vines nearly 10 feet long, with which it makes its slam attacks. A mandragora rarely strays far from its lair amid tangled roots or vines, but when it encounters any other creature, it attacks regardless of the odds. However, a mandragora can usually recognize druids and does not attack them or their animal companions unless they attack it first. It has no qualms about attacking a druid’s allies. When mandragora poison is mixed with its thick, gooey, sap-like blood and 1,000gp worth of alchemical reagents, the resulting fluid can be used as a focus for the scrying spell. The fluid only lasts for the duration of the spell’s casting time and resulting effects but the subject of the spell takes a –4 penalty on the save to resist it. A mandrake root that is growing on or near a demon’s corpse or ichor has a 2% chance of awakening as a mandragora within a day of first absorbing the tainted material. A creature that wants to create a mandragora can do so with alchemy; the process requires a day of work, a mandrake root, several pints of ichor or the body of a demon of CR 6 or above, and a successful DC 25 Craft (alchemy) check. The newly created mandragora is hostile, even to its creator.

Larger, more aggressive, and far more deadly than its lesser cousins, the dire bear (known to barbarian tribes variously as the cave bear or the short-faced bear) is a primeval menace indeed. This behemoth avoids more civilized reaches of the world, preferring to dwell in remote wilderness locations. A dire bear is a rare and terrifying sight— especially to those not used to normal bears. Unlike most bears, a dire bear is short-tempered and swift to anger when confronted with intruders in its territory. Like a grizzly, a dire bear attempts to subdue or kill with its claws. However, a dire bear is far more likely (and willing) to begin biting a grabbed foe.

While the tiger itself is a fearsome predator, its strength and ferocity pales in comparison to that of the larger dire tiger. Known to many scholars as the smilodon and to tribal societies as the saber-toothed tiger, the dire tiger is invariably one of the region’s top predators. Its defining feature is a pair of huge incisors that hang down like fearsome knives from the upper jaw, protruding menacingly even when the creature’s mouth is shut. These immense hunting cats grow to be over 12 feet long and can weigh up to 6,000 pounds.

Treants are guardians of the forest and speakers for the trees. As long-lived as the forests themselves, and seeing themselves as parents and shepherds rather than gardeners, treants are slow and methodical in most things but terrifying when forced to fight in defense of their f lock. Though they rarely seek out the companionship of the short-lived races, and have an inherent distrust of change, they have been known to tolerate those who seek to learn from their long, rambling monologues, especially if the pupils express a desire to help protect the wildlands. Yet against those who would threaten the forest, especially loggers who seek to harvest wood for lumber or those who try to clearcut a section of forest in order to build a fort or establish a town, the treants’ wrath is swift and devastating. They are particularly gifted at tearing down what others build—a trait that serves angry treants well. Treants are primarily solitary creatures, with a given individual sometimes responsible for an entire forest, but they occasionally come together in small groups called groves to share news and reproduce. In times of grave danger, all of the groves in a region may gather for a great months-long meeting called a moot, but such events are exceedingly rare, and millennia may go by between them. The typical treant is 30 feet tall, with a trunk 2 feet in diameter, and weighs 4,500 pounds. Treants tend to resemble the species of trees most common in their woodland territories.

The great mastodons are primeval cousins of elephants. Their large tusks dwarf those of regular elephants, jutting outward and then curving back toward one another at the tips. Shaggy woolly mammoths are a mastodon variant adapted to cold environments, but have the same statistics.

These powerful, wolf like creatures live in northern forests and on the vast, open tundra. Amarok are typically 12 feet long with midnight-black fur. Their eyes and sharp teeth glow with the color of moonlight, and their tails are longer and much more flexible than those of wolves. Unlike wolves, amaroks hunt alone, coming together only to breed and raise cubs. Amaroks are great hunters, and legends say nothing remains concealed from their gazes. When fighting, they rush forth and use their jaws to rip out the throats of their prey or attack their enemies’ souls.  Amaroks don’t hunt people for food, but they relish the thrill and strategy of the chase, and enjoy teaching lessons to those who foolishly hunt alone at night. The amaroks stalk hunters, then attack suddenly from the shadows. They bring their prey to the edge of unconsciousness, then depart back into the woods. Those who seek to improve their hunting techniques after these harrowing encounters earn the amaroks’ approval, and amaroks are excellent, if harsh, instructors of stalking, tracking, and wrestling techniques. They are also implacable foes of those who commit the one act they cannot forgive—a foolish person who slays an amarok’s pups faces a swift and brutal death at the amarok’s jaws.  An amarok is 29 feet from nose to the tip of its tail, stands 9 feet high at the shoulder, and weighs 9 tons.

Taiga giants wander endlessly to keep from depleting the food supply of any one area. Aurochs and mammoths are their preferred inland prey, while whales, seals, and walruses provide food in coastal regions. These animals form the cornerstone of tribal survival, not just for the food they provide but because nearly all of a tribe’s possessions, from their portable shelters to their weapons, are crafted from the bone, hides, and sinews of felled beasts. Little is wasted. Taiga giants are also deeply spiritual, worshiping their ancestors. Every tribe member learns to call forth ancestor spirits at a young age. Taiga giants are ashamed of being the ancestors of rune giants as, like most giants, they both hate and fear rune giants as slavers and monsters. A typical taiga giant stands 20 feet in height and weighs 10,000 pounds. Skin tones vary from dark to pale gray, with hair color ranging from dark brown to red.

A beast covered with hundreds of spines, the taiga linnorm is a terror to all those who venture through the arctic forests of the north. Taiga linnorms take down foes and prey first with their electrifying breath and finish their victims off with their devastating bite. In winter, when light is sparse and the nights are long, it is easy for a taiga linnorm to blend in with the coniferous forests it dwells in, hiding among the trees and ambushing imprudent travelers or unwary adventurers setting up camp. A taiga linnorm often lies in wait for days— sometimes weeks—just for the opportunity to maim and devour unsuspecting victims. When this subtler tactic does not work, a taiga linnorm simply rampages through the woods in order to find nearby settlements to pillage, taking twisted delight in shocking the inhabitants before shredding them with its massive jaws or destructive forelimbs. In any event, taiga linnorms rarely venture far from their woodland territories save for short flights to attack outlying villages. A taiga linnorm is 50 feet long and weighs just over 13,000 pounds.