Classic lore followed by observed campaign evidence
First encountered during the fall of the Safehold.
Record 01 · Day 1 · Monstrosity
The Bulette
A heavily armoured hunter that travels beneath the earth and erupts without warning beneath its prey.
Ground shockArmoured hideSudden emergence
Classic description: Often called a landshark, the bulette is a massive, low-slung predator plated in blue-grey armour. It burrows beneath soil and stone, senses movement above it and bursts upward with enormous jaws and powerful foreclaws.
Campaign encounter: Its arrival scattered barbarians and defenders alike, shattered the training yard and exposed the ancient dwarven works below.
Cunning, organised scavengers occupying the forgotten passages around a broad dwarven bridge.
AmbushPoisoned dartsAlchemical fire
Classic description: Ratmen are wiry rat-headed humanoids associated with warrens, scavenged tools, traps and overwhelming numbers. They favour darkness, ambush and poisoned or improvised weapons over open battle.
Campaign encounter: They attacked from bridge and walls, then surrendered after their flame device ruptured. Halen spared the survivors.
A colossal armoured creature radiating intense heat through the darkness of its lair.
Extreme heatTunnel breakerResponsive
Classic description: A remorhaz is a huge centipede-like arctic predator with a many-legged blue-white body, broad wing-like fins and a furnace-hot back. It erupts from beneath snow or earth, seizes prey and can swallow victims whole.
Campaign encounters: Karl’s words allowed the rail-cart to pass the first remorhaz. Another later helped maintain Telchur’s sanctuary and preserved cells.
A possible community of stranded souls, seen only through the avatar’s shared vision.
Record 21 · Foreseen guardians · Location uncertain
The Forgotten Worshippers
Dead or frozen followers of Telchur gathered in a ruined refuge between worlds.
Trapped soulsWinter wolvesFrost giant watcher
What is known: The vision suggested worshippers who could not complete their passage into the afterlife. Wolves prowled among them and a frost giant guarded the outer ruins. Their exact nature and loyalties remain unknown.
Ambush predators and subterranean monstrosities encountered between the drowned trials and primordial swamp.
Giant Crocodile · Day 2 Classic description: An immense ambush predator with a low armoured body, crushing jaws and a powerful tail. It waits almost entirely submerged before dragging prey into deep water. Campaign encounter: It attacked on the drowned causeway and was defeated before the trials.
Purple Worm · Day 6 Classic description: A titanic, purple-skinned burrower able to tunnel through earth and stone. Its circular maw can swallow a person whole, while the tail carries a venomous stinger. Campaign encounter: A Beastman druid called it into the mire; it swallowed Toby before withdrawing after the party’s counterattack.
Chained Basilisk · Day 8 Classic description: A squat, many-legged reptilian monstrosity whose supernatural gaze turns living creatures to stone. Its heavy jaws remain dangerous even when opponents avoid its eyes. Campaign encounter: Its gaze petrified Karl, Halen and Toby. Asuran fought from concealment with alchemist’s fire.
Water-sphincter Creature · Day 12 Campaign form: No standard identity was established. It formed a living sphincter around the flooded rail tunnel. Campaign encounter: Toby infected the creature with disease as the cart passed through; Karl called on Kord and cured the creature.
Prehistoric Predator Ambush · Day 13 Campaign forms: A large sail-backed Dimetrodon, a powerful mobile theropod and a smaller raptor-like dinosaur hunted through the primordial swamp. The exact dinosaur species of the two theropods was not established. Campaign encounter: The Dimetrodon mauled Asuran, the larger theropod clawed Karl and the raptor repeatedly rushed Halen. Toby wounded two predators with arrows, slowing them for Karl and Halen; Toby slew the raptor, Karl and Halen brought down the large theropod, and further arrows finished the Dimetrodon.
HUMANOID CREATURES
Clans, hunters and handlers
Beastmen, Drow handlers and troglodytes—three very different humanoid threats from the underways.
Beastmen and Beastman Druid · Day 6 Classic description: Savage humanoids combining human posture with bestial heads, hides, horns or claws. They gather in rough war-bands, follow strength and instinct, and may be guided by shamans or druids tied to wild places. Campaign encounter: The party hunted them into the western mire; their concealed druid called the Purple Worm.
Two Drow · Day 8 Classic description: Dark-elven underworld dwellers known for pale hair, dark skin, disciplined cruelty, stealth and the use of poison. Their raiding parties often control dangerous subterranean creatures. Campaign encounter: Two handlers brought a chained basilisk into the rail tunnel.
Troglodytes · Days 12–13 Classic description: Primitive reptilian humanoids with clawed hands, ridged heads and a powerful defensive stench. They favour caves and marshy underground lairs and commonly fight with stone weapons or claws. Campaign encounter: They ambushed the party with poison on Day 12; surviving swamp inhabitants later preserved the rites and memory of Semunyae.
PLANAR BEINGS
Elementals and celestials
Stone, celestial authority and shapeless divinity within the damaged spaces between worlds.
Earth Elemental · Days 9–10 Classic description: A hulking living mass of soil and stone, immensely strong and almost indistinguishable from natural rock when still. Earth elementals move through unworked ground as though it were water. Campaign encounter: It led the party through living stone and later greeted an unknown “master.”
Celestial Watcher · Day 11 Campaign form: A stern being of the upper planes, beautiful and terrible, carrying the authority of a cosmic sentinel rather than a mortal priest. No exact standard celestial type was established. Campaign encounter: It answered Karl’s invocation with a warning about powers listening beyond the silent gods.
Avatar of Ghaunadaur · Day 11 Classic description: A divine manifestation associated with shapeless life, slime, hunger and the rejected things of the deep world. Its form need not obey a stable anatomy. Campaign encounter: The chest-like, slime-drowned avatar barred the Library threshold and left Asuran a divine symbol.
UNDEAD & RESTLESS SOULS
The dead who remained
Incorporeal dead and mummy-like desiccated warriors guarding the ancient ziggurat.
Restless Spirits · Day 2 Classic description: Incorporeal dead linger as translucent remnants bound by violence, duty or an unfinished purpose. Ordinary weapons often pass through them without effect. Campaign encounter: Spirits patrolled near the thorn-bound tower beyond the trials.
Four Wraiths · Day 10 Classic description: Wraiths are shadowy undead shaped from malice and the absence of life. Their incorporeal touch drains vitality, leaving victims weakened, withered or prematurely aged. Campaign encounter: Four crossed the forbidden threshold, drained Halen’s vitality and aged him visibly.
Tomb Guardians · Day 13 · Mummy-like Undead Classification: Desiccated ancient warriors preserved as tomb guardians. Their dried bodies, funerary role and armed defence resemble mummies, although no further standard mummy abilities were confirmed. Campaign encounter: They defended the ziggurat while its high priest remained trapped in undeath.
CONSTRUCTS & CREATED THREATS
The Self-loading Ballista
The operatorless mechanism wound, loaded, fired and repaired itself until Asuran jammed its workings.
Automaton Ballista · Day 10 Classic description: A constructed guardian is an artificial defender driven by mechanisms, binding commands or a creator’s design. It does not tire, panic or negotiate and continues its assigned task until disabled. Campaign encounter: This operatorless ballista could wind, load, fire and repair itself. Asuran jammed the mechanism, and the party recovered two heavy bolts.
The monkey arbiter, shrine parasites and clay-armoured inhabitants of the ancient earth chambers.
Monkey Arbiter · Day 2 Classic description: A small, agile primate—clever, expressive and able to communicate through gesture, mimicry and reward. This individual served as a supernatural-seeming judge, though its exact nature was never established. Campaign encounter: It silently directed the four trials and judged their completion.
Lamprey-like Parasites · Day 13 Classic description: Blood-feeding, jawless parasites that fasten onto flesh with circular toothed mouths. In numbers they can rapidly weaken a host or contaminate a lair. Campaign encounter: They infested the diseased shrine until the party cleansed it.
Earth Barbarians · Day 10 Classic description: Human warriors equipped for survival and close combat rather than a separate monster species. These fighters wore clay armour and bore ancient earth symbols. Campaign encounter: Three confronted the party in the earth demiplane and were killed before their allegiance could be learned.
FEY & PRIMORDIAL TITANS · DAY 14
Dryad and God-killer
The unidentified titan crossed the jungle to meet Utabo in a battle beyond mortal scale.
Dryad · Day 14 Classic description: A dryad is a fey nature spirit bound to a particular tree or woodland. Usually appearing as a beautiful humanoid woman with bark, leaf or blossom features, a dryad can influence plants and charm intruders but generally protects her grove rather than seeking battle. Campaign encounter: A dryad blocked the jungle path until Karl persuaded her to allow the party through.
Unidentified God-killing Titan · Day 14 Campaign classification: A colossal primordial monstrosity resembling a warped fusion of dragon and demon. It possessed the size, claws and physical power to meet a dinosaur demigod directly. “Killer of gods” remains the party’s suspicion, not a confirmed species or title. Campaign encounter: It approached through the jungle beneath a purple storm and began a tooth-and-claw battle with Utabo while the party escaped.
Blood magic, ancient brass and a diminished divine presence beneath the frozen surface
The immense stitched construct slept beneath frost and blood-fed alchemical vessels.
Record 04 · Day 22 · Construct
Sleeping Flesh Golem
An enormous stitched humanoid construct used to excavate the shaft and carry the barbarians’ heavy cargo.
Alchemical lifeGreat strengthDormant
Classic description: A flesh golem is assembled from stitched humanoid remains and animated through alchemy and unnatural life-force. It possesses immense physical strength and endurance but follows the commands of its creator rather than acting as a free creature.
Campaign form: This golem was sustained by alchemy and blood rather than ordinary active magic. Evidence in the cavern suggested it had excavated the thirty-four-foot shaft and carried the expedition’s barrels and strongbox.
Campaign encounter: The party found it asleep in an alcove beneath the barbarian camp. They moved quietly, placed barrels as an obstacle and opened the chained strongbox without waking it. Its condition and eventual fate remain unresolved.
The temple guardian was animated and sustained by blood magic.
Record 05 · Day 22 · Construct
Blood-powered Brass Guardian
A massive brass temple defender animated by blood and armed with a long brass spear.
Brass armourBlood poweredLong spear
Campaign form: A purpose-built construct rather than a living creature. Blood supplied its animating force through the hidden shrine, allowing the guardian to continue fighting despite terrible damage.
Campaign encounter: It defended the inner temple while Gut Ripper conducted his rites. Karl broke its armour, Halen severed an arm, and the party finally destroyed it. Asuran recovered its brass longspear.
One elemental had died; another remained alive and trapped beyond the portal.
Record 06 · Day 22 · Elemental
Blood Elementals
Living elemental beings whose substance was blood rather than earth, air, fire or ordinary water.
Liquid formElemental essencePortal-bound
Campaign form: Their exact origin and standard classification remain uncertain. The party found the remains of one dead blood elemental and learned that another living elemental was imprisoned nearby.
Campaign encounter: After Toby’s planar-knowledge check, the party collectively devised a plan: offer the dead elemental’s remaining blood to strengthen Laogzed’s avatar, enabling it to open the portal so the surviving elemental could be sent through. Kev was absent, and the other players were controlling Toby during this scene. Blood recovered from the dead elemental was retained as an exceptionally valuable alchemical resource.
A newborn planar life-form beneath the frozen surface
Interpretive portrait of the newly formed elemental crossing through the cavern ice; its exact outline was not established.
Record 07 · Day 23 · Para-elemental
Newborn Ice Elemental
A large but newly born being formed where elemental ice was crossing into the Prime Material Plane.
Freezing presenceMoves through iceNewborn curiosity
Campaign classification: An ice para-elemental associated with the boundary between elemental water and elemental ice. Such a creature should not naturally be born on the Prime Material Plane.
Observed nature: Its focused supernatural cold caught Asuran as he passed the shape in the wall. It then cracked free and moved through solid ice as though the frozen barriers were mist. The warmer refuge caused visible discomfort and melting fragments fell from its body.
Behaviour: Dangerous simply by proximity, but not confirmed malicious. Toby interpreted the movement of its fallen fragments as an attempt to communicate. The creature appeared curious and inexperienced, and eventually returned to the colder passages.
Significance: Its birth provides direct evidence that elemental cold is crossing or overlapping into the caverns strongly enough to create planar life.
A coordinated pack, shown without the separate shard-touched winter wolf.
Record 08 · Day 25 · Animals
Eastern Wolf Pack
Ordinary wolves behaving with extraordinary coordination in the frozen country.
Observed hunt: The pack dug pits, hid the spoil and froze the walls with water. It drove a wounded sabre-toothed tiger along safe paths into one chosen trap.
Encounter: The wolves circled their own pits, attacked from several directions, tripped isolated opponents and withdrew together while carrying off their wounded. The party avoided a larger battle with roughly thirty wolves.
Distinction: The pack’s discipline was observed; the green divine fragments and supernatural fog belonged to the much larger winter wolf, not to every wolf in the pack.
Raw divine essence projected from its body like shrapnel.
Record 09 · Day 25 · Magical beast
Shard-touched Winter Wolf
Initially mistaken for an avatar, this winter wolf had instead been altered by green divine fragments. It generated freezing fog, influenced Halen’s mind and crossed into an ice demiplane.
The injured cat was driven into an ice-lined pit by the wolves.
Record 10 · Day 25 · Animal
Sabre-toothed Tiger
An enormous, wounded predator, approximately the size of a buffalo.
Observed condition: It came down the track bloodied and missing patches of fur while unseen wolves steered it toward prepared ground.
Fate: The tiger fell into the pack’s concealed pit and could not climb its frozen walls. Supernatural cold killed it there. The party later recovered the body and made a formal offering to the Wolf Lord.
Dedicated portrait of the unusually large ice mephit before Halen’s javelin brought it down.
Observed form: An unusually large, spindly winged ice outsider carrying an icy blowpipe. Its pale body repeatedly vanished in the whiteout; its attacks carried cold and could freeze a victim into paralysis.
Campaign encounter: Halen crippled its wing with a thrown javelin. Tanner and Karl killed it after it crashed, but not before it issued a piercing call for its kin. Its corpse melted away and returned to its native plane because the damaged demiplane could not hold the dead outsider.
FlightFreezing attacksPlanar call
DAY 25 · SHARD-CORRUPTED BEAST
Shard-Corrupted Dire Polar Bear
Pain and green divine corruption drove the mortally wounded animal onward.
Observed form: A gigantic polar bear with missing fur, infected wounds, boils and a raw green fragment embedded beside one eye. The shard caused disease, agony, frenzy and endurance far beyond natural limits.
Campaign encounter: It smashed through an ice wall, charged Toby and nearly carried him away in its jaws. It continued attacking after suffering mortal wounds and finally collapsed only after the party inflicted extraordinary additional damage.
The colony watched the intruders with curiosity rather than aggression.
Observed form: A mixed colony of ordinary and unusually large penguins occupying the warmer lower cavern.
Campaign encounter: The birds did not attack. Toby offered food and passed among them while the party investigated the frozen mammoth and shard-pierced warriors.
Non-hostileCold-adaptedLower cavern
Later in the frozen wastes
Predators and living processes travelling with the divine glacier
A mated pair hunted beneath the advancing glacier as part of a frost giant’s pack.
Record 11 · Monstrous humanoid
Winter Ogrelons
Four-armed white predators resembling a brutal union of ogre, orc and great northern ape.
Four clawsSnow burrowerMated hunter
Observed behaviour: Winter ogrelons are aggressive carnivores that normally hunt in mated pairs. Their pale colouring conceals them almost perfectly in snow and ice, and they can force themselves through walls of loosely packed snow.
Campaign encounter: One approached carrying a timber-wolf head and attacked Halen and Tanner. Its mate broke into the inner passage and attempted to seize Toby. The pair belonged to a nearby frost giant’s hunting pack.
Interpretive portrait: Halen heard the hunter calling to its pack, but the party never saw its appearance or equipment.
Record 12 · Giant
Frost Giant Hunter
A giant hunter directing winter ogrelons through the glacier’s outer reaches.
GiantishHunting masterUnengaged
Campaign evidence: Halen heard the giant calling to its pack after the female ogrelon cried out. The party extinguished its lights and remained hidden; the giant moved away without locating the ice pass. Its appearance, equipment and allegiance remain unconfirmed.
The swarm formed a living engine within the divine glacier’s advancing ecosystem.
Record 13 · Ooze-like colony
Frost Beetle Swarm
Tiny mineral-eating organisms that resemble beetles but behave more like a distributed ooze.
Rock eaterWater producerLiving excavation
Observed behaviour: A few frost beetles would be insignificant. Here, thousands consumed glacier-resistant stone, left water behind and bored person-sized channels through the rock. Their shifting mass blocked and released the airflow and sound coming from the Black Expanse.
Campaign encounter: The beetles ignored living creatures while undisturbed and their tunnels offered the party a route onward. Inside the wall, the party learned that disturbing the colony could provoke it to gather into a defensive swarm.
Aberrations and regenerating giants encountered below the glacier
The aberrations offered themselves as bait, waiting to consume whatever answered.
Record 14 · Aberration
Sea Gricks
Pale, agile aberrations that move between ice floes and deliberately lure aquatic predators.
Living baitIce agilityGrowth by consumption
Observed behaviour: Rather than chase prey, the Gricks stared into the water and attracted larger hunters. When attacked, they could engulf the predator and grow into a larger form.
Campaign encounter: They did not pursue the party. Something much larger moved beneath the lake, but it remained unidentified.
Three trolls hurled ice at the weightless company; Toby’s bow gem briefly turned one to stone.
Record 15 · Giant
Ice Trolls of the Flooded Lake
Regenerating hunters occupying floes and frozen structures beneath the glacier.
RegenerationThrown iceFire vulnerable
Observed behaviour: At least three trolls attacked at range with heavy ice. Their wounds began closing rapidly; fire was identified as the means of preventing regeneration.
Campaign encounter: Toby struck two with gem-empowered petrifying arrows. One resisted; one became stone temporarily. Another wounded troll withdrew to recover, and the company survived the crossing to reach Telchur’s sanctuary.
Record 16 · Undead giant
Jargaluk Stone-Eater
A colossal Entombed mountain giant who carried the party to Telchur’s sanctuary after Toby and Tanner released him.
A lawful-evil illithid offered telepathic knowledge for release. The party kept it sealed, though several later accepted a smaller bargain: a temporary mental reserve that could be expended once as a second chance.
The glacier imprisoned Kraal when Toby invoked Telchur through his mark.
Record 18 · Extraplanar cold elemental
Kraal
A large, relentless elemental that emerged while the White Corpse reshaped its passages.
Freezing breathClose assaultRefused retreat
Encounter: Kraal attacked while Karl and Tanner were trapped in the moving walls. Halen held it at close quarters until Toby’s invocation prompted the glacier to seal the elemental in ice.
The dead bodies were shells; the parasite inside remained alive and sought a stronger host.
Record 19 · Aberrant parasites · Name provisional
Crystal Parasites
Possessing creatures that wrap dead bodies around themselves as expendable armour.
Corpse shellsHost transferMust be killed twice
Observed behaviour: Destroying the outer corpse exposed rather than killed the parasite. When a shell failed, the creature attempted to infest a stronger living host, including the frozen Winter Knight.
Encounter: The party destroyed the exposed parasites and Tanner helped knock one away before it could possess the knight.
