Great Porcupine

Type

Animal

Base HD

4

Terror

-1

Height (cm)

325

The great porcupine is a quilled rodent twice the size of ox instead of many times smaller than one. It is covered in enormous quills which, like those of the common, much smaller porcupine, easily detach from the body. The great porcupine eats tree bark, nuts, and tubers, and is not preyed upon by any common creature because its bulk makes it dangerous to smaller creatures and its quills make it dangerous to the few creatures larger than it. It is slow and ponderous and known for gnawing on salt deposits, and they can be a nuisance because they will steal salt licks left out for cows or horses. Great porcupines are not aggressive and do not react aversely to being approached by Men. They are very loud creatures despite making only snuffling sounds because their quills rattle like a hundred loose branches in wind, and they also smell as bad as a bear.

Their fallen quills are light, springy, but quite durable, making them useful for all manner of tooling. Hay forks and fish harpoons are commonly made of the quills of a great porcupine. However, their quills are ineffective as weapons against any but unarmoured foes. Against unarmoured foes, such as starving mountain lions or overly aggressive dogs, the quills can be almost immediately lethal; when a great porcupine is actively attacked it will back up into its enemy and swipe with its tail so that whatever attacked it is run through with spear-like quills the length of a man’s arm. The quills are barbed in horrific fashion and are very difficult to remove. Sometimes they are hung from castle walls to discourage attackers from looking up with their unarmoured faces.

In some lands the quills of a great porcupine are used for the thatching of the moderately well-off, as they rot only very slowly and are effective at blocking rain. Their black-and-white coloration makes for a distinctive house. There have been sporadic attempts to domesticate them, but great porcupines eat a great deal and seem to have an urge to gnaw on wooden things, so these attempts have mostly resulted in untamed great porcupines and financially ruined farmers with destroyed barns. Instead, communities which live near great porcupines sometimes maintain briny lakes or trees wrapped in thick hemp rope to attract the porcupines and collect their shed quills from the ground. Attempts to hunt them have mostly been unsuccessful because the porcupines are too large to trap easily and their dense quills are almost immune to arrows, while their sheer bulk makes them very dangerous in close quarters.