A Blood-Hound is the size of a wolfhound but deeper in the chest and heavier in the foreleg, with a short, rust-red to charcoal coat over thick, scarred hide. Its head is broad and its ears tall and mobile, turning independently at every sound. Its eyes are dark red. Its forefeet carry long, curved claws that it can spread like a hand, edged sharp enough to slit leather. It runs with a low, bounding gait, and a pack calls with short, barking cries that pass signals along the line. It smells of blood and wet iron.

They hunt in packs of half a dozen to twenty across the valleys and ruins of the Scourge, and follow war-bands and battles for the leavings.

A pack hunts with a coordination that unsettles travellers: it splits, drives prey towards hounds waiting ahead, and closes from all sides at once. They take the wounded and the straggler first and follow a blood trail for days. They do not flee from armed people, only from larger packs and from the Iron-Claws.

Their senses are keen beyond any hound of Caeldon: they hear a heartbeat behind a wall and smell a drop of blood across a valley. Their claws slit armour that is not of good metal.

A pack whelps in the shelter of ruins, and the pups run with it within a season. They live as long as they keep up; a Blood-Hound that falls behind is left, or eaten.

The Scourge-Born are said to raise Blood-Hound pups as war-beasts, and the bond lasts as long as it profits both. Their hides make light armour. Their danger is the pack itself: a single hound can be fought, a pack cannot.

In battlefield tales on Caeldon, red hounds seen at the edge of a slaughter are sometimes said to have come through a War-Gate, battlefields where the Veil has worn thin. The tales may be true of a few such places; most red hounds on Caeldon are only dogs.

Mercenary companies tell of a battlefield in the Broken Marches where a pack came through at dusk and ran down the fleeing side to the last man, then turned on the victors; whether any of it is true, sellswords will not camp on that field.