Cold-Stalkers

Overview

Cold-Stalkers are the wolf-like hunters of the Ashen Wastes, the commonest of its Scavenger Beasts. They track living things by warmth alone, and in a plane where heat drains away within moments, a warm body is a beacon to them.

Appearance

A Cold-Stalker is the size of a large wolf but far leaner, with a deep, narrow chest, long legs, and a head that seems too big for its neck. Its coat is thick, dull grey, and matted with ash, so that it disappears against the plains when it lies still. Its muzzle is short and its nostrils wide, and the bare skin around them is dark and always cold to the touch. Its eyes are small and dim; it barely uses them. It moves at a slow, steady lope that it can keep up for days, and it hardly ever runs. In the muffled air its howl carries only as a low, breathy moan, and a pack calls to one another in near-silence.

Habitat and Range

They roam the open ash plains of the Ashen Wastes in small packs, following the few warm things the plane holds: Ash-Walker camps, travellers, the carcasses of other beasts.

Behaviour and Temperament

A pack finds its prey by the faintest difference in warmth, a trace of breath on the air, the heat left in a footprint, and follows it without hurry. They rarely attack a strong, warm creature head-on. They shadow it instead, sometimes for days, waiting for it to slow, cool, and stumble, and then close in together. They feed first on the warmest parts of a kill.

Abilities

A Cold-Stalker can feel warmth at a distance through ash, darkness, and storm, and can tell a living body from a dead one by the heat it gives off. It spends so little strength that it can follow a trail for days without eating.

Life Cycle

A pack raises its few cubs together in a hollow under the ash, sharing warmth around them through the long torpid spans. Few cubs live, and an old Cold-Stalker is one that has learned never to waste a step. The dead are fed on by the pack before they cool.

Uses and Dangers

Their pelts are prized insulation, and the Ash-Walkers wear them. Travellers learn to fear the moan behind them on the ash, and the old advice is never to sleep warm and alone.

Lore and Belief

Travellers call them cold-wolves, and some say they are the hounds of the dying sun. The tale that a Cold-Stalker can smell a hidden coal through a pack is very nearly true: it does not smell the coal, but it feels its warmth.

Delvers into the Wastes say a pack will trail a party for days and strike the night its last fire fails, and cold-country inns toast the delver who kept her companions alive by burning her own cloak a strip at a time until the Cold Gate was reached.

Where It Appears

• The Ashen Wastes
• Writers' Guide: The Planes