Darkness panther

The darkness panther is a large beast of Canarque that can fill a place with unnatural darkness. In the campaign Yeni Dünya ("New World") one made its lair in the mine that supplied Alaztaşı outside Aquila, and the darkness it spread brought the mine's work to a halt. The mine's foreman called the creature a Doruk.¹²

Description

The foreman described it as a horned animal like the wild cats of the mainland. He had heard of a beast that makes unnatural darkness to hide its young in the breeding season: a big panther-like animal whose darkness comes from something in its throat and hangs in the air. Its fur, he said, is valuable for making things that help one see in the dark.¹³⁴⁵

Inside the mine the party first found only its signs: a black area like a wall that lantern light could not brighten, and the tracks of a big four-legged animal, larger than a wolf's and shaped like a cat's paws. When they finally found the animal, it was a great panther-like creature with small horns and two tails. A drawing that showed it with four tails was corrected to two.⁶⁷⁸⁹

In the mine

The foreman wanted the pelts of the adult and its young rather than live animals, and offered the party a share of the income from clearing them out; according to Saga, he meant to post men with crossbows at the exits so that no animal could be smuggled out alive. Fauna, the party's guide, warned that going into the mine was not a matter for her alone, as she had relationships to answer for, while Saga wished to save the animals less out of concern for nature than to help the others.^1011121314

The adult lay badly wounded beside its newborn cubs, whose eyes were still closed; one cub at the edge had been born dead. Each time the adult wheezed, patches of darkness formed in different parts of the chamber. Its blood loss came from giving birth, not from an attack, and it may also have been old; magical healing could have saved it, but left alone it would die. It pushed its cubs towards Fauna, and in the feeling that passed from it, it wished them to be let go into the wild.^151617181920

Spoiler: The fate of the mother and her cubsGösterAçık ettiği: Yeni Dünya #2; Yeni Dünya #6; Yeni Dünya #3 · Ne okuduğunuzu söyleyin

The party ended the wounded adult's life with a rapier thrust behind the eye. They carried its body and the stillborn cub out of the mine and told the foreman that they had found only one cub. Meanwhile Sticks took the living cubs out through a hidden air shaft and hid them in a thicket.^212223242526

The cubs could not yet survive alone and would need about a month of care before they could be released. Fauna left to find them keepers among the tribes, and the party told the researcher who had sent them that they had saved the cubs rather than hand them over for their pelts. Fauna later left the cubs with someone she trusted and returned to her companions.^27282930