Carcerian Dogs

Various travellers that journeyed to Carceri and made it back reported an unusual pack of wild dogs that live in the Red Prison. These reports were ignored for many cycles, until a copy of "Carcerian Fauna" made it to Sigil.

A chapter of this work was written by one particularly stubborn greybeard, a githzerai named Oreas Nutnik, told about th' unusual dogs seen in Carceri. This addled greybeard, regardless of the dangers, stayed in Carceri for a full year studying the most extraordinary behaviour of the dogs. It seems at first that the dogs are just an ordinary pack of wild animals, and that would be somewhat true statement, as physically they are exactly he same as their cousins from other planes. However, these dogs appear to be planetouched in some way. As said before, they're not physically altered in any way, but their animal minds became corrupted and twisted by the prolonged exposure to the treacherous nature of the Red Prison.

They travel along the banks of the Styx River in the Othrys layer. Even though they form a packs, when approaching prey they choose a single specimen, while the rest of the pack is staying out of sight. Therefore a traveller addled enough to come in this vile plane will most likely meet a lone dog, while the rest of the savage carnivores waits somewhere in the vicinity.

The most extraordinary thing about these animals is their unusual habit of finding prey. After many months of studying Oreas Nutnik finally brought all the dark of it before your peery eyes.

The dogs roam the area around the filthy banks of the foul river Styx in search of their favourite meal - Styx swimmers. Yes, that's true, these dogs eat people who fell into the Styx and lost their memories forever. The keen smell of the dogs helps them identify if encountered humanoid fell to the Styx or not. If they believe the berk didn't swim in the accursed waters, they usually leave him alone. The same case is with fiends - the dogs have learned to run whenever they see one - they are simply too weak to face a fiend in a fight.

After positively identifying the prey as a Styx swimmer, a single dog walks towards the berk, behaving extremely friendly, as if the wild dog was the berk's pet. The victim, stripped of memories, can't remember if she had such a dog or not, but most of the time they accept the friendly dog and travel with the dog.

As a real Carcerian native however, the dog turns stag on the unsuspecting victim as soon as the unwary of danger leatherhead falls asleep. The dog simply crushes the throat of the sleepin' prey, killing him in few seconds. Then the rest of the pack comes to feed on the carcass.

Very interesting is the astonishing rate of success of these treacherous Carcerian dogs - if they spot a Styx swimmer and manage to befriend her, only 1 in 300 victims survives the first night. It's probably due to this fact that dogs begun to multiply their numbers very quickly. By the time you read this note, most probably there are already several packs of stag-turning dogs on the banks of Carceri.

Obviously the dogs are no threat for the numerous fiends inhabiting the region and often end up on others' plates themselves, but they still pose a lethal threat to the unwary travellers.