Bestiary: Harrows
Harrows are monsters that usually start as an existing being—fauna—and are mutated into something else by the influence and power of another being or their environment. Their creation may be purposeful or accidental. Some were created in experiments by powerful mages. Others mutated due to exposure to magical energy such as the lairs of behemoths and dragons, adapting to the environment. They may seem similar to chimaerae, but they are not a hybrid of fauna, rather they have additional unique abilities and powers such as the ability to petrify, camouflage itself, or rust metal.
Harrows include: basilisks, gorgons, gricks, mimics, nightmares, remorhazes, and rust monsters.
The Gorgon is an example of a harrow, though its origins are unknown. The bull-like beast has an exoskeleton of stony plates and can exhale a green gas that can petrify its prey. It could have been an experiment on bulls gone wrong, or it may have transformed due to exposure to a toxic magical environment. It may have started off as a grymbull, with the petrifaction disease creating the bony exoskeleton and later mutated further. Some say it was created by hags to protect their lairs as it is often found in defiled woods where a hag is suspected to live.
The Hodag of Skaan
In the Baest Notera, Nyklander writes of a legendary beast of the Skaan people called the hodag. He adds it as a sidebar to the Gorgon entry as he seems to think they are related or similar due to the lore behind the hodag as both are derived from bovine draft animals.
Among the Skaan, from the days when their realm spanned from the Gywven mountains west to the sea, there is a tale about a creature called the hodag. It resembles an ox with green fur, a frog-like face, clawed paws instead of hooves, and spines along its back. It would menace the countryside, especially farms and ranches where oxen and cattle were kept. It was said to be a vengeful beast or spirit that terrorized those that treated their stock poorly. One Skaan tale said that the hodag rose from dead oxen that had been fed—along with its herd—magically enhanced grain to make them larger to produce more meat and hide. The spell on the grain went wrong and cursed the beasts. After the first one rose, as each ox died after, it absorbed their spirit and grew stronger with the death of each of its kin. Eventually it was caught and paraded around the town, then it disappeared. Its captors said they holed it up in a cave somewhere as they could not kill it. Despite my efforts, I was unable to locate the possible location of the beast.
