#the hound is one of my fav creations tbh.

[scattered-winter]

also for your oc ask game: !! i am very curious about your creatures/monsters!

I'll tell u abt some things from a vague fantasy concept I have !! I actually originally came up with these creature concepts to fit in with a fantasy au from an existing fandom + characters but I ended up liking them so much that I've started developing the worldbuilding itself separate from the au so I can eventually fit it into one of my oc stories <3 as of right now I don't actually have any ocs for this particular story setting BUT I have the world ready for ocs pretty much at any time so as soon as I think of them I'll have a whole story pretty much ready <33

so first: the cats <3

they're like. large cats (lions, leopards, tigers, etc) except they're BIG. like. tryna think of a good comparison but if you've seen the legend of korra, they're about as big as naga, the polar bear dog

speaking technically, there are breeds of giant cat that are pretty much really, really big housecats that civilians have in their households (usually to pull wagons or lift things, or sometimes they're just pets) but the cats I like to talk about are the slightly wild ones (lions, tigers, etc). they're the oldest species of giant cat, and all the domesticated ones are their descendants (like a wolf + dog situation) and they're the biggest and most dangerous. additionally, they're intrinsically linked to knights because as part of their training, a knight will choose a kitten (about the size of a small golden retriever <3) to become his battle companion for life. he will raise the cat and train it, and they will have a mystical bond that ties them together in ways most people can't even imagine. they can sense each other's emotions, and it's like. a tether . sorta tying them together. if a knight has a partner or kids or anyone he's particularly close to, the cat will sort of psuedo-bond with them (there isn't really an actual Bond but the cat will protect them like they were the knight himself) and if either the knight or the cat dies, the tether snaps, and losing a cat is considered one of the absolute worst tragedies that could happen because it's like losing a part of yourself. if a knight loses a cat he is able to get a new one, but a lot of knights don't do it because it's too painful to reopen the bond. and if a cat loses his knight, usually the pain of the severed bond drives them completely feral and they need to be taken down, or released into the wild unless the knight had family who could take care of it instead.

royal families also traditionally have cats, but they're more of a sign of status than an actual battle companion/steed. but since I love knights so much (not a secret to anyone who's been here for a while) I figured this worldbuilding would probably be centered around knights and their cats because <333333333

and I'll also talk about the hound!!! I've touched on it before on my blog but couldn't find the posts alas, so I'll try to sum everything up:

basically, the hound is an ancient eldritch horror that haunts the darkest corners of the world. it's passed into legend and so stories have spread, and so people will say it's a giant wolf, or a dragon dog, or a bunch of other things, but none of them are actually right. it isn't even organic matter!! it's basically a cocktail of dark spells and curses and black magic all compressed together like a neutron star and it takes the form of a giant shadowy dog. it has huge teeth and claws that can retract like a cat, and their full length is about a foot and a half long, and its claws and teeth also infect anyone who is bitten/scratched with death magic that slowly leeches away at their life force until they basically become a husk. like a zombie except it answers only to the hound. the husks are relatively easy to kill, but they can also spread the death magic infection to others, so if left unchecked it could be a major fucking problem. however if the hound kills its prey, they won't like. resurrect as a husk or anything. they have to be alive to be infected. back in the day the hound's handlers (the wizards who created it) would send it after their enemies, and the hound would track them all the way across the continent, and probably even across oceans too. it's manifested by shadows so it only shows up at night, but it will constantly track its prey until its dead. nowadays though, the hound has been around for thousands of years (long enough that it's more legend than anything else) and its handlers (the successors of the creators) don't really have a lot of information about what that thing really is. a lot of it was lost over the ages in what's basically a game of telephone, and each new generation of handler had less of an idea of what the hound is, so by now, the handlers have NO idea what theyre really dealing with.

the hound's ONLY weakness is light (life) magic. one of the most fundamental laws of the magic system is that Everything Has An Equal Opposing Force. no matter how powerful the spell is, there will ALWAYS be something equally powerful that can counter it. and each class of magic has an opposite class that can cancel it out. and because the hound is pure dark (death) magic, light magic is the natural opposite, and the only thing that can really stop the hound. unfortunately, light magic is practically extinct, and so if you're being hunted by the hound your only real chance at survival is rediscovering a magic discipline that hasn't been around for centuries <3

(the magic system has a LOT more moving parts but these are the ones that apply to the hound so. <3)

also, the hound has been EVOLVING all this time, so it's even MORE of an unknown. it's literally pure fucking evil, because it's made entirely of evil spells, and it's been programmed to be pure evil, but as time goes on, it starts gaining a bit of sentience. it was created to only follow the orders of its handlers, but as it learns and grows, the hound starts developing free will, and it starts hunting and killing because it loves the thrill of the hunt, not because it was ordered to. and eventually, down the line, it turns on its handlers and is unleashed without anyone holding it back or controlling it. and I figure Plot would happen when the main characters (whoever they are) go out to stop the hound and the potential husk zombie apocalypse but this fantasy story doesn't have any characters yet lmao. I have the worldbuilding and the setting, but it's not populated yet 😔

I've done a shitty little sketch of the thing also:

when it moves it has a sort of. anime flower petal effect except its with little particles of shadow floating off its body <3 also it can stand on its hind legs and when it does, its movements are super stilted and jerky and horror movie-esque, but when it's down on all fours it moves so smoothly and gracefully that it's terrifying in the OTHER direction because it moves like a Peak Predator. <3

ask me abt my original stuff !!