Ghost Packs

When spreading towns and farms killed off a great pack of hunters, its spirits sometimes kept hunting anyway. Phantom wolves may haunt a city, phantom lions a plantation, and a rare few packs follow a nemesis or rogue hero. They look as they did in life, if gaunt, sometimes with red, black, or clouded eyes or coats of pure white or black.

They hunt as the living animals did, but walls and buildings mean nothing to them; they pass right through. Only create sanctuary or a protective circle against spirits keeps them at bay.

Shamans of any alignment may court a ghost pack. Familiarity is won by delivering a live animal of a species the pack once hunted that has vanished from the region. The spirits chase it down, then perform one service. No Shamanic Ritual proficiency check is needed, since this counts as an offering rather than a formal sacrifice.

The shaman's duty is to shield the pack from anyone trying to stop its hunts. Worship bores them and spells are limited: priest spells of the Animal sphere through 2nd level, and solitary shaman spells through 4th. Their true gift is protection. If the shaman's life is ever in grave danger, the pack falls on the attackers and tears them to pieces.