Shatjan

Picture a stocky human, male or female, wearing a reindeer's head: with big antlers on males and smaller ones on females. Gray to dark brown fur covers its head and upper body down to the forearms. It wears garments of skin and bark painted with symbols.

Not a fighter by nature, the shatjan still battles predators of all kinds while protecting its herds. Ice, snow, and cold never hinder it, and it tries to lure enemies into drifts or onto slick ice. Its weapons are clubs, short bows, and harpoons tipped with bone.

Each round it can breathe a tight jet of cold at one target within 5 feet for 3 dice of damage; a save vs. breath weapon negates all of it. It also passively chills a 10-foot radius by 10 degrees per round. Creatures inside take 1-2 damage each round once the air hits 0 degrees, and 1-4 per round at -20 or below. Warm clothing helps: characters in parkas starting at 0 degrees take nothing until -20, then half damage. Cold of any kind leaves it unharmed, and weapons below +1 cannot touch it.

Shatjan follow the reindeer on their yearly migrations. A camp is one lifelong mated pair plus young; the female fights as well as the male, while offspring have 1-5 Hit Dice but lack every special ability. Summer camps of fir and birch-bark huts sit where forest meets tundra, and in winter the family retreats into the woods to ice caves or leather tents, built for comfort since cold cannot hurt them.

Able to predict weather and speak with animals, the shatjan watches over its herd but intervenes against predators only when losses grow too heavy, and it leads the reindeer to safety from fires or famine. It sees humans as just another force to deal with. Besides its own tongue it speaks the nearest tribe's language haltingly.

It eats roughly what reindeer eat and sometimes trades with people for vegetable delicacies the north lacks. The northern tribes depend on the herds and revere shatjan as totem spirits. Wise hunters make an offering before every hunt, and meeting one is treated as a good omen.