Walrus Folk [Dragonlance]

Walrus folk have barrel-shaped bodies, human limbs and walrus faces. Their padded, flipperlike feet are webbed for swimming and tipped with hooked claws that grip ice but are useless in a fight; their stubby-fingered hands can hold a staff or throw a spear. Dark gray or brown leathery hide hangs in folds under arms and chin and around the waist, smells of fish and covers a deep layer of fat that lets them swim in icy seas unharmed. Small dark eyes sit above broad nostrils, bone-cracking teeth and stiff lip bristles that sweep snow and strain drinking water.

The tusks, enlarged upper incisors of thick solid bone, curve over the lower lip and reach almost 3 feet on big adults; they serve as weapons and digging tools. Females have 2-foot tusks, slimmer bodies and paler hides. Clothing is decoration only, such as fur capes, scarves and the fish-spine crowns of medicine women. They waddle on land, but big adults can stay under water 30 minutes, breathing through a valved blowhole on the neck.

Their speech of grunts, snarls and coughs, backed by chest slaps and twitches, is subtle; only 5% of characters with Intelligence 16 or more can follow it, though evil races such as minotaurs fare better. About 20% speak common.

Their tactics are crude: circle behind foes using their sure footing on ice, or just charge. Their strength adds 2 points of damage to any weapon. Weapons are mostly bone, stone or wood, plus a few frost cleavers (battle axes +4 forged by the ice-dwelling human tribes), and their prized harpoons. A harpoon stabs for 2d4 against medium-sized foes and 2d6 against large ones, and a walrus warrior hurling it by its leather strap adds 2 more. Stiff hands keep them from using bows. Instead of a weapon, one can gore a single foe twice for 2d4 per tusk. They never wear armor.

No cold, magical or natural, harms them, but fire of any kind deals 1 extra point per die. Warmth also hurts: they are uncomfortable at average temperatures of 32° to 40° F and lose 1d4+1 hit points for every week where the average stays above 40° F.

Dim and suspicious, they kill trespassers and hunt helpless prey for fun, shunning a dragon but delighting in massacring seals, though they cooperate with evil races who share their goals. They live only in bitter cold, on ocean shores or drifting glaciers, moving on when game runs out. Homes are tusk-cut ice blocks lit by oil pots.

A tribe of about 20 holds several families; females bear one or two young every two years. Young aged 2 to 20 have 2 Hit Dice, cannot wield weapons and gore for 1d4 per tusk; the lifespan is about 60 years. The leader, typically the meanest male, must be 30 or older with at least 5 Hit Dice; he decides everything and names a deputy to succeed him. A tribe with no suitable leaders left joins another. The eldest female, the medicine woman, can use predict weather and cure serious wounds three times each per day (the forecast covers 24 hours within 30 miles, 90% accurate) and trains her successor.

Coins and gems are only charms and lures. Tamed ice bears track game, carry riders bareback over deep drifts and pull wood-and-bone sleds, two bears to a dozen riders, on blubber-greased runners. Sleds carry pots of oil distilled from seabed deposits plus pouches of embers; lit pots are thrown at foes and are deadly against vehicles such as human iceboats.

Ice bears, not evil races, are their lasting allies. Their great enemies are the ice-dwelling human tribes, locked with them in an endless land feud; those humans hunt them for blubber, for hides to make warm clothing, and for tusks to carve into jewelry and weapons. Walrus folk never trade and make nothing valuable but weapons, which collectors prize, harpoons above all. They eat fish trapped under lake ice, seal, whale, seabirds and even carrion, always raw.