Rasclinn

About 3 feet tall at the shoulder and up to 50 pounds, the rasclinn is built like a lean wild dog. Trace metals drawn from badland scrub give adults a burnished, silvery coat. Pups have not built up that metal yet and come in brown, white, or a patchwork of both. The animals have no language, but distinct barks and yelps tell the young to scatter or announce that food or water has turned up.

Running is always the first answer. A pack that surprises travelers bolts at once, often into a stand of spider or sand cacti, and its crafty leader shakes off pursuit with real fox-like guile. Metal-hard foot pads carry them over thorny, jagged ground that would shred a chaser's feet. Their hearing is so sharp that surprise succeeds against them only on a d10 roll of 1 or 2.

Cornered adults bite with unusually hard teeth for +1 to hit, a bonus lost against foes in metal armor. Harm or threaten a pup and every adult rages, gaining +2 to attack and damage for as long as the young stay in danger. Pups have 1 Hit Die, THAC0 20, and a 1d3 bite.

Their diet makes them wholly immune to plant-based poisons, with +4 on saves against all other poisons. Adults also keep up a constant tower of iron will at power score 14, leaving them nearly untouchable by psionics.

A pack is one family: one male with as many as five females, with any extras being pups. The male matters most, so when danger closes in all the females but one drop back to fight while the rest escape, and he joins in only when truly trapped. Pups are trained to vanish at an adult's first warning yelp.

Females bear 1d3 live young each spring, about 90% of them female, so a male pup is guarded jealously. At around a year old, most daughters stay while each young male leaves with at least one female. A lone pair is always a young male and his mate, and a solitary animal is usually a widowed male, which can be tamed once caught.

Rasclinn will eat nearly any plant and relish cactus needles. No other known creature can draw metal from vegetation, and that metallic hide tastes vile to predators, so only humans and demihumans hunt them. A skilled tanner and armorer can make AC 4 hide armor (normal hide is AC 6) from two adult skins, though it weighs about 20 pounds. A hide can even be smelted for as much as 5 coins' weight of iron (50 cp in value), but only a few of the wealthiest merchant houses own a forge that can do it.