Thursday, December 15, 2011

Dire Wolverine & Wolverine

Raging wolverines and dire wolverines are the barbarians of the animal kingdom.  Their musk is also almost as bad as a skunk’s, a fact that has no in-game impact but can add some disagreeable flavor.

Gnomes’ fondness for badger companions is well known.  The gnomes who opt for their larger cousins tend to be loners—often trappers, rangers, or solitary barbarians—who don’t mind wolverines’ musk or their need to pick fights with wolves and panthers over meals.

Dwarf outriders steer their shaggy ponies up and down the mountain passes, keeping the roads clear and tending small shelters for travelers (the better to keep them on the path and out of dwarven lands).  They also leave emergency caches of food, but in lean years this means conflicts with dire wolverines, who dig up and devour the stores, then spray whatever’s left out of spite.

Fairy tales are told about the awful winter witches of the North.  The tales are silent about the much rarer “spring witches”—the Vernal Sisters, strange wild-eyed witches who tap fearsome powers of renewal, making plants bloom, vines grow, the wind whip, rivers burst their seams, and even the very earth to leap up and shift in its place.  Dire wolverines are their servants, stubbornly carrying messages for the Sisters to places other animals won’t go.

Pathfinder Bestiary 279

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