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| creatures [2024/03/10 18:28] – created Ron Helwig | creatures [2026/07/03 15:00] (current) – Fix creature page rendering Seraphina |
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| ====== Norse Creatures ====== | ====== Norse Creatures ====== |
| ===== Farm Animals ===== | |
| Most Norse would be very familiar with the typical animals we associate with farming in Northern temperate climates. | |
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| **Cats** would certainly be kept around farms and housing. They are good for pest control. | This page collects animals and legendary beings that fit a Norse-inspired D&D campaign. Some are ordinary creatures that make farms, forests, fjords, and ruins feel lived-in. Others come from Norse myth, saga material, later Scandinavian folklore, or modern fantasy adapted to the campaign. |
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| **Chickens** are a staple that most houses would have. | The goal is not to make every animal magical. Ordinary creatures matter because they show what people eat, fear, hunt, herd, sacrifice, notice, and tell stories about. Mythic creatures should feel rarer and heavier: omens, local powers, old grudges, cursed treasure, or dangers that reshape the land around them. |
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| **Cows** provide dairy. Cheese is a great way to store milk for later consumption. Since cows require a lot more resources to care for, they will not usually be owned by poor farmers. It might take years to save up enough money to get one. | ===== Farm Animals ===== |
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| **Dogs** would be at least as common as they are today. Not only are they great alarm systems, but their mere presence tends to keep predators away. | Most Norse communities would know farm animals better than monsters. Livestock is food, wealth, labor, clothing, status, and survival through winter. |
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| **Goats** are another great source of dairy. They also eat all kinds of things, acting as waste disposals. Most farms would have a few goats. | * **Cats.** Kept for pest control. Also sacred to Freyja in later interpretation and often treated as luck-bearing household animals. |
| | * **Chickens.** Common household livestock; eggs were reliable food and hens fit the daily life of farms and villages. |
| **Horses** would be somewhat rare and owned by those with more wealth. | * **Cows.** Valued for milk, cheese, calves, hides, and wealth. Expensive to maintain and important in compensation or status. |
| | * **Dogs.** Guardians, companions, hunters, herders, and shipboard animals. A barking dog can be the first alarm a farm gets. |
| **Pigs** are another waste disposal and meat supply. Bacon and sausage are staples of every household. | * **Goats.** Hardy, versatile livestock that provide milk and meat. Mythologically linked to Thor’s goats, Tanngrisnir and Tanngnjóstr. |
| | * **Horses.** Valuable travel, status, and ritual animals. They deserve more weight than generic mounts in a Norse campaign. |
| **Sheep** provide wool and meat. Most farms would have some, along with simple tools to process the wool. | * **Pigs.** Important for meat and waste disposal; boar imagery also carries Freyr-associated prestige. |
| | * **Sheep.** Central to wool, winter clothing, trade, and everyday textile work, as well as meat and hides. |
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| ===== Wild Animals ===== | ===== Wild Animals ===== |
| Badgers | |
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| Bats | Wild animals should make the setting feel northern, practical, and dangerous without turning every forest walk into a monster fight. They are quarry, omens, pests, familiars, sacred symbols, and warning signs when something has gone wrong. |
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| Bears | * [[creatures:badgers|Badgers]] -- Nocturnal diggers that turn banks, field edges, and old barrows into riddled ground; usually avoided, but fierce when cornered. |
| | * [[creatures:bats|Bats]] -- Cave and ruin dwellers whose sudden swarms can reveal hidden chambers, foul air, or something deeper waking underground. |
| Boars | * [[creatures:bears|Bears]] -- Large forest and mountain predators tied to fear, strength, winter hunger, and the berserker image. |
| | * [[creatures:boars|Boars]] -- Violent forest animals and prestige quarry, with strong ties to Freyr, fertility, courage, and noble feasting. |
| Deer | * [[creatures:deer|Deer]] -- Common quarry and omen-bearing animals of the forest edge, useful for travel scenes, hunting, and signs of disturbance. |
| | * [[creatures:eagles|Eagles]] -- High-sky hunters linked to cliffs, omens, battlefields, and the upper reaches of the world tree. |
| Eagles | * [[creatures:elk|Elk]] -- Massive antlered forest animals whose strength and scale make them feel close to the giant-haunted wilderness. |
| | * [[creatures:foxes|Foxes]] -- Clever small predators of field, shore, and forest edge, useful as omens of stealth, theft, and hidden trails. |
| Elk | * [[creatures:frogs|Frogs]] -- Wetland animals that make excellent signs of marsh health, poison, witchcraft, and seasonal change. |
| | * [[creatures:hawks|Hawks]] -- Sharp-eyed hunting birds associated with falconry, warning, and the high branches of mythic trees. |
| Foxes | * [[creatures:lynx|Lynx]] -- Silent forest cats of the northern woods, rarely seen but excellent for stealth, ambush, and uncanny watcher scenes. |
| | * [[creatures:mountain-lions-puma-panther|Mountain Lions / Puma / Panther]] -- Not native to Scandinavia, but useful as foreign cats, exaggerated travel tales, or names applied to unfamiliar large predators. |
| Frogs | * [[creatures:owls|Owls]] -- Night hunters that bring silence, watchfulness, hidden wisdom, and unease to forests, barns, and grave mounds. |
| | * [[creatures:rabbits|Rabbits]] -- Small prey animals that support hunting scenes, survival play, and signs of seasonal or magical imbalance. |
| Hawks | * [[creatures:rats|Rats]] -- Settlement scavengers, shipboard pests, and plague-adjacent warning signs in granaries, docks, and ruins. |
| | * [[creatures:ravens|Ravens]] -- Sacred, clever carrion birds tied to Odin, battlefields, memory, news, and the boundary between omen and scavenger. |
| Lynx | * [[creatures:snakes|Snakes]] -- Cold-blooded hazards of rock, heath, and story, linked in myth to venom, treasure, boundaries, and world-encircling fear. |
| | * [[creatures:spiders|Spiders]] -- Web-builders of sheds, caves, old halls, and dark forests, easily shifted from natural pest to horror symbol. |
| Mountain Lions/Puma/Panther | * [[creatures:squirrels|Squirrels]] -- Small tree creatures made mythically important by Ratatoskr, the gossiping messenger of Yggdrasil. |
| | * [[creatures:turtles|Turtles]] -- Rare or foreign-feeling reptiles in a northern campaign, best used around trade, warm coasts, magic, or imported curiosities. |
| Owls | * [[creatures:weasels|Weasels]] -- Small, fierce hunters of burrows, barns, and stone walls, useful for familiars and stealthy movement. |
| | * [[creatures:wolves-and-wargs|Wolves & Wargs]] -- Feared pack hunters and their darker fantasy kin, tied to wilderness danger, outlaws, war, hunger, and Fenrir’s shadow. |
| Rabbits | |
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| Rats | |
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| Ravens - Hugin and Munin | |
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| Snakes | |
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| Spiders | |
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| Squirrels | |
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| Turtles | |
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| Weasels | |
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| Wolves & Wargs | |
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| ===== Monsters ===== | ===== Monsters ===== |
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| Dragons / Wyrms | These beings belong to myth, saga, folklore, and fantasy. Use them with more weight than ordinary animals. A monster should usually leave signs before it appears: missing livestock, changed weather, bad dreams, old taboos, cursed treasure, strange tracks, or people who refuse to speak its name. |
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| Draugr & Gjenganger | |
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| Fafnir - a dwarf that was transformed into a dragon by his greed. | * [[creatures:dragons-wyrms|Dragons / Wyrms]] -- Ancient scaled terrors of treasure, poison, fire, wisdom, and doom; in Norse style they are often serpentine wyrms as much as winged dragons. |
| | * [[creatures:draugr-and-gjenganger|Draugr & Gjenganger]] -- Restless dead from Norse and Scandinavian tradition: grave-haunting, revenge-driven, physically dangerous, and socially terrifying. |
| | * [[creatures:fafnir|Fafnir]] -- The dragon of greed from the Sigurd cycle: once a dwarf or dwarf-like being, transformed by cursed treasure and slain by the hero Sigurd. |
| | * [[creatures:gullinbursti|Gullinbursti]] -- Freyr’s golden boar, forged by dwarves: a shining divine mount, not a normal animal or random monster. |
| | * [[creatures:hafgufa-lyngbakr|Hafgufa / Lyngbakr]] -- Island-like sea monsters from northern tradition, useful for ocean awe, false landfalls, and encounters where the terrain is alive. |
| | * [[creatures:hellhounds-garm|Hellhounds / Garm]] -- Supernatural hounds of fire, death, gates, and pursuit; Garmr is the great hound associated with Hel and Ragnarök. |
| | * [[creatures:kraken|Kraken]] -- A later Scandinavian sea-monster name that works well for enormous tentacled horror, deep-water fear, and sailor rumor. |
| | * [[creatures:landvaettir|Landvættir]] -- Land spirits that guard places, families, farms, coastlines, and regions; often better treated as powers to respect than monsters to kill. |
| | * [[creatures:marmenill|Marmenill (Mermen)]] -- Aquatic humanoids from Norse sea lore, sometimes prophetic, dangerous, or strange rather than simply merfolk with another name. |
| | * [[creatures:nixie|Nixie]] -- Water spirits related to the nykr/nøkk tradition: beautiful, dangerous, musical, shapeshifting, and associated with drowning. |
| | * [[creatures:sea-serpent|Sea Serpent]] -- Lesser kin or echoes of Jörmungandr: long ocean serpents that threaten ships, reefs, and storm-dark waters. |
| | * [[creatures:trolls|Trolls]] -- Wilderness and mountain beings that range from giant-like monsters to uncanny neighbors; dangerous, old, and varied in Scandinavian tradition. |
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| Gullinbursti - a golden boar made by the dwarves. | ===== Races ===== |
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| Hafgufa / Lyngbakr | Many creature “races” in D&D are loosely based on Norse ideas, but often diverge heavily from original myth. |
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| Hellhounds / Garm - Garm is the guardian of Hel and the largest of the hellhounds. | ==== Dwarves ==== |
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| Kraken | * In Norse myth, dwarves or //dvergar// are master craftsmen and often associated with underground places. |
| | * There is no need to make every dwarf short, comic, or modern-fantasy-coded. In this campaign they can be skilled, dangerous, wealthy, secretive, and old. |
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| Landvættir | ==== Elves ==== |
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| Marmenill (Mermen) | * The //álfar// are present in Norse sources, but their exact nature is vague. |
| | * D&D elves can still exist for gameplay, but campaign lore should not pretend that the full D&D version is identical to the older mythic idea. |
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| Nixie | ==== Aesir & Vanir ==== |
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| Sea Serpent | * The Aesir and Vanir are divine beings, not ordinary adventuring races. |
| | * For gameplay, divine servants, descendants, avatars, or blessed bloodlines can carry some of this imagery without making the gods into routine NPC species. |
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| Trolls | ==== Jotuns ==== |
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| ====== Races ====== | * The //jötnar// are chaotic, old, and varied. They are not always simply huge monsters, though D&D giants are a useful table-facing adaptation. |
| A lot of what we "know" about the races come from more modern interpretations and fictionalization of the old myths. Those more modern interpretations got integrated into D&D from the beginning, so we pretty much just have to live with it. | * Fire giants, frost giants, stone giants, and storm giants can all be treated as different campaign expressions of jotun power. |
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| ===== Dwarves ===== | ==== Goliaths ==== |
| There is nothing in the original sources to indicate that the dwarves were short or stout. They might have been just like humans, and current beliefs about their stature might be due to Christian influence. They were usually skilled craftsmen though. | |
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| ===== Elves ===== | * Goliaths are a modern D&D invention. |
| Nothing in the original sources tells us that elves, either light or dark elves, are any different than regular humans. They are definitely not fey creatures. However, for D&D purposes we can include the pointed ears and at least some sort of fey-ness. | * In this campaign they work well as descendants of jotuns, stone giants, or mountain folk changed by old giant blood. |
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| ===== Aesir & Vanir ===== | ==== Warforged ==== |
| The Aesir and Vanir seem to basically be immortal or at least very long-lived super-powerful humanoids. | |
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| ===== Jotuns ===== | * Warforged are not Norse myth creatures. |
| There is also nothing in the original sources that says that Jotuns are any different than the Aesir or Vanir. They look just like us humans. But for purposes of D&D, we can accept that they are larger and giant-like. In most D&D worlds Jotuns **are** giants, so we will go with that and have the various giant races exist under the term Jotun. | * In this setting, they are creations of Byzantine artificers in Constantinople, used for military service. After 20 years, they gain their freedom. Characters of this type should usually take the Varangian background. |
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| ===== Goliaths ===== | ==== Tabaxi ==== |
| This race is fairly new to D&D and isn't part of the Norse history or mythology. For D&D purposes we can say that they are a mortal child-race of the Jotuns. So if Stone Giants, AKA Jotunstein, exist then there should be a sub-race of goliaths that have similar traits to the stone giants. | |
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| ===== Warforged ===== | * Tabaxi are not Norse myth creatures. |
| These constructed humanoids are produced by advanced artificers and wizards, so they are usually found only in the largest of cities. For our purposes they would have been built in Constantinople to serve as guards or in the military. Once their twenty years of service is up they have earned their freedom, so they can then become adventurers. I have a special homebrew background I created called Varangian that players should choose for their warforged characters. | * In this setting, they are Egyptian-born wanderers and natural enemies of gnolls. Their foreign nature should make them rare and memorable to most Norsefolk. |
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| ===== Tabaxi ===== | |
| These cat-like creatures usually come from around Egypt. They are natural enemies of Gnolls, who typically can be found in desert areas. | |