Scourge Tuskers

Overview

Scourge Tuskers are the grazing herds of the Scourge: heavy, plated, boar-like beasts that crop the plains and fight everything, each other included. On a plane where even the prey is armed, they are what the hunters live on, above all the Iron-Claws.

Appearance

A Tusker stands as high at the shoulder as a pony and is far heavier, barrel-bodied on short, thick legs. Its back and flanks are covered in overlapping plates of horn the colour of rust and charcoal, scarred and chipped from fighting, and between the plates grows bristle, coarse and dark red. The head is long and low, with small, red-rimmed eyes and four curved tusks, the lower pair long enough to gut a horse. A herd on the move is loud: grunting, squealing, the clash of tusk on plate, and the drum of hooves. They smell of dung, blood, and churned earth.

Habitat and Range

They live in herds of a dozen to a hundred on the open plains of the plane, moving constantly between grazing grounds, never resting long in one place.

Behaviour and Temperament

Tuskers graze the red bloodgrass, whose edges cut lesser mouths but not theirs, and root for bulbs. They are born fighting and never stop: herd members shove, slash, and gore one another over grazing, rank, and mates, and the scarred old boars lead. Anything that comes near a herd is charged, beast or traveller, and a herd will charge together at a threat. They panic only at the scent of an Iron-Claw, and then the herd runs and leaves its slowest behind.

Abilities

Their plates turn most blades and arrows, and they heal from wounds that would kill a beast of Caeldon, as the plane's life does. A Tusker's charge gathers force as it comes, and once it is moving it cannot easily be turned or stopped.

Life Cycle

Sows drop their young at a run, and the piglets must keep up with the herd within the hour. They grow their first plates within days and their tusks within weeks. Few Tuskers die old: the hunters of the plane take the slow, and the herd takes the weak.

Uses and Dangers

They are the meat of the plane for hunters and for the Scourge-Born, who hunt them in war-bands and make their best armour from the plates. A herd's passing leaves the grass trampled flat, the safest ground on the plains, since nothing waits in it. To travellers they are a danger to be watched for and gone around.

Lore and Belief

Travellers call them the plane's swine and say that even its pigs carry swords. The Scourge-Born have a rite in which a youth must bring down a Tusker alone before being counted a fighter. Some Material-Plane boar hunters claim that the fiercest wild boar on Caeldon are descended from Tuskers that came through a War-Gate; nothing supports the claim.

Sellswords who have been to the Scourge hang a Tusker's tusk over the door of the company's winter hall, and a newcomer is told the tale of how it was won before anything else.

Where It Appears

• Overview: Natives of the Planes