Shiverscrape

Somewhere in the Gifreethan countryside...

Shadows grow ever larger as the sun threatens to disappear below the horizon. Bihra can see her breath in the freezing air with every trudging step she takes through the snow. Only a few miles left to return to her warm cottage with her jug of drail cider and roaring fire. But Bihra had been careless, and she let the day get away from her while she was out exploring the woods; the twinkling of her cottage's window a maddening distance down the road was a constant reminder. Creeping fingers of ice tugged at the few inches of exposed skin around her face. As she crested the last hill, Bihra's sigh of relief caught in her throat. From the copse of trees on her left came a horrid, screeching rattle that seemed to echo around the inside of her skull. Then another. And another. Jittering, pitch-black forms separated themselves from the shadows underneath the trees and began to make their jagged, unsteady way towards her. Shiverscrapes. Creatures like a child's imagining of an imp, with skin like charcoal and wild, unfocused eyes beneath spiny fur. Almost absentmindedly, the shiverscrapes gnashed the teeth at the end of their tubular snouts. Gripping the handle of her skinning knife, Bihra broke into a run, eliciting more screeches from the creatures behind her. She had no time to look back and gauge their numbers - the only way to survive now was to get to her roaring fire before the shiverscrapes caught her.

A Frozen Menace

Every farmhand, soldier, and misbehaving child knows of the shiverscrapes. Active from the first frozen day of Dethed to the last cold day of Ounsid, shiverscrapes infest every forest and cave across the Gray Expanse. While it's unknown where they first originated from, their hardy constitution and omnivorous appetites make them capable of surviving just about anywhere cold enough to support their low body temperatures. Not fearsome fighters on their own, the strength of shiverscrapes comes from the fact that they almost never appear alone. They reproduce quickly and grow to maturity in less than two weeks, but shiverscrapes as young as three days old can already be dangerous to unprepared travelers. As such, they are the cause of many travel bans in the Gray Expanse during the colder months.

Frigid Biology

^{Excerpt from "On Northerne Beastes" by Reglis P. Withernight, thaumobiologist}
Shiverscrapes are roughly humanoid in shape, with two long arms and two stubby legs. Their heads are a funnel shape that end in a narrow ring of teeth they use to impale vital organs in their prey. Most of their bodies, save for their whiplike tail, are covered in coarse quill-like fur that causes irritation if exposed to bare skin. The most disquieting feature, according to many travelers, is the way a shiverscrape's many unevenly distributed eyes flicker about without focus. Some say they can see phantasms - others attribute it simply to madness. Unlike many so-called "cold blooded" animals, shiverscrape cryolymph (their equivalent of blood) is actually cooled and condensed below the freezing temperature of water. Should one have the misfortune of coming into contact with a shiverscrape, its skin would actually be cold to the touch. Thus, they cannot venture to places too warm for their cryolymph, or their blood will quite literally begin to boil away. As hateful as the shiverscrapes can be, the process has been described as "unnecessarily grotesque" by those that have beheld it.