Fearsome Critters from Lumberjack Tales - The Snow Wasset and The Polar Wasset
Snow Wasset
Medium Magical Beast
Hit Dice: 3d10+9 (25 hp)
Initiative: +3
Speed: 10 ft. (2 squares) [20 ft. in summer], burrow 40 ft. [in snow, see below], swim 20 ft.
Armor Class: 16 (+3 Dex, +3 natural), touch 13, flat-footed 13 [usually under cover for another +4 AC]
Base Attack/Grapple: +3/+5 [+13 to prevent escape from jaws]
Attack: Bite +6 melee (1d8+3)
Full Attack: Bite +6 melee (1d8+3)
Space/Reach: 5 ft./ 5 ft.
Special Attacks: Gnaw 1d8+3, improved grab, lock jaws, pull-down
Special Qualities: Cold resistance 10, frozen burrowing, hold breath, low-light vision, scent, tremorsense 60 ft.
Saves: Fort +6, Ref +6, Will +2
Abilities: Str 14, Dex 17, Con 17, Int 2, Wis 12, Cha 10
Skills: Escape Artist +13, Hide +5*[+13 in native environment, +23 when buried in wait], Listen +8, Move Silently +8, Spot +1, Swim +10
Feats: Stealthy, TrackB, Weapon Focus (Bite)
Environment: Cold forests, marshes or plains
Organization: Solitary
Challenge Rating: 3
Treasure: Goods 25% (pelt)
Alignment: Always neutral
Advancement: 4-5 (Medium), 6-9 HD (Large)
Level Adjustment: —
Lying before you is a long-bodied creature resembling a man-sized stoat in form. The beast has few obvious features, its sleek body is covered in dense fur and tapers smoothly from an earless head shaped like that of a wolverine, to a flat tail like an otter's. The palisade of sharp fangs in its jaws clearly reveals a predatory nature.
Snow wassets are subarctic predators found in boreal forests. In winter a snow wasset is a legless white-furred animal a bit bigger than a man, looking something like a legless ermine. When spring comes around a wasset's fur turns green and it begins to grow rudimentary legs, which help it move about during the summer in a search for the refreshment of food, water and cool shade. A warm-season snow wasset can easily be mistaken for some kind of fat lizard, with its green furry hide and short legs. In the hottest weather the snow wasset retreats to a marsh, where it burrows into the drying mud like a lungfish to estivate - a "summer sleep" resembling hibernation. When autumn comes around its green fur turns brown, thus continuing to be useful camouflage. Finally, the first blizzards cover the land with snowdrifts and the wasset sheds its legs, grows its winter coat and slips away beneath the snow-crust to hunt.
A typical snow wasset is about 8 feet in length, including its tail, and weighs around 300 pounds.
Combat
A Snow wasset are only aggressive hunters during winter and nearly always attack while burrowing through snow, ambushing their victims from below. They normally fight with the protection of cover and concealment, since they need only protrude their muzzles from beneath the snow-crust to attack. In seasons when the ground is thawed out, snow wassets usually crawl away and hide from potential confrontations, only fighting when cornered.
Snow wassets seek to grab an opponent with their bite attack, then drag them under the snow with their Pull-Down attack to worry to death and then devour. If the victim escapes, the snow wasset may pursue them by porpoising through the snow. They are tenacious fighters, and once a snow wasset has locked its jaws upon a victim it takes severe punishment (at least half their hit points in damage), if not death to compel the wasset to relinquish its prey.
Frozen Burrowing (Ex)
A snow wasset can burrow through snow as easily as a fish swims through water. It can also "swim" slowly (burrow 10 ft.) through solid ice or ground that is mostly frozen water, such as frozen mud, but can not burrow through stony ground or bedrock. A snow wasset can choose to leave a tunnel behind itself while burrowing, but usually elects not to since this slows them greatly (to burrow 10 ft. in snow, 5 ft. in ice).
A snow wasset can make a Run action while burrowing in snow by skimming across the surface in a series of leaps, like a skipping stone or porpoising dolphin bounces across the surface of water. When running in this fashion, a snow wasset throws up great spumes of snow and ice particles as it enters and emerges from the ground. A porpoising wasset does not benefit from any cover for burrowing, since it spends most of its transit time above ground, but it does have concealment from the obscuring cloud of hail it casts about.
Snow wassets breathe air, so will suffocate if they "swim" for too long through solid ice without surfacing to draw breath. They can breathe normally in a loose, airy medium such as a snow drift, since their nostrils are guarded by a special mat of bristles which filter out such particles.
Hold Breath (Ex)
A snow wasset can hold its breath for a number of rounds equal to 4 times its Constitution score before it risks drowning.
Improved Grab (Ex)
To use this ability, a snow wasset must hit with its bite attack. It can then attempt to start a grapple as a free action without provoking an attack of opportunity. If it wins the grapple check, it establishes a hold and can gnaw or pit-pull its opponent.
Gnaw (Ex)
On a successful grapple check, a snow wasset deals 1d8+3 points of damage to an opponent it has grappled with its bite attack.
Lock Jaws (Ex)
Snow wassets can lock their jaws closed, giving them a +8 racial bonus to grapple checks to prevent the escape of opponents it has grappled with its bite attack.
Pull-Down (Ex)
A snow wasset can drag a single grappled victim no larger than itself into the snow as a standard action provided it is free to move by burrowing. This requires a standard action and a successful grapple check, which must also beat the grapple checks of any other participants in the grapple. The snow wasset get a +4 bonus on its grapple check to pull a pinned opponent into the snow, but only if no one else is involved in the grapple. If the pull-down succeeds the snow wasset breaks the hold(s) of any other creatures grappling it, since only the chosen victim is pulled under, the other creatures being left upon the surface.
The snow wasset does not necessarily pull the victim completely under the snow, but they are deep enough that the snow wasset has total cover and total concealment against any other opponents on the surface. The wasset has cover and concealment against its snow-buried victim, giving the wasset +4 AC and the victim a 20% miss chance. The confined quarters of the snow-pit the victim is in means they can only wield light slashing or piercing weapons.
The victim, or their allies, can attempt to pull the victim out of the snow using the rules for moving in a grapple.
Skills
Snow wassets have a +8 racial bonus to their Hide checks in their native terrain when their coat-colour is appropriate for the local climate. Further, a burrowing snow wasset can lie with only its eyes and nostrils showing above the surface, gaining a +10 cover bonus on Hide checks. A snow wasset's keen hearing gives it a +4 racial bonus to Listen checks. A wasset's legless flexibility and coat of slick fur gives it a +10 racial bonus to Escape Artist checks.
A snow wasset has a +8 racial bonus on any Swim check to perform some special action or avoid a hazard. It can always choose to take 10 on a Swim check, even if distracted or endangered. It can use the run action while swimming, provided it swims in a straight line.
Lore Checks
DC 13 - Snow wassets are slinky critters like eight-foot long legless ermine. They burrow about in deep snowdrifts to bite prey from below, who they then pull down into the snowdrifts. They have no compunctions against eating up man, wolf or elk when they're hungry.
DC 18 - When the snow melts, a snow wasset's fur turns green and it grow little legs, all the better to sneak around the forests they live in. If the weather gets hot, they hide in swamps.
DC 23 - A snow wasset don't need to see you to know where you are, they can feel your footsteps through their whiskers up to twenty yards away. If you stand dead still, the wasset won't know where you are, unless it sticks its head out of the snow for a look-see.
Ecology
Snow wassets are migratory animals, spending their summers at more northerly latitudes and moving south after the first winter storms have covered the forests with the snowdrifts they need to travel. Snow wassets are vigorous beasts during winter, so need to catch an abundance of prey to sustain themselves. They are experts at slipping silently through the snow, and can surprise even such flighty animals as snow hares. The bulk of their diet is birds and varmints like ptarmigans, burrowing grouse, rabbits, lemmings and the like, but when the winter draws late and such meals become scarce they will take on stronger prey like caribou, elk or even wolves.
Some sages theorize that the wasset is a relative of the snoligoster, them both being furry, lizard-shaped mammalian predators that retire to marshes.
Snow wassets are solitary creatures, only gathering to breed. Each requires a considerable territory to produce enough animal life for them to survive the harshest of winters. Female wassets produce 2-4 pups in a den carved out of ice with no passages to it apart from a narrow ventilation-shaft covered in snow, the mother wasset never leaves an open tunnel behind herself when entering or departing the den, thus safeguarding it from most predators. She feeds her young a rich diet of first milk and then regurgitated meat. Usually the hunting is only good enough to raise one or two of the litter, the weaker pups generally starve to death and are then devoured by their cold-hearted parent and siblings. Infant wassets stay in the den, growing rapidly, until they're about two thirds adult size (Medium sized, about 5' long, 100-150 lbs weight, 2d10+6 Hit Dice, Str 10), whereupon their burrowing power manifests and they leave their den for the first time and disperse. Juvenile wassets do not need parental lessons in how to catch food, being born with fine-honed hunting instincts. The mother wasset offers her young no more care once they've left the den, and will drive them out of her territory if she encounters them.
The fur of a snow wasset has many remarkable properties. It offers superb insulation from the cold, and neither water nor snow will adhere to it, making it marvellous protection for an animal that burrows through subzero snow and ice. The fur is made up of hollow transparent hairs which, in warm weather, become host to symbiotic algae which provide the snow wasset with its camouflaging green or brown coloration and, possibly, a minor source of nourishment. The algae within these hairs dies off over autumn before the wasset sheds its summer coat, the snow wasset keeps a store of live algae in glands beneath its tail to replenish its fur-flora after winter has passed.
The fur also contains the secret to their burrowing skill, for a live wasset has the paranormal power to turn frozen water within a finger's breadth of its hair into a supercold liquid, thus allowing them to melt their way through snow or ice without needing to actually expend warmth. The 'liquid ice' thus created has a lower volume than solid ice, just like liquid water is denser than ice. When a burrowing wasset uses its whiskers to transform an area in front of its snout into liquid, the drop in pressure literally sucks the wasset forward and thus speeds its passage, the liquid ice then flows around to behind the wasset and instantly re-freezes back to its initial form, expanding to its original volume and pushing the wasset ahead.
These properties make wasset pelts a valuable commodity (see Treasure, below). Catching and killing a wasset without damaging the skin is a tricky proposition, made dangerous by a wasset's willingness to attack men, so the people of the far North prefer to use traps to hunt them. A common method is to set out a bait, a hobbled caribou calf being ideal, surrounded with a whole battery of dead-falls. The trigger is set so that a dozen logs fall in from all sides toward the bait, pinning the wasset under the snow wherever it may be, since it is impossible to tell from what direction the animal will approach beneath the snow. Some tribes prefer a circle of snares around a bait, but these are less effective than dead-falls, since a wasset's streamlined body makes it very good at wriggling out of such nooses.
One curious observation about snow wassets is that when they porpoise across snow they leave a trail of 6-8 foot long prints that superficially resemble enormous humanoid footprints. Any folk watching a distant trail being created rarely notices the wasset that creates it, since the porpoising beast is both superbly camouflaged and concealed by flying snow. Such trails may start in the middle of a snowfield, often pursuing some animal or person and ending suddenly with the disappearance of the trails of both the "giant" and the pursued creature, sometimes with a pit containing a few shreds of frozen flesh. This evidence has led to legends that such trails are the work of invisible, flying carnivorous giants, who land to chase down victims, who they punch into the ground or snatch up and fly away with, then devour. (See the Windigo Giant, below, for stats for this legendary monster.)
Polar Wasset
Even further to the north, in the true arctic, lives the polar wasset. Polar wassets are more streamlined in shape than their relatives the snow wassets, they look rather like furry, finless killer whales with a flat paddle-like tail like a dugong's. Polar wassets are covered in fur like a snow wasset, which may turn green in warm weather. Unlike snow wassets, they never metamorphose to grow or shed legs.
Polar wassets have very small eyes, since good vision is of little use to a critter that spends most of its life either under ice or in the month-long darkness of the arctic winter. They make up for this deficit by having a superbly developed version of tremorsense, just as effective in its own way as the blindsight sonar of a dolphin or whale.
A polar wasset can endure cold of any intensity, but can not abide temperatures above freezing for very long. Temperatures above 32° F are very hot conditions to a polar wasset, requiring it to make a Fortitude check (DC 15 + 1 per previous check) for every hour they spend in the "heat" or take 1d4 nonlethal damage, which cannot be recovered until the polar wasset gets out of the warms and cools down again, while 60° F is severe heat to a polar wasset (save every 10 minutes or take 1d4 nonlethal damage and suffer fatigue from heatstroke) and 90° F is extreme heat (save every five minutes or take 1d4 lethal damage plus heatstroke).
Polar wassets can burrow through solid ice and frozen mud as easily as snow. They are often found in tundra, where even in the height of summer they can easily dive to the comfortable chill of the permafrost underneath the warmed-up topsoil. Snow wassets can also live in such terrain, but the polar wasset is far better suited for dwelling in tundra, so the former species rarely succeeds in settling such terrain. Polar wassets also live along the coastline, where they venture out into frozen seas to compete with polar bears in the hunt for seals and their pups. When the approach of spring threatens to warm the climate to a life-threatening heat the polar wassets must either migrate to the tundra or withdraw to estivate in a glacier until the next winter.
Polar wassets have the same statistics for snow wassets, except for the following changes:
Medium Magical Beast (Cold)
Speed: 10 ft. (2 squares), burrow 40 ft. [frozen strata only], swim 30 ft.
Special Qualities: Frozen burrowing, hold breath, immunity to cold, low-light vision, scent, tremorsight 120 ft. [defaults to tremorsense 60 ft.], vulnerability to fire
Environment: Cold plains or aquatic [frozen seas].
Skills: Escape Artist +13, Hide +5*[+13 in arctic environment, +23 when buried in wait], Listen +8*, Move Silently +8, Spot +5*[-3 without tremorsight], Swim +10
*A polar wasset has a +4 racial bonus on Spot and Listen checks. These bonuses are lost if its tremorsight is negated. Polar wassets have poor eyesight, giving them a -4 racial penalty to Spot checks when they have to rely on vision alone.
Frozen Burrowing (Ex)
A polar wasset can burrow through snow or solid ice as easily as a fish swims through water. It can also "swim" through ground that is mostly frozen water, such as tundra or frozen mud, but can not burrow through stony ground or bedrock. A polar wasset can choose to leave a tunnel behind itself while burrowing, but usually elect not to since this slows them greatly (to burrow 10 ft.).
A polar wasset can make a Run action while burrowing by skimming across the surface in a series of leaps, like a skipping stone or porpoising dolphin bounces across the surface of water. When running in this fashion, a polar wasset throws up great spumes of snow and ice particles as it enters and emerges from the ground. A porpoising wasset does not benefit from any cover for burrowing, since it spends most of its transit time above ground, but it does have concealment from the obscuring cloud of hail it casts about.
Tremorsight (Ex)
A polar wasset possesses an incredibly acute combination of vibration sensitivity and echolocation which bears the same relation to tremorsense as blindsight does to blindsense. This tremorsight only functions while the polar wasset is burrowing or swimming, and must be triggered as a free action. As a result, the wasset only gains the benefits of its tremorsight during its turn. If the wasset elects not to use tremorsight it still gets the benefit of tremorsense to a 60 foot range. A polar wasset's tremorsight works through liquid water as well as it does ice.
When active, tremorsight works just like blindsight except that the polar wasset can only sense objects immersed or in contact with the ground or water within a 120 foot cone. If no straight path exists through the ground/water from the wasset to the object(s) it is sensing, then the range defines the maximum distance of the shortest indirect path. Unlike tremorsense, tremorsight can detect stationary objects through echolocation, so creatures can not conceal themselves simply by not moving, although a successful Move Silently check against the polar wasset's Spot check will grant such creature concealment against the wasset's tremorsight. Deafening attacks and silence spells thwart a polar wasset's tremorsight, granting its opponents total concealment.
Treasure
Neither breed of arctic wasset values treasure, and since they devour prey on the spot there is almost no chance of any valuables possession of their victims finding their way into the wasset's den.
An average wasset pelt is worth some 225 gp, provided it is intact and in good condition, the largest and finest wasset pelts are worth about 500 gp (value equals one quarter of the treasure value of the wasset's Challenge Rating). Removing the pelt from a dead wasset requires a DC 20 Survival check, or a DC 15 Craft (Butchery) check, failing this check damages the skin and halves its value.
A complete wasset skin is peculiarly suited to the making of shapely single-seat canoes, being tough, able to shed ice and snow and just the right size and shape to stretch over a kayak-frame. A white winter pelt is best, since it is legless so won’t have leg-holes to seal up.
Wasset pelts can be used in the creation of a number of magical items, such as the wasset coat and wasset kayak: These are so useful in the boreal regions they command a high price, leading to the existence of fakes made from the skins of wassets, or merely polar bears, often with the addition of a magic aura spell to provide a fraudulent enchantment.
Wasset Coat
A wasset coat is a full body garment made from a double layer or wasset skin, with fur on both the outside and inside. The coat keeps the wearer comfortably warm at temperatures down to –50° F, as if he were affected by an endure elements spell and continually protects its wearer with cold resistance 5. In addition, a wasset coat is a Cold Weather Outfit that is as light and easy to wear as a Traveller's Outfit, so grants a +5 circumstance bonus on Fortitude saving throws against exposure to cold weather and weighs 5 pounds for a Medium sized user. Finally, the white fur of the coat is excellent camouflage against snow or ice, providing a +5 circumstance bonus on Hide checks.
Faint abjuration; CL 3rd; Craft Wondrous Item, endure elements, resist energy; Price 5,000 gp, weighs 5 lbs.
Wasset Kayak
These single-seater kayaks possess the power of instantly liquefying ice on contact, just like a live wasset, so a wasset kayak floats on ice just as if it were liquid water. This allows a wasset kayaker to paddle across a glacier or frozen river as if they were a lake of still water, while grinding ice-sheets do as little damage to a wasset kayak as splashing waves. This effect extends to the kayaker if they wear a wasset coat, which would allow them to be caught between clashing icebergs and suffer damage equivalent to being swamped by a giant wave. Drowning is the main risk to someone navigating an arctic ocean in a wasset kayak, even If they're buried under ice, the kayak and its occupant just float to the surface, where the kayaker can easily roll their vessel upright if it has capsized.
A wasset kayak must be made from the pelt of a polar wasset. One enchanted from a snow wasset pelt will float on ice, but can barely move – it's like trying to paddle through mud.
Wasset kayaks may bear an additional enchantment which substitutes for the slats of a kayak-frame. Such a wasset kayak collapses into a loose pelt, which can be rolled up for easy stowage, whenever anyone rubs a symbol tattooed on the floor beneath the kayak's seat three times counter-clockwise. Shake out the pelt and rub the symbol again in the opposite direction and the skin expands back into a handy little vessel. A few of these wasset kayaks use command words as well as, or instead of, this gesture. Boreal aborigines who own collapsing wasset kayaks often perform elaborate charades of chanting and gesturing when transforming them in the presence of strangers, in order to conceal the simple secret of their activation.
Moderate transmutation; CL 7th (standard), 9th (collapsing version); Craft Wondrous Item, creator must have 2 ranks in the Craft (shipmaking) skill, gentle repose, fabricate (collapsing version); Price 7,200 gp (standard), 9,000 gp (collapsing version); Weight 50 lb, (5 lbs collapsed).
I guess I'd better praise my own perspicacity and award the prize to myself them ... hm, I think I'll the Snow Wasset next, since that was the beastie mentioned in the example.
