Apex Predators (the Scourge)

Overview

Apex Predators is the name the Scourge gives to its beasts as a kind: animals made to dominate the food chain of a world without safety. The best known are the pack-hunting Blood-Hounds, the armoured Iron-Claws, and the unseen Murk-Fangs.

Appearance

They share the plane's colours, crimson, rust, and charcoal, and its violence: heavy jaws, thick hides, claws and spines, and scars. They are loud animals, and the roar of beasts is one of the sounds the Scourge is never without.

Habitat and Range

They range over the whole of the Scourge, and gather wherever there is fighting, because violence on the plane draws predators to it.

Behaviour and Temperament

What unites them is that each is the top hunter in its own way, by numbers, by armour, or by stealth, and none of them is prey to anything for long. They are drawn to blood and noise, and a battle on the Scourge soon has more of them at its edges than combatants in it.

Uses and Dangers

Their hides make the armour the Scourge-Born wear, and hunters come for them. Their danger is that peace on the plane is rare, and every fight calls them.

Lore and Belief

Travellers say a silence on the Scourge is usually a trap, and that the roaring is the safe part. Between the Scourge and the Parched, it is said, lies a badland where the predators of both planes raid for what little there is.

Sellswords who crossed for the arms of the Scourge's old battlefields bring back claws and teeth as long as a forearm, and a company that carries one on its banner pole is believed to have lost half its number earning it.

Where It Appears

• The Scourge