Vangorlinth (VAN GORE LIN-TH)

The vangorlinth were a race of flesheaters too horrible to be fully described. Accounts date from the Age of Myth but are thought to reference even older events. Many scholars consider the creature to be a summation of all dangerous predators mortal's distant ancestors may have faced and the hunts that drove the monsters to extinction to be allegories for the rise of organization and eventually civilization.
While many relics claim to be some fragment of a vangorlinth, to date only one partially complete skeleton has been found by non-other than the notorious explorer Qheven who claims to have found the bones being worshiped by a group of primitives on an island in the Southern Ocean. He maintains that the group had removed the bones from the earth and rebuilt the missing pieces with metalworking skills lost to the tribe, which sadly was wiped out in a fanatical attack on Qheven's camp.

Basic Information

Anatomy

Described as having "the body of a horse, neck of a serpent, and face of a man" these fearsome creatures were said to have walked early Sanzeia preying upon any mortals they found with an endless hunger.

Behaviour

Sources are understandably more fictional than factual, but a few common traits appear in reference to the vangorlinth. They are exceptionally efficient predators, and both ravenous and malicious in their approach to mortals. They were said to stalk mortals only to skin them alive before devouring them. The skins would be used to fashion garments for the vangorlinth, with particularly fearsome examples referred to as "wearing a coat of 100 faces."

Additional Information

Social Structure

At least according tradition, the vangorlinth were solitary and territorial, coming together only to mate (which in some traditions was fatal to one or both parties). To the extent this species is thought to have been an actuality and not entirely a cultural boogeyman, it was mortalkind's greater number and organization that allowed them to isolate and drive these fearsome creatures to extinction.

Facial characteristics

The head of a vangorlinth was said to resemble the grinning skull of a man with its flesh pulled back, and was large enough to bite a person in half.

Average Intelligence

Normally described in terms of beasts, the vangorlinth are also said to have fashioned (admittedly grotesque) clothing and in some cases been able to speak.

Reconstruction of a supposed Vangorlinth skeleton, Belde

EXTINCT

Average Height

8' / 2.4m

Average Length

12' / 3.7m