Oblef

Encyclopedia entry: This massive creature is called a speckled Snowgrune. These heavily built animals make the remote tundra and boreal forests of Peterra their home, rarely revealing themselves. Small populations of speckled snowgrune have been found on Missoulou as well, but these creatures have never been known to establish themselves long term on that planet. It is said they use magic to keep their existence a secret, but although they do have some extrasensory abilities, most of their secretive ways are due to just their intelligence as well as their living very spread out from each other.

The average weight of an adult male is about two thousand pounds; females are smaller at around 1500 pounds. There are few animals that can match the sheer muscle power of a snowgrune and normally nothing will mess with an adult one, but a mother snowgrune must guard her cubs from danger until they grow large enough to defend themselves. The more food she is able to supply for them, the larger and faster they will grow.

Snowgrunes are omnivorous and eat just about anything, including many plants, but prefer large land animals, and fish. Their front dewclaws are partly opposable, which helps them grab prey both from land and sea.

Snowgrunes are mostly solitary, except for a mother raising her cubs. Each Snowgrune defends its own home range. Male Snowgrunes have much larger territories that overlap those of several females. Female snowgrunes are tolerant of females from neighbouring territories wandering into theirs sometimes, and will even be friendly with their neighbours, but males will defend their lands vigorously from other males. They leave claw marks on trees all along the border of their lands to mark it as theirs and warn other males away. Most of the time, everyone hunts in their own land and peace is kept. When a male cub grows up and leaves its mother's home, he may wander many miles for a long time before he finds a territory that is available.

There exist some places where food is abundant, such as large supplies of fish, where multiple Snowgrunes may gather and socialise. Here, they will form a hierarchy, with the largest Snowgrunes usually claiming the best places to fish.


Learn more at the Xanje Library

Credit for this pattern:

• Chaos — primary artist