Cantobele

Sleek and heavily muscled like a great cat, the cantobele walks on six legs. Its thick double coat and long mane shade from gray-white to tawny, shifting with the seasons for camouflage, while deeper, richer color marks a young animal. The broad tail is short-furred and ends in a tuft of black hair. Most unsettling are its eyes: startlingly human, plainly intelligent, with brown or mauve irises. The name comes from the lovely ringing cry, like a chorus of bells, that it sounds after a kill.

Cantobeles lurk in thick undergrowth and use a soft, high, womanly voice to lure prey and mislead enemies, aided by innate tongues and ESP with a 90-yard reach. When prey is close, they pounce. The target must pass a Dexterity check at -4 or be knocked flat, after which every cantobele attack gains +4. It fights with all six legs and its fangs; the tail can strike as well but mostly provides balance while the claws are busy. Its damage scales with its Hit Dice.

Once a day it can cast misdirection, typically to draw well-armed intruders away from its lair, and once every 12 hours ice storm. It does nothing else in a round when casting.

Cantobeles are immune to cold attacks and natural freezing weather. Their infravision reaches 110 feet, and a second eyelid strains out glare so snow or bright light never blinds or dazzles them. Claws and six-legged footing keep them steady on ice, deep snow, and branches, and neither fumble nor grease hinders them. They climb anything short of a sheer face at full speed, and sheer surfaces at half.

Though they favor humid, lonely country, especially swamps and wooded ravines, they are common only in a few flooded lake regions of the north and along one marshy river valley, where they gather in great numbers. They mate every third year in early spring; one that fails to find a mate within two months of the season falls catatonic and dies. The male carries the litter, 4-16 young but most often 5-8 (1d4+4), and rears them for a year.

Tales of man-eating have led lakeside cities to post bounties of up to 50 gp per confirmed kill, with no cap. Fearing extinction, sages have countered with 65 gp for each cantobele taken alive, so it can be released somewhere wilder, such as a remote lake at the heart of a vast rift.