Exactly what the title says: come up with predators specialized for hunting certain fantasy creatures, especially fantasy races.
I'm thinking that these things were either made by disgruntled nature gods, disgruntled druids, or a rival of that particular race's patron deity. (Gruumsh, for instance, would create predators for elves.)
So far, here's what I've got:
>Werewarg
>Despite its name, this dire bear-sized carnivore has no relation to lycanthropes; rather, it earns its name because it looks like a massively built werewolf with silvery bear-like claws on its front paws, a pair of short saber teeth, and thick, wiry fur that ranges in color from russet brown to silvery white.
>Mainly quadrupedal, but capable of rearing up on its hind legs, this immense creature was bred by an ancient sect of druids, whose paladin allies were constantly harassed by a community of vampires, to be the ultimate vampire-killing machine; needless to say, it was a complete success.
>The claws and fangs of a werewarg can cleave through the unliving flesh of a vampire with ease, thanks to large concentrations of silver in their teeth and claws. Thick rhinoceros-like hide underneath the skin renders the fangs of a vampire next to useless against the creature, and its acute sense of smell can easily track the undead when it goes into gaseous form, while its saliva, which reeks of garlic, contains chemical compounds that are almost identical to those found in healing potions, allowing them to both speed the healing of minor wounds by licking them and burn vampires with their very spit. Furthermore, werewargs are excellent swimmers, with webbed paws like those of a labrador, making it all too easy for them to drag a vampire into running water.
>It's possible to train werewargs if raised from pups, and the church of paladins that the druids first bred the creatures for still uses them to this day.
>>48009102
(Cont'd.)
>Silvertooth Tiger
>This rare, solitary magical big cat looks like an enormous tiger, growing to almost 16 feet in length, with fur ranging in color from rust red to bone white, depending on the environment, and a pair of 18-inch-long saber teeth seemingly made out of pure silver. All silvertooth cats have pupilless eyes that look like orbs of pure mercury.
>These deadly cats were supposedly made by a rival to [the creator of lycanthropes], specifically a deity whose domains included the moon and the earth, although the deity's identity changes with each telling of the tale. The deity was enraged that [the creator of lycanthropes] had dared to intrude upon his/her domain by creating monstrous creatures that were linked to his/her beautiful moon, and created the silverteeth to forever hunt these pretenders to his/her glory.
>As their name dictates, silvertooth tigers are natural predators of lycanthropes, although wereboars, werefelines of any sort, and werewolves are their favorite targets. Every single tooth in their mouth is wrought from purest silver, as are their claws, allowing the beasts to tear apart lycanthropes with ease. Its prey is not safe even while hiding in human or animal form; the tiger can tell a disguised lycanthrope from the real thing with but a sniff.
>Aside from a few druids, nobody has managed to successfully train dire tigers: the great beasts simply refuse to eat in captivity, and quickly starve to death.
>>48009239
>Branch Lurker
>Dwelling in forested regions, these intelligent reptilian predators are elf-hunters; where they came from is unknown, with theories ranging from the orc god Gruumsh to simple magically-guided evolution.
>Standing approximately five feet tall, a branch lurker has a humanoid body plan covered in mottled green scaly skin like that of a lizard. The tail is long, whiplike, and semi-prehensile, with an almost elastic quality similar to the limbs of a choker, and is strong enough to hold the creature's weight as it hangs from its tail or to strangle unlucky prey items. Its arms are almost like those of a gibbon in terms of proportion, long enough to scrape the ground, and each hand has three long fingers and a thumb, all of which are tipped with sharp hooked claws, perfect for shredding flesh and grasping branches. The hind legs, which are structured like those of a theropod dinosaur, are about three-quarters as long as they would be on a human of the same size, and have four grasping toes on each foot. The head has a short reptilian snout, jaws filled with razor-sharp blade-like teeth, and a pair of glowing yellow slit-pupiled eyes.
>Moving through the trees by brachiating like a monkey, specialized fatty pads just underneath the skin of the finger and toetips make for totally silent movement as the branch lurker runs and climbs-in the case of the latter, up vertical surfaces like a gecko if it wants to. Further enhancing its stealth capabilities is its ability to change color to match its environment like an octopus and its near total lack of a distinct smell.
>The fangs and claws of a branch lurker contain a potent paralytic agent, similar to that found in the claws of ghasts, allowing the creature to quickly sneak up to its elven prey and paralyze it before it can call out for help.
>A coal-black subspecies with larger, more acute eyes and nostrils exists in the caverns of the world, specialized for hunting drow.
>>48009102
>Leystriker Lizard
>A 3-foot-long lizard with the body, tail, tongue, and legs of a chamelon, the toe pads of a gecko, and the claws and head of a monitor lizard.
>Found along ley lines and other sites of high fey activity, these lazy, brightly-colored lizards are quite unassuming, but they become terrifying to small fey like pixies, fairies, and grigs, their natural prey.
>Attracting its curious prey with bioluminescent lights that run down its spine and sides and adorn its head, the leystriker lies in wait, staying perfectly still and changing the color of its skin to perfectly match the branch or rock it lounges on. As soon as the unforunate fey gets in range, it strikes, its long tongue lashing out and slamming into the tiny creature, its sticky tip and magic-dampening saliva holding the creature fast and preventing it from using any abilities it might have to escape, and reeling it into its gaping maw, where the fey is unceremoniously killed with a powerful bite and its remains swallowed whole. This entire process can take place in under a second, giving the lizard more than enough time to strike at any other fey in the area.
>How exactly the leystriker evolved, and why it is seemingly totally immune to the charms and spells of the fair folk, is a complete mystery: the most widely accepted theory is that they were originally creatures of this world that somehow ended up in the same primal land that all fey hail from; exempt from the strange rules that natives of the realm seem to be bound to follow, the leystriker quickly adapted to its new home by evolving to hunt fey. At least, that's the best idea that the sages have; most are content with just throwing their hands on the air and saying, "Fuck it; fey logic."
10/10 thread. I'll contribute with some of my beasts once I get home
>>48009854
Thanks, man!
>>48009511
>ley lines
really kid
>>48009102
>Skystriker
>A sky-blue slightly smaller relative of the wyvern, the skystriker is considerably more adapted to the air than its cousin, with a longer neck, thinner body, a streamlined head with no horns or frills on it, wide wings lacking any 'thumb claws,' powerful hind legs with eagle-like talons, and a much longer, more flexible tail with a stinger shaped almost like a cutlass.
>Hunting in packs of up to eight or ten animals, skystrikers spend most of their lives up in the air, hunting larger aerial predators, particularly dragons.
>These clever beasts hunt using one of two different tactics: one, striking at the unarmored joints of the dragon with their stingers, injecting a potent paralytic toxin that causes the limbs to lock up, causing the prey item to plummet to the ground and die upon impact; or two, flying around the dragon and avoiding its attacks with their superior aerial maneuverability (Skystrikers are incredibly fast fliers, and can even fly backwards if they want to) hammering away at the much larger creature with pulses of sonic energy fired from the maw; seeing as very few creatures are actually immune to sonic damage, this almost always works.
>Skystriders are much less willful than wyverns, and as such are much more commonly trained. Dragonslayers and couriers are the typical riders of these beasts: the former for the creature's dragon-killing prowess and the latter for its incredible speed.
>>48010162
What's so bad about it? They're places where fairies and gnomes n' shit are said to love hanging out at and are usually said to be gateways to the land of the fey, so it made sense to put 'em there.
>>48010181
I just realized midway through typing this how similar these things were to yrthaks. Have an addendum.
>Despite their similarities, skystrikers and yrthaks aren't actually related; they are merely the result of convergent evolution. In fact, the hatred that skystrikers and yrthaks have for one another is legendary-the two creatures attack one another on sight, not stopping until one species or the other is totally extinct in the area.
>>48009102
>Drake's Bane Spider
>Despite their fearsome name, these jet-black spiders are 'only' the size of a beagle-huge by any normal standards, but quite small as far as giant arachnids go.
>Drake's banes, as the name implies, are predators of drakes and, on occasion, dragons, but they don't go after fully-grown specimens: they are, after all, still spiders. Instead, they are nest raiders, sneaking into drake nests and devouring their eggs and chicks, dispatching their prey with a potent venom that's especially effective against dragons and their kind.
>As any scholar worth his scrolls will tell you, drakes are incredibly varied creatures, and the drake's bane has evolved accordingly: It has mild resistance to heat, cold, poison, and acid to defend itself from the pitiful attacks of baby drakes, but it isn't uncommon to find variant species with different abilities.
>Drake's banes found in areas with large populations of fire drakes and red dragons, for instance, often develop total immunity to fire, with glowing red-and-black chitin to blend in with the molten material of their habitat, while another population of the spiders found at high altitudes in a mountainous region might develop webbing between their legs to glide or spikes on their feet like crampons to steady their grip.
>In fact, some legends tell of drake's bane spiders that have actually gained new powers from their gorging on draconic flesh, ranging from the ability to spit webs coated in a substance that burns upon contact with oxygen to thick scaly armor that can deflect a blow from a mace to slit-pupiled reptilian eyes that can see through illusions.
So, I decided to get a bit creative with this one. I mainly based it on the moonspider from Peter Jackson's King Kong.
(Sidenote: I based the werewarg on the fact that werewolves and vampires are said to be mortal enemies in most games and the silvertooth tiger on the fact that Siberian tigers are the only animals that will actively hunt wolves.)
Looks neat.
I like the Werewargs the most I might actually use 'em.
>>48009102
>Warren Wurm
>Measuring 15 feet in length, the warren wurm is a wormlike creature with tough hide mottled grey-and-brown in color and a wide circular maw filled to the brim with razor-sharp teeth.
>Lurking in swamps, dungeons, and caverns near to the surface, these powerful, sinuous predators are named for their skill at infiltrating the warrens of small humanoids, particularly those of goblins and kobolds.
>The creature's skin, which is tough enough to turn aside the caltrops and rusty spikes that grace most kobold traps, secretes a thick, viscous fireproof oil that protects them from goblins' beloved flames. The worm's ability to burrow through even solid stone allows it to bypass most traps typically found in a kobold warren, and its tough, somewhat elastic flesh tastes horrid, making the semi-trained beasts so often found with goblins and kobolds unwilling to come to their "masters'" aid. Furthermore, warren worms have extremely high metabolisms, their appetites allowing them to keep up with their fast-breeding prey.
>Despite their services in keeping down goblin and kobold numbers, warren worms are feared and reviled by most good-aligned races, mostly due to untrue stories of the creatures breaking into halfling and gnome burrows; in reality, these worms dislike eating either of these species: gnomes' fey blood makes them taste... off to the worms, and the presence of dire badgers in gnome warrens, the natural predator of the creature, keeps them at bay, while halflings simply spend so much goddamn time eating, getting high on pipeweed, and being absolute wastes of fucking space that so much as taking a bite out of one can leave a warren worm sick for weeks.
Pic related; that ugly bastard's what inspired these things.
>>48009102
>Vampyres
>aka ''Blind Ghouls''
>hyper-evolved varghouls (Feral Ghouls)
>live in underground caves in remote unexplored regions of the world
>nocturnal hunters, only enter the upperworld/exit their caves to hunt during the night and only if driven by lack of food
>completely blind, rely on smell/hearing/touch to locate prey
>extremely potent venom, one bite has enough punch to make a dragon feel dizzy
>super-rapid metabolism rate grants them superhuman speed and strenght, but also a constant need for energy/food
>spent most of their lives in hibernation to conserve energy, waiting for the time prey is a plenty
>ironically their greatest weakness are poisons and venoms, as their incredibly fast metabolism rate means any poison takes an effect on them very fast if not instantly
>are not killed by sunlight or vulnerably to silver as some believe
>main food sources are Ghouls (common ghouls) and Varghouls (Feral Ghouls)
>Vampyres are the boogeyman in Ghoul culture understandibly
>>48011189
Sweet! Good to see that someone else is working on this thread as well!
Question: Are your ghouls undead or living? If they're undead, I could see these guys being what happens to survivors of ghoul fever; sure, they aren't undead, but they're still killing machines.
>>48011232
>Question: Are your ghouls undead or living?
Living.
They're offshoots from a separate evolutionary branch of humanity; they share a common (distant) ancestor with humans and chimpanzees.
They're basically a race of human-sized Gollums to give you and idea.
Varghouls are a non-sentient, bestial race of atavistic ghouls. They have a more canine-like facial structure as opposed to a simian, more body hair.
Intellectually (and socially) the difference between a ghoul and a varghoul is like the one between a ten year old child and a rabid wolf.
>>48009102
>Great Yrthak
>A much larger, more formidable cousin to the common yrthak with more powerful hind legs, eagle-like talons on its feet, wide draconic wings, a long spinosaur-like snout filled with flesh-ripping teeth, a long whiplike semi-prehensile tail, alligator-like scaly hide, and a long, sharp, upwards-curving horn growing at a 45 degree angle from between where the eyes would be.
>Great yrthaks, unlike their smaller cousins, are solitary predators, and specialized ones to boot. Using sonar and an incredibly acute sense of smell to navigate, these 40-foot-long beasts primarily feed on other large fliers: griffons, wyverns, pegasi, chimeras, hippogriffs, and other such creatures, using its incredibly powerful sonic pulse, which is strong enough to blast through solid stone, its goring horn, its teeth, and its razor-sharp talons.
>Rare and highly dangerous, great yrthaks are the undisputed lords of their ecosystems; while they primarily hunt other flying creatures, they aren't averse to snatching up a few deer, cattle, or bears once in a while.
Yeah, I've always loved yrthaks, and the skystriker's similarities to them inspired this guy.
>TURNS OUT IT'S MAN!
