#fearsome critters
Snow Wasset
Image © Tom Mead, accessed at his DeviantArt page here
[The first Fearsome Critter of the World Tour block, and one of my favorites. A burrowing murder-weasel is somewhat mundane by the standards of Fearsome Critters, but that plausibility gives it a certain charm. And makes it seem like it could actually have originated from stories told by lumberjacks, as opposed to having been wholly made up to sate the market for Paul Bunyan tales and other folksy Americana.]
Snow Wasset
CR 5 N Magical Beast
This creature looks something like a furry snake as big as a python, only its head is like that of a weasel.
Snow wassets are ambush predators of the lumberwoods. They skim through the snow with remarkable speed, swimming through it as if it were liquid water. A snow wasset is a voracious carnivore that hunts by attacking from beneath the surface, inflicting bleeding wounds with its recurved teeth. These monsters aim for the heels and ankles of their prey, tearing the tendons and slowing possible escape. Few snow wassets are bold enough to attack an entire party at once, but a single humanoid or horse is fair game.
Most snow wassets are migratory, moving north during the spring and south in the fall tracking the movement of snow pack. If they cannot move to cooler climes, or if a warm spell denies them their snow, they estivate in bogs or fens, immersing themselves in water to keep cool. A snow wasset without snow sheds its outer coat of white fur, revealing a greenish, fuzzy undercoat and small limb nubs, like those of a burrowing skink. Snow wassets require a lot of food, and thus are usually solitary. Males and females cooperate to rear young, taking turns guarding the kits while the other hunts for meat to regurgitate for the family at home.
A snow wasset is between ten and fifteen feet long.
Snow Wasset CR 5
XP 1,600
N Large magical beast
Init+3;Sensesdarkvision 60 ft., Perception +5, tremorsense 30 ft.
Defense
AC18, touch 13, flat-footed 14 (-1 size, +3 Dex, +1 dodge, +5 natural)
hp59 (7d10+21)
Fort+8,Ref+8,Will+3
Resistcold 10
Offense
Speed20 ft., swim 40 ft., snow swimmer
Meleebite +11 (2d6+7 plus bleed)
Space10 ft., Reach5 ft.
Special Attacks bleed (1d6), blood rage, hobbling attack
Statistics
Str21,Dex16,Con17,Int2,Wis13,Cha10
Base Atk +7;CMB+13;CMD27 (cannot be tripped)
FeatsDodge, Mobility, Spring Attack, Stealthy
SkillsEscape Artist +8, Perception +5, Stealth +7 (+15 in snow); Racial Modifiers +8 Stealth in snow
SQcompression, hold breath
Ecology
Environmentcold hills and forest
Organizationsolitary or pair
Treasureincidental
Special Abilities
Hobbling Attack (Ex) A snow wasset that hits a flat-footed opponent tears at its legs, slowing its movement. A creature so struck must succeed a DC 18 Fortitude save or have its speed reduced by half until it receives magical healing or a DC 15 Heal check. The save DC is Strength based.
Snow Swimmer (Ex) A snow wasset uses its swim speed when moving through snow. When it moves through snow, it can choose to leave a tunnel.
A little study into the teeth of the axehandle hound. It’s a fearsome critter, a plague upon lumberjacks that specifically only eats the wooden handles of axes. The original description of them gives them an axe-shaped snout. Which got me thinking of the proposals for Smilodon lips. Thus here we have the axehandle hound hiding two rodent-like incisors for chewing and breaking apart its wooden delicacies. Behind them they have inner teeth adapted for grinding, but are still noticeably canine. Their incisors also have high iron content like some rodents but don’t grow throughout their lives.
Originally this was just black and white, but I wanted to try my hand at coloring it. One thing most people tend to miss out on when drawing them is that, while compared to a dachshund, they’re wild dogs. So I wanted to make it look more like a coyote than a beagle. Unfortunately… coyote fur is really hard to draw. Wolves as well. They’ve got this really complex fur where there are individual strands of hair colored differently right next to each other. Which is super time-consuming to draw. I tried my best to render it without straying too far from the line-art style, but it still doesn’t look nearly as good. Oh well. For one of the TDG stories, an axehandle hound plays a central role. If only I’d get around to writing it.
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