Sarlag
GM's Eyes Only
Spoilers. This page is written for the GM, and players who read on will learn things their characters don't know.
A towering, woolly, antlered buffalo of the frozen north, thought by many to be extinct. Source: Iron Kingdoms Monsternomicon, p. 58 (Raevhan Buffalo).
Names. Sarlag to most. The Yeti call them Ulaanbaatar, "red hero."
What it is. Over ten feet at the shoulder, with a woolly brownish-black coat, a rack of antlers spanning more than a dozen feet, and thick tusks for digging plants out of the permafrost. Its split hooves splay on snow and loose rock.
Behavior. Males are solitary outside mating season, and two that meet fight for hours with their antlers crashing together. Females keep small groups to guard their young. Both are fiercely territorial and charge intruders, and being hurt only makes them angrier and stronger. A wounded sarlag chases its attacker for miles, well past its own ground. Long trenches with packed hollows where it beds down mark its territory.
Hunting one. The old way is to wound it, let it chase you, and keep ahead until it drops from exhaustion.
In Tir Hathar. The frozen north.
Stats¶
First draft, built from WWN's baseline stat lines.
| HD | AC | Atk | Dmg | Shock | Move | ML | Inst | Skill | Save | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sarlag | 6 | 13 | +6 | 2d6 | 2/13 | 40' | 10 | 6 | +1 | 12+ |
- Wrath. Once it has been wounded, it attacks twice per Main Action and its Morale becomes 12.
- Toss. On a natural 20, it flings the target 10 feet: prone, and an extra 1d6 damage.
- Charge. It charges anything that stays in its territory after a stamping, snorting warning. A wounded sarlag chases its attacker for miles.
Still open: playtesting the numbers; how many are left; and how sarlag fit the Northern Reaches' ecology next to the mammoths, since both graze and browse young pine. Suggested, not settled: the goad-and-run hunt as a Yeti tradition, which would suit the name.