A couple of Caranoctian critters for a short story. Obviously you see some design elements here I'm fond of - big claws, long snouts with jutting teeth, awkward bodies. The one on the right, Spiny Norman, is based on a hedgehog. My one sis, in addition to dogs and cats, fosters hedgehogs. I'd never gotten a close look at a hedgehog before she brought a box full of them with her one time, and I found them impressively interesting. It's been lurking in the back of my mind that I would like to take an innocuous little critter and do it over as a hulking Caranoctian beast.


Greyling

Found exclusively in and around the fallen city of Thorcasia, greylings have enough similarities to trolls that they are almost certainly an 'early draft' version of the species, or possibly an experimental offshoot.

Roughly human-sized, greylings have squat, toadlike bodies and short but powerful hind limbs and long, sinewy forelimbs. They lack wrist and heel spurs, but are quite effectively armed with four talons on the hind foot and a distinctive claw arrangement on the forepaw - a thumb with a sharply curved talon, a massively overdeveloped first finger with a hooked talon, and the nest two digits fused into a single one with a double claw. Greylings usually move about clumsily on all fours, sprawled and knuckle-walking, but when they feel the need to hurry will rise onto the hind legs and proceed in a series of bipedal hops which look awkward but are actually frighteningly swift.

The head is the most trollish thing about a greyling, though hideously distorted. The skull is elongate, narrow and deep and generally in the shape of an axe head. The flat forehead is in line with the top of the nose, which is squashed down onto the extended, sharp-chinned muzzle. The razor sharp, yellowed fangs are even more jagged and crowded than a troll's, the tongue dark and rough, long and flattened, looking like a strip of blown-out tire. The small, round eyes are pale yellow with a usually pinprick pupil, giving them an eerie, mad stare. The ears are tall, narrow and peaked. A mane of fluffy, white, absurdly pettable-looking fur adorns the head and neck, contrasting with the warty grey skin.

Greylings are about as intelligent as chimp, and seem to have a malign urge to deface and destroy whatever they can get their paws on. Seemingly oblivious to or uncaring of the danger, troops of greylings will harass and pester trolls at any opportunity. No matter how many the trolls kill, they always come back for more - perhaps they perceive these near-relatives as threats to their territory.

While preferring meat, greylings are omnivores who are willing and able to eat just about anything they can shove in their mouths. In fact, some greedier than usual greylings have died when attempting to devour objects too large (or too alive and angry) to swallow. They also exhibit pica, the urge to eat non-food items like shiny stones or metal objects. Greylings possess extensive throat pouches and a crop, and may simply be doing this to carry around things they find interesting. Like jackdaws, they enjoy stealing and hoarding interesting junk. Greylings are highly social beasts with a hierarchal social structure. They prefer to live in squabbling, noisy groups.

As with trolls, greylings have a single gender, but do not require a partner to reproduce. When the creature is well-fed and contented, it will spontaneously generate a litter of youngsters. Interestingly enough, sometimes when an individual is extremely stressed and near starving, it will put its last energies into squirting out a few neonates, possible in a desperate attempt to keep its genes going.

Greylings mostly inhabit the abandoned and derelict buildings of Thorcasia, nesting in the darkest, most remote areas and emerging with the dusk to hunt and feed. Evenings resound with their hooting and wailing of their territorial calls. Some groups have spread out into the surrounding forest area and are beginning to intrude onto the natural cave system. There are persistent rumors of a single greyling, perhaps imported as a scientific curiosity or zoological exhibit, escaping into one of the major cities and generating an entire colony of the pests.

Trolls consider greylings ugly pests. The creatures not only upset the local ecology, they are incredibly destructive and seem to have no fear of their betters. Greylings are naturally aggressive, and even seem to take a peculiar delight in ambushing unwary trolls. Troll spawn are in serious danger of becoming a greyling's light snack, so the trolls ruthlessly hunt greylings down whenever they can. Still, the creatures are so proliferate their populations always manage to rebound from even the worst bloodbaths. If they ever did establish colonies in the human cities, the impact would be devastating.


Worm-eater

A native of Xbalanque, descended from imported African hedgehogs.

The animal is built much like a grizzly bear - a massive, tailless, hunchbacked barrel-shaped body covered in blunt quills, supported by short, muscular bowed legs armed with powerful claws. The eyes are beady and the ears quite small. When endangered, the creature can pull its head back into the thick, protective folds of skin on the neck. The short-furred snout is long, slender, slightly upcurved, the lipless jaws armed with an interlocking array of slender, sharp teeth like ivory pine needles. The snout terminates in a bulbous, damp nose, its primary sensory organ.

As the name implies, worm-eaters mostly dine on giant earthworms, which they locate by scent. They rapidly dig down to the worm, and seize it in their jaws, which are perfectly adapted to holding onto wriggly, slippery objects. Worm-eaters will also scavenge on large carcasses if the opportunity arises, tearing an opening in the hide with their fore claws, then thrusting their snout inside to grab delicious organs. Some have even been observed fishing.

Worm-eaters appear to be solitary creatures and primarily nocturnal. The females are extremely protective of their cubs. They can make a wide range of noises, from grunts to shrieks.



Throatcutter (not pictured)

Hyperactive and vicious, this creation of the Aelvian life sculptors was designed to serve as foot soldiers. They are not sapient, but are just barely intelligent enough to follow simple orders.

Throatcutters resemble a human being warped and twisted into a sort of bipedal praying mantis. The limbs are scrawny and birdlike. The torso is humanoid, but the arms (usually carried tightly folded to the body) are extremely long and terminate in single bony scythe. The head is small and triangular, dominated by huge, staring eyes, with a tiny flat nose and weak jaws. The body is covered by a sort of exoskeleton made of overlapping plates of keratin reinforced in some places with bone. This armor is often twisted into fantastic shapes, bosses, hornets, spike and so on, and along the inner edge of the arms it forms into a saw-toothed row of hooks that aid it in grappling prey.