Stock bred by the Nobility for war, for sport, for the gardens, and for purposes recorded only in the lord’s own books. More kinds have been released than any single register holds. Dragons are raced and fought, three-headed birds are bred to hunt them, and the estate woods are taught to walk.

Amended. These are the kinds a hunter is most likely to meet.

Lesser dragons

Bred for sport and war · high valleys of the North and the deep East · Danger: serious

The lesser dragons outlived the Nobles who raced and fought them. They’re the size of a wagon, armored, and breathe fire. People have reported greater dragons, but nobody has ever brought one back.

Signs. Burned timber with no storm to explain it. Goats missing from high pastures, their bones dropped from a height. A shape in the sky too big for a bird.

How to handle it. Dragons hunt from the air and nest in golden era buildings. Fight them on the ground, at the nest, with firearms, and pin the wings with stakes. Killing one pays very well.

Harvest. Dragon-bone holds an edge better than steel, and the scaled hide turns blades. Gunsmiths and the Institute pay more for a whole dragon than most towns pay for the bounty.

Carrion birds

Bred to hunt dragons · open country, everywhere · Danger: everyday

Three-headed birds bred to prey on dragons, which means they’ll prey on anything. They circle any fight in open country and come down to feed, often before the fight is over.

Signs. Three heads on one silhouette. A fight in open country drawing a crowd overhead. Carcasses stripped from above.

How to handle it. Don’t drag out a fight in the open. End it fast or move it under cover.

Harvest. The feathers fetch a little from fletchers. Sheriffs pay the bounty per bird and want all three heads as proof.

Walking woods

Bred trees, for decoration · estate grounds, mostly in the East · Danger: everyday to serious

Forests the Nobility taught to move, so an estate’s grounds could rearrange themselves to suit the lord. Some untended woods still move. A road through one may not be where it was yesterday, and anyone inside when the wood moves can be lost or crushed.

Signs. A road that ends at trees. Trees standing where there was a field. Wheel ruts running under the roots.

How to handle it. Don’t fight it. Get out before the wood closes. Entlings can sometimes tell what mood a wood is in.

Harvest. Timber cut from a walking wood keeps trying to move, so builders won’t use it. The Institute buys it.

Night-cloud

Bred hazard · low ground, everywhere · Danger: serious

A drifting fog that kills. It moves along low ground after dusk, and whatever it covers doesn’t wake up. The Nobility used it to clear valleys of life they didn’t want, and it’s still doing that.

Signs. Livestock dead in a low field without a mark on them. Fog moving against the wind. No frogs where there should be frogs.

How to handle it. Get to high ground. A night-cloud can’t climb, and it won’t cross fire. By day, find where it beds down, usually a golden era drain or cistern, and burn it out.

Harvest. Burning one out leaves a grey residue in the drain. It is a strong poison, and both the Institute and poisoners will pay for it.

Takers

Bred collectors · towns, everywhere · Danger: serious

Long-armed, silent creatures that come over walls at night and carry people away alive. They were bred to collect people, and they still do. The purpose of the collection is restricted.

Signs. A window opened from outside. Long fingermarks in the dust on a sill. A bed that was slept in, empty, and no blood.

How to handle it. Takers avoid bells, dogs, and light, and will drop what they’re carrying to get away from any of the three. Track them to their lair, usually a golden era building, where some of the people they took are often still alive. Have a doctor look at anyone you bring back before they go home.

Harvest. The long arms are mostly tendon, and dried taker tendon makes the best bowstrings and snares on the Frontier. Sheriffs pay the bounty on the hands.

Head-takers

Bred animal, purpose restricted · the South · Danger: serious

Pale, fast creatures that take heads, cleanly, and leave the bodies. Last spring Ashfall woke up to find a row of its dead laid out along the Salt Road. Redwater found the heads a week later.

Signs. A body with a single wound. Bodies laid out in a straight row. A season of killings in one area, then nothing for years.

How to handle it. Head-takers hunt alone and take one victim a night. Set out a decoy on a road and wait in numbers. Companies usually charge triple for this job.

Harvest. The Institute wants whole carcasses and pays well for them. Southern sheriffs pay the bounty on the head.

Storm-leeches

Bred animal · open country during storms · Danger: everyday

Creatures that feed on lightning. They rise with thunderstorms and cling to whatever draws the strike: a church tower, a lone tree, a rider in the open. In a dry season they go hungry and attack people and livestock instead.

Signs. Lightning hitting the same spot every storm. Burned flesh and no thunder heard. Charged air in a still room.

How to handle it. Use grounded cold iron: stake a chain into the earth and let the leech come to it. Don’t fire guns during a storm.

Harvest. A dead leech holds its charge for weeks. Artificers buy them to run workshop tools, and a bare hand on one gets burned.

Land sirens

Bred for decoration · empty country · Danger: serious

Beautiful voices singing from just out of sight in empty country. People who follow the song turn up later, far from the road, and some are never found. The Nobility kept sirens in their gardens, and the sirens outlived the gardens.

Signs. Singing where nobody is. Travelers leaving the road for no reason. The same tune, later, from a companion who never heard it.

How to handle it. Plug your ears with wax, rope the riders together, and bring a hunter who has heard the song before. The siren itself is fragile and easy to kill once you reach it.

Harvest. The throat keeps humming for days after the siren dies. Bards and the Institute pay well for one. Carry it sealed in wax.

Glamour-beasts

Bred to deceive · roads, everywhere · Danger: serious

They hunt with illusions, showing their prey whatever it wants to see: a waystation’s lights, a friend on the road, a well. Most victims don’t see through it until the beast is on them.

Signs. A waystation on a road that doesn’t have one. A friend who doesn’t answer to their name. Tracks that end at nothing.

How to handle it. Be suspicious of anything that shows up too conveniently. Anyone who stops wanting what a glamour shows can see through it.

Harvest. The eyes keep a little of the glamour after death. Card sharps and swindlers pay well for them, which is why the Capitol bans the trade.

Muddle-mold

Bred fungus · damp ruins, and houses built from their stone · Danger: everyday

A fungus that grows in damp ruins and in the walls of old houses, and confuses anything that breathes near it. Scavengers who walk into a patch lose the way out. Towns built from salvaged stone have had whole streets of people get lost on the way home.

Signs. People lost inside houses they know. A crew that went in confident and came out somewhere else. A smell of bread where there isn’t any bread.

How to handle it. Torches and lime: the mold burns, and lime kills it. Scavengers mark known patches at a ruin’s entrance with three short lines, for whoever comes next.

Harvest. Scraped and dried, it burns into a smoke that leaves people lost and easy to rob. Selling it is a hanging offense in most towns.

Hedge-hounds

Bred garden guards, gone feral · the green ruins of the East · Danger: everyday

Bred to patrol the Nobility’s estates, now wild. Long, low, and mottled like undergrowth, they hunt in packs that don’t make a sound until the last second.

Signs. Stems snapped at knee height. Livestock taken without a struggle. No birdsong in the hedges.

How to handle it. They avoid open ground and bright light, and lose most of their edge once you draw them out of cover. Entlings can sometimes calm a pack.

Harvest. The mottled pelts make the best hunting cloaks on the Frontier. In undergrowth, a hunter wearing one is hard to see.

Lampjaws

Bred road guards, now wild · roadsides, everywhere · Danger: serious

Guard animals the Nobility posted along their roads. A lampjaw holds a pale light in front of its mouth and waits in the dark, still as a lantern on a post, for whatever comes to look. Nobody tends them now, and they hunt travelers.

Signs. A light in the distance that doesn’t move toward you. A lantern where no lantern should be. Travelers who went to look at a light and never came back.

How to handle it. Never walk toward a light that isn’t moving on a road at night. Hunters kill lampjaws by day, when the lure is dim and the beast is slow, and they shoot from well outside the light.

Harvest. The lure is a gland that glows without fire. Cut out whole, it gives a steady light for about a month, and the Guild buys them for its waystations. Sheriffs accept the lure as proof of the kill.

Frostwings

Bred for the cold · the North · Danger: everyday

Pale, wide-winged flyers bred to ride the cold. They follow the early winters the failing weather engines bring down from the peaks, and they nest in buildings the snow has emptied.

Signs. Frostwings in autumn mean an early winter. A circling pair means a nest. A frozen valley with its houses still standing.

How to handle it. They’re slow to take off and slow to turn. Fight them on the ground at dawn, when the cold has stiffened them, and never while they’re in the air.

Harvest. Frostwing down is the warmest lining there is, and Northern traders pay well for a full skin.

Sand mantas

Bred burrower · the Southern salt flats · Danger: serious

Wide, flat predators that move through loose salt and sand the way rays move through water. They come up under horses and riders and take them whole. They’re why Southern ranchers count the herd every morning.

Signs. A ridge in the salt moving against the wind. Cattle half buried. A rider’s tracks that just stop.

How to handle it. They hunt by feeling movement. Cross the flats slowly and single file, never at a gallop. Stake out bait at a distance and shoot when the manta surfaces.

Harvest. The hide is tough, smooth, and doesn’t rot in salt. Southern saddlers make their best saddles and boots from it.

Tithe-moths

Bred blood collectors · towns, in summer, everywhere · Danger: everyday

Swarms bred to collect the Nobility’s blood tithe from sleeping villages. The Nobility are long gone from most of the Frontier, but the moths still come on summer nights and collect blood from sleepers.

Signs. People waking up pale and tired in summer. Fine grey dust on the windowsills. A soft sound in the walls, like paper.

How to handle it. Smoke drives them out and fire finishes them. Many towns burn wormwood in their chimneys on midsummer nights to keep them off. Follow the swarm back to the building where it roosts.

Harvest. The blood glands, which the Institute buys by the jar. They keep drawing blood after the moth is dead, so never carry them against bare skin.

Bell-crows

Bred timekeepers · towns, everywhere · Danger: everyday, indirect

Crows bred to keep time on the Nobility’s estates. They’ve learned to imitate the dusk bell, and they ring it early. A town that bars its doors at a bell-crow’s call shuts its own travelers outside after dark.

Signs. A dusk bell before the sun is down. Crows on the church roof. Someone missing who should have made it home.

How to handle it. Bell-crows are easy to scare off or shoot. The danger is to the travelers they lock out after dark. In crow season, sheriffs put a watcher on the bell.

Harvest. Nothing worth selling. In crow season, some sheriffs pay a small bounty per bird.