The Surface is home to wild beasts and domesticated stock alike. The wild kinds have outlasted every age of the world by keeping to country no one else wanted; the tame kinds live alongside the surface folk who keep them. Animals hold no beliefs and serve no greater creature — they answer to instinct, the season, and, for the tame ones, their keepers.
Speed 125% · Health 150%Favorite foods:
A large, heavy-bodied animal with coarse bristled fur, a long blunt snout, and a pair of curved tusks. A boar that is not threatened will usually keep to itself — but a provoked or cornered one charges without warning, fast and heavy enough to knock a fighter off their feet. Its charge is committed and straight: a well-timed step aside leaves it overrunning its mark, and it has little stomach for a long chase.
Boars are rarely domesticated, but the Hammerborn appear to have managed it to a degree — their camps keep boars the way other folk keep dogs, and a Hammerborn warband may even drive boars ahead of it in combat, where the animals’ charge serves as a living first blow.
Speed 100% · Health 80%Favorite foods:
A large, placid grazer kept in pastures and farmland, most of all around the Mallardine Citadels. Cows are docile and slow and pose no threat to anyone. They are valued for milk, meat, leather, and the steady labour of the herd.
Speed 140% · Health 80%Favorite foods:
A tall, strong animal bred to carry riders and pull loads — the backbone of surface travel and labour. Even-tempered when well handled, though a frightened horse may bolt or kick.
Speed 125% · Health 125%Favorite foods:
A wild cat of deep forest and rocky highland — larger than a housecat and far more dangerous, with tufted ears, broad padded paws, and a dappled coat. It stalks in perfect silence and strikes from cover before its prey knows it is there. A lynx that loses the advantage of surprise will usually melt back into the trees rather than press a fight, and open ground robs it of everything its hunt depends on.
Speed 100% · Health 80%Favorite foods:
A small, woolly grazer kept in flocks — most famously by the Aelfar, who graze them in forest clearings and prize their fleece for weaving, and by settled folk besides. Sheep are timid and easily startled, clustering together and following the flock. They offer wool, meat, and nothing in the way of danger.
Speed 125% · Health 125%Favorite foods:
A lean, long-legged pack hunter of forest and cold country. Wolves hunt as one, flanking and cutting off escape almost without a sound, and they read weakness unerringly — the young, the lone, and the injured. A single wolf is a manageable danger and would rather break off than risk injury; a pack is another matter. Stand together, hold your ground, look strong, and stay near fire, and a pack will often think better of it.