Beast of Bruada

The creatures known as Beasts of Bruada are horrendous, ever-hungering monsters which live only to hunt and feed. They are born of Bruada, The First Monster, the goddess of blood and the savage hunt.

Description

No Beasts of Bruada is like another. They are each unique, and are all legendary monsters within their own territories. They usually resemble ordinary predators, such as wolves, bears, snakes, birds of prey, sharks or great felines. However, they are also known to appear in the form of less feared animals, such as great apes, elks, crabs, rats or amphibians.
What unites these various forms of Beasts is their monstrous size and ravenous appetite. Rarely are such Beasts larger than a warhorse, and many are known to be as great as a farmhouse. They often have unnatural features, such as spiny protrusions, unnaturally tough and calloused skin, claws which are devilishly sharp and long, or jaws which open horrendously wide, like a bear trap filled with needle-like teeth. They hunt with a savage intelligence, and many hunters or would-be-heroes have been caught unaware, believing they are against a simple-minded animal.
When a Beast of Bruada falls, its heart beats in its chest until it has drained itself of blood and it begins to rot and disintegrate. In recent decades, enterprising individuals have harvested and preserved these so-called ravening hearts for rather inventive uses.

Behavior

Beasts of Bruada prowl the edges of deep wilderness, and the greatest among them are found in the old and forgotten places of the world. Driven by bloodthirst, they will venture out of their lairs and attack nearby settlements, without warning or mercy.
Beasts of Bruada delight in causing terror and leaving destruction in their wake. Those who survive an encounter with such a Beast are often left horribly maimed, an awful reminder of the bloodshed they witnessed.

Relationship with kith

Creatures of such monstrous strength and origin serve primarily to please the Beastmother, and they serve as a powerful reminder of her strength and influence to kith who cross paths with them, or grow listening to cautionary tales of them. They punish those communities who refuse to worship or pay tribute to her, which she is glad to extract herself.
Supplicants of Bruada are known to petition their goddess for the aid of such a beast, to help take revenge or simply to aid in carnage which they wish to sow in Bruada's name. Such worshippers of the Beastmother often end up as collateral casualties of the Beast's rampage, but their deaths also please her, and she has plans for followers who die so in her service.

Notable Beasts of Bruada

The Bloodworm. A gargantuan leech which prowls the coastal marshlands of southwestern Mundus Major. It is said that the creature constantly bleeds through its leathery skin, staining the waters and reeds around it red. It is said to attack large creatues and groups traversing the marsh, but it avoids lone wanderers. It reportedly chased groups of kith, far from its usual feeding grounds, and completely slaughtered the villages they fled to in the years 1332, 1392, 1470, and 1511.