Displacer Beast

This monstrous predator takes its name from its ability to displace light so that it appears to be several feet away from its actual location. A displacer beast resembles a sleek great cat covered in blue-black fur.
However, its otherworldly origins are clear in its six legs and the two tentacles sprouting from its shoulders, both ending in pads tipped with spiky protrusions. A displacer beast's eyes glow with an awful malevolence that persists even in death.

Unseelie Origins

Displacer beasts roamed the twilight lands of the Feywild for ages, until they were captured and trained by the Unseelie Court. The warriors of the court selectively bred the beasts to reinforce their ferocious and predatory nature, using them to hunt unicorns, pegasi, and other wondrous prey. However, it didn't take long for the displacer beasts to use their malevolent intelligence to escape their masters.
Running and breeding freely in the Feywild, the displacer beasts soon came to the attention of the Seelie Court. With blink dog companions at their side, fey hunters drove these predators to the fringes of the Feywild, where many crossed over to the Material Plane. To this day, displacer beasts and blink dogs attack each other on sight.

Love of the Kill

Displacer beasts kill not just for food but also for sport. They target prey even when not hungry, often toying with their victims to entertain themselves until they are ready to eat. After killing its prey using its tentacles, a displacer beast drags the corpse to a quiet place where it can feed without distraction.
Displacer beasts hunt alone or in small prides that demonstrate skill at setting ambushes. A single beast will strike and withdraw, luring prey into a densely wooded area where its pack mates wait. Packs of displacer beasts hunting near trade roads recall the frequency and schedule of regular caravans, laying down ambushes to pick off those caravans.

Basic Information

Biological Traits

The displacer beast is a magical creature that resembles a large black panther, save for its six legs and the pair of horned tentacles sprouting from its shoulders. Its name derives from its ability to appear up to a full yard away from its actual position, caused by subtle vibrations emitted from its flesh that apparently refract light to distort the beast's apparent location. This enables the beast to avoid most initial attacks, which are directed at the illusionary form which usually appears closer to the attacker. From this power and from their own stamina, ferocity, and lighting skill, they are also highly resistant to magical effects, poison, and attacks that may be dodged (such as a dragon's breath). They are devilishly hard to kill. 
In order to learn more about these strange creatures, I had to capture one alive - a task made most difficult by their rarity. What few displacer beasts there are prefer to live in the deep wilderness - in old forests, mountains and hilly regions, on vast plains, and even in the desert. Occasionally a pack of them is found in a swamp. The swamp variety tends to be somewhat larger than other sorts and swims very well. It is especially dangerous because of these facts, and because the swamp provides excellent cover for ambushes.
I was able to obtain a grant from our lordship and a leave from this university to obtain a specimen of this creature for study. I gathered a force of porters and armed men and proceeded into the Broken Spire country, where we searched for three weeks. Finally, we sighted a large male displacer on a mountainside, and one of my more zealous followers cast a net at the beast - missing, of course. It then ran off with incredible speed, apparently without using its front legs for travel. The beast looked for a few moments like a feline centaur.
After a few more luckless days, we were blessed to come across a displacer beast cave, which I identified at once by the abrasions left on the cave mouth from the beast's habit of sharpening its claws and tentacles on bare rock. Realizing our danger as well as our fortune, I deployed the twelve mercenaries with us about the cave in pairs, arming them with short swords as well as their nets. Two of my assistants carried long darts, especially prepared with a sleeping venom approved by the Council of Scholars and our lordship for use against rogue creatures who share no humanity.
Having prepared my spells and said my prayers to the gods and the university's alchemical staff (who had mixed the sleeping venom), I gave a signal and every man present gave out a roaring shout. We abruptly discovered, as the displacers emerged, that we had found a family lair. An enormous male, purple-black in color, a smaller female of blue tone, and two cubs rushed forth. My amazement could only be imagined, as no young displacer beasts had ever been known in these lands, and it had been assumed that such creatures were somehow generated full-grown. I was barely able to recover myself to raise the iron nail in my hands and speak the words to the spell of holding. The mercenaries hurled their nets at the male, almost forgetting about the rest of the pack in their haste to bring down the greater threat, and chaos reigned for the space of perhaps a minute.
Merciful are the gods of the university, and wise are the old men in the alchemical department! At our moment of greatest peril, the male beast's natural resistances failed him as the iron nail vanished from my hands and the male displacer vanished - only to reappear several feet away, flat on the ground, paralyzed! Only one of the many nets hurled had even struck him, entangling his horned tentacles and perhaps sparing the life of a soldier that the beast had begun to maul. The soldier himself was caught by the spell, but was no worse for the experience and was quickly treated by Brother Synon of Saint Ardan's, who accompanied us. The blue-black female succumbed to a dart from one of my aides, and the cubs were quickly netted as they tried to escape.
A marvelous find, I must admit. The male was huge, measuring 11' from nose to tail, with 7' tentacles. It weighed in at about 600 lbs. The female was quite a bit smaller, only about 8™ long and 450 lbs., but was in excellent health. Each cub was about the size of a large housecat, but lacked the characteristic tentacles, having only knobby growths instead. In captivity here at the university, the cubs quickly developed their adult size and appearance within a matter of weeks. Their growth rate was astonishing. It appears that they reached full maturity at the ripe old age of four months.
The displacer beast's claim to fame is, of course, it's power to appear 3' away from its actual location. The sage Dunmeyer has written extensively of displacers, though he had not studied live ones, and he once conjectured that his remarkable effect was somehow caused by molecular vibrations. Until I was able to shed new light on this mystery, anyone else could do nothing but guess, though my research is far from complete itself. It seems now that the molecular vibrations, stimulated by a specialized group of nerves, occur only in the outer layers of the beast's skin cells. Where as the vibrational movement is too minute to be normally noticed, it is sufficient to bend and redirect the rays of colored light. The refracted light rays form the illusionary image while the true form is masked, virtually invisible. This magical power is automatic, but it may be consciously directed by the beast itself.
It is still unknown, even to me, precisely how the light rays are deflected by the vibrations. Due to the beast's magical nature, I would not be at all surprised if the super-natural had a fair hand in the origin of the talent. Interestingly enough, displacer beasts are able to see each other's true forms and are not deceived by displacing - in fact confirmed by watching them in captivity. Although only full-grown displacer beasts are found in packs outside the lair, obviously there are young. They never leave the lair until they are full-grown or the family moves to another locale. It seems as if the beasts do not want the young to be out before their displacing talent has been acquired. As violently disposed as they are to other creatures, they do not fight among their own species and exhibit no sense of rivalry among themselves, except for the play of young cubs. This playful behavior vanishes with adulthood. I am currently attempting to familiarize one of the grown displacers in the bestiary to my presence, though without much success.
Given the observations of other explorers who have recently visited the Broken Spires on other quests, we have a more complete picture of the life of the average displacer beast. Lairs contain two adult displacer beasts - male and female, of course - and perhaps as many as four cubs, though usu-ally only one or two are produced. The birth rate among displacers appears to be quite low, given their small numbers. Little is known about their mating or birthing procedures. Unlike most carnivorous mammals, displacer cubs are born with their eyes open and a set of usable teeth for eating meat right away. Adult females have mammary glands and nurse their cubs until they leave the lair at the age of four months. Newborn kittens have no tentacles and are about the size of small housecats, though after the first eight weeks their tentacles sprout and grow at the rate of an inch or so a day until after about 30 days more have passed. At this time, the cubs will measure close to 4½' long, weigh near 90 lbs., and generally be the same size as a large lynx. At the end of the first year, length and weight will be approximately 7½' and 350 lbs., respectively.
From then on, the length of the tail will be around one-third of the overall body length, and tentacles will typically equal half the total length. When the beast reaches full maturity after two years, 10' is average length for a male, with 9' being the norm for females. Weight is about 500 lbs. for males, females 450. The extremely fast growth is even more impressive when one stops to consider that the beast's average lifespan is perhaps close to 100 years.
Distantly related to the true cats, the displacer beasts hunt in a similar fashion but often for more powerful game, such as giant deer, boars, cattle, buffalo, bears, and (as every child knows) blink dogs. They move silently until within striking distance for a lightning-fast attack made by several adults at once. They generally use only their tentacles, but their fangs and talons may be brought into play in close combat. Though they walk at a quick pace on all six legs when fighting or running, they raise their forelegs to claw at victims if they so desire and can run on their rear four legs without difficulty.
Displacer beasts can leap 20' straight up, 25' across on a standing jump, and double that on a running jump. Unlike many other creatures with more than four legs that have slow metabolisms, the displacer beast can move with great speed and with high dexterity despite the extra pair of legs that might get in the way.
I regret to say it, but a great many of those who have followed my work care little about my discoveries on how the displacer beast hides its form and creates an illusionary one, being more interested in the creature's violent temperament. "Why are they so vicious around blink dogs?" is the most often-asked question that comes from visitors to the university bestiary. Indeed, the murderous fury of a displacer beast is fit only for nightmares, of which I had several after our successful hunting expedition. Not being especially intelligent or cunning, displacers are not subtle when they burst into attack. They have been seen to maul any beast that comes within striking range of them, from humans to small dragons, and rumors abound of howling battles between some large carnivore and a hungry pack of displacers, shrieking and screaming their fury as they savagely tear their prey to shreds.
I know of few things to compare such madness to in the animal kingdom, not even excepting the behavior of certain berserkers and were-beasts. I have evidence that some process connected to their maturation, likely a growth hormone, affects their minds as they go from amiable kitten to adult killer. From the moment that the tentacles of the two kittens we had captured began to grow, the kittens became irascible and violent. I have scars on my left arm from wounds caused by Emerald Fire, the larger of the pair, that have only recently healed. This terrible nature only grows worse over time, though, as I've said be-fore, they will not attack their own kind. Perhaps the scent of one another is the key element in preventing these attacks; I cannot say, though I have further experiments planned.
As foul-tempered as it is, the displacer beast reserves its most intense hatred for blink dogs. There seems to be a particular reason for this, as my research has shown, but the explanation was hard to come by. The two species both prefer temperate climates, but the displacer beast usually lives in the forests and mountains, whereas the blink dog is generally a creature of the open plains, so there are no territorial dis-putes or fights over prey on a species-wide basis. The "dog-and-cat" hypothesis holds no water here, as you might guess, since cats and dogs are not enemies by nature.
My explanation is based upon prolonged experimentation (and the deaths of several blink dogs). The very actions of displace-ment and blinking seem to interfere with the nervous and mental systems of the opposing creatures. I have seen a blind-folded displacer beast jump and yowl when a blink dog was allowed to teleport itself within several feet of the former's cage. The blink dog, in turn, began to snarl and bark in the direction of the displacer even though it, too , was blindfolded, had its sensitive nose covered, and was within the area of a spell of silence. Detection of the other is automatic for each, and appears to trigger hate, ferocity, and violence in both animals, especially the displacer beast, whose special nerves are spread throughout its entire body. This occurs whenever the creatures are within 150' of one another.
Even if the blink dogs are not using their power or if the displacer beasts are asleep and not using theirs, both have learned to identify the other by scent and sight, provoking automatic flight or attack, depending upon the circumstances. Both species can also detect the approximate location of their enemy should their respective special powers be brought into play, and some rather sophisticated wild blink dogs have learned to not use their powers when preparing ambushes for the displacers. Blink dogs get a general feeling for the direction in which a displacer beast lies, but the displacers can find a blink dog as soon as it blinks in with unfailing accuracy.
As a side note, I would be curious to learn the effect upon a blink dog of wearing one of those remarkable displacing cloaks that adventurers talk about. I would wager hat being caught by a pack of the creatures would not be a pleasant experience!
A truly unique and interesting creature, the displacer beast. I am more than happy to spend the rest of my life studying it.

Average Weight

500 lbs

Average Length

9'