I just made up Brudae (singular: Brudo) today so I don't have a lot about them yet. I know they live as far east as the western slopes of the mountains which border the Northern Realm which makes up the base of their habitat; the Northern Realm that is (
map, sorry the map is a little poorly done. It was made a long time ago, and in a hurry). As far as looks go, they are pretty much really big wolves with some bear-like qualities.
I want to take a moment to take my own creature creating advice and fill in a few set questions. I'm going to just leave the questions as they are, though I should reformat them sometime soon.
I'm also thinking about changing the name up a bit. Maybe Brundae/Brundo? I could use some suggestions there.
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1. I would start with where it is my creature lives, asking questions about the climate. Is it hot or cold? Dry or wet? Lots of sun or a little?
I also might ask what sort of vegetation is around. Are there lots of trees? Is it a great grassy plain? Are they in the mountains with those little stunted shrubs?
The climate is temperate. There are almost no forests to speak of in the Northern Realm, so were are looking mostly at grass and shrubs. It is also fairly dry except for all of the springs, rivers, and streams and such. This is partially because most of the rain, which comes from the sea in the east, gets dumped in the valley on the eastern side of the mountains. Very little rain or snowfall reaches the land of the Brudae
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2. Then I take a general animal kingdom to start with, and you can pick extremes if you want. So, do I want reptiles who live in the snow, or an amphibian, or maybe a hybrid?
For all intensive purposes, this is basically a hybrid of a wolf and a bear.
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3. Once I've decided I might look at some unusual examples of these types of creatures in our world. Aka, I would poke around on Wikipedia for a while, looking at pictures.
Done, well sort of. I looked for pictures of wolf-bears.
Here and
here are the two best I found. They really combined the features in the ways I had in my head.
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4. Then I would move into the ways the creature might survive in its environment. If it is an extreme environment then it is more fun to think of ways they might battle the elements. Asking questions about where it lives, what it eats, how it reproduces, whether or not it lives in groups, and how it escapes predators can be helpful.
They have to survive some pretty cold, but relatively dry winters. They would most likely stay in packs so they could hunt some of the larger plane dwelling animals (I'm imagining bison, or something of the sort). Brudae are at the top of their respective food chains. I imagine them digging out large burrows to protect their young, but they would be fairly migratory since they would need to follow the herds of elk and bison, so they wouldn't put a whole lot of effort into making burrows for any extended period of time. Just to keep warm and the like. There isn't enough snow to make the dens like polar bears do, but maybe something like that.
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5. This step could come in handy earlier on, but I don't usually think about it until I have the creature at least partially created in my head. Anyway, I would think of why I'm making up this creature at all. Do I need a strange source of food in a desperate climate where my characters are escaping to? Am I adding another level of danger to a hostile environment? Is it something that the characters hate or admire? Is it a symbol of a nation?
I was actually just placing them in a strange part of the world to add a sense of mystery. I.e. what are these Brudae doing way over here in the mountains? I just wanted something to be amiss, so I had a plane dwelling animal coming out of a forest region. They are extremely hard to kill because of their size and the fact that they roam in groups, but I might have a few outcasts roaming around later in the story which will make for some interesting scenes.
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6. Then I would ask in what way do the intelligent beings of the world interact with these creatures on a day to day basis.
For the most part, the men and elves avoid them, but I bet the orcs would love a chance to ride them around. They are certainly the right size for the orcs, and are of a similar large and aggressive nature. The only problem is that orcs live in a forested region to the south. I suppose there could be a domesticated verity for the orcs to use.
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7. All throughout these steps the visuals of my creature are developing for me. The coloring comes either for camouflage or for mating rituals. The size is so large because a human has to be able to ride it.
So these things are mostly of a brown coloring which helps them blend in with the grass and such during the summer. During the winter, since there is a small amount of snowfall, their coloring would lighten and even turn white-ish. Their coats would be very shaggy and even matted during the cold seasons, and, of course, they would shed a great deal during the summer to get their new coat.
I imagine they would communicate through deep howls as well as other guttural barks and growls.
They are fast, but also have the sort of build to trek for miles at a time at great speed (hence the bear-like bodies; bears are great long-distance runners). They wouldn't be exceptional sprinters, but much faster than a man at least. Not as fast as something like a horse.
I would think that the social factors of a pack would pretty much be like a wolf pack. I don't see either sex as being much bigger than the other, but there would be the alpha male and female rolls which would most likely mean that they are the two largest of the back.
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That is enough for now. Feel free to comment. I'm still working on these a bit. I would love to hear what you think.
