Introduced in the original Fiend Folio, given a great “The Ecology of…” in Dragon 132, and updated in Pathfinder Adventure Path 34’s “Blood for Blood,” aurumvoraxes are gold-eating eight-legged cats (or wolves—sources differ). While the Bestiary 2 doesn’t give stats for aurumvorax companions, you can be sure the druids and rangers in your party will want a kit of their own.
Two rival clans of dwarves share the same mountain but have radically different attitudes toward the golden gorgers. The Krazarks, an iron-smelting clan living deep underground, use them to ward off orcs and rust monsters. The Gilderswergs live closer to the surface. Their veins have run dry, reducing them to panning the rivers, and they blame aurumvoraxes in part for their ill luck—both the wild varieties and their neighbors’. A third clan typically keeps the peace, but the Ridgewalkers are gifted rangers and sorely tempted by the Gilderswergs’s new bounty on pelts.
A thief convinces a sultan to guard his treasure vault with an aurumvorax. Now the sultan is considerably less wealthy, while the thief has made out quite handsomely—despite the inconvenience to having to sift through aurumvorax droppings for gems. The sultan wants revenge; the thief wants safe passage with any group who will take him.
Travelers who cross the void to the worldshard of Koin find an ecology rife with many-legged beasts—behirs, aurumvoraxes, spindly antelopes, and strange, light-shifting panthers. That Koin has enough gold to support aurumvoraxes might make it a target for miners—but the vemeraks who people the worldshard do not seek company.
—Pathfinder Adventure Path 34 18–19 & Bestiary 2 35
I thought the auromvorax was supposed to resemble a badger. Also, it's a magical beast, not an animal.
ReplyDeleteGrrr...fixing the creature type stuck that stupid formatting arrow in there.
ReplyDeleteMy impression of the aurumvorax is heavily influenced by my first exposure to it in Dragon Magazine #132, where the art and descriptions leaned more feline. But honestly a mustelid makes just as much, if not more, sense—aurmovoraxes dig like badgers and have the attitudes of wolverines, plus the longer frame of a mink would better fit those extra legs. Works for me.