Swampmare

Kin to the tapir, the swampmare has thick, leathery greenish skin, a short snout, beady eyes, small ears and webbed, clawed feet for paddling through deep muck. It is just large enough to carry one gator-man rider and moves easily through water, mud and tangled swamp jungle.

A swampmare bites fiercely, and in water it can also claw with its forefeet, giving it all four of its attacks.

Its greatest defense is turning into a bald cypress, a form identical to a real tree. Swampmares from rain forests become more fitting local trees instead. If one fails a morale check and cannot run, it spends one round transforming and waits out the danger. The tree form is AC 0, weapon blows can inflict at most 1 point on it each round, and it never bleeds or otherwise betrays that it is an animal.

In thick vegetation its coloring lets it hide in shadows with a 30% chance.

Swampmares live in rain forests and swamps. When frightened they squeal and run for water; the squeals seem to be how family groups talk. The gator men of the great bayou breed tame strains as war mounts and pack animals, and sometimes eat them.

They eat leaves, fruit and other plants and need at least two hours of sun a day to stay healthy. A swampmare can stay in tree form up to six hours a day, and three or more hours as a tree in strong sun fills it up for the whole day. The gator men exploit this in wartime, coaxing mounts into tree shape for some hours each day so they need no fodder. With age a swampmare spends more and more time as a cypress, and when old age comes it usually becomes a tree one last time and stays that way.

The bald cypress drops its leaves each year, can tower up to 170 feet on a huge trunk, and pushes knobby root 'knees' above the waterline that boatbuilders favor. Its wood is prized timber, and the gator men might earn a fortune selling it, though they show no interest in trade.