Feranth

A droning hum announces the presence of this enormous horned beast. Powerful muscles ripple just beneath its mottled black hide.

Feranth (CR 14)

Huge Magical Beast
Alignment: Chaotic Evil
Initiative: -2
Senses: Darkvision 60 feet, Low-Light Vision, Tremorsense 120 feet; Perception +16

Speed: 50 feet, Burrow 30 feet
Space: 15 feet

Defense

Armor Class: 29, touch 6, flat-footed 29 (-2 Dex, +23 natural, -2 size)
Hit Points: 218 (19d10+114)
Saving Throws: Fort +16, Ref +9, Will +11
Ferocity, hardened body
Damage Reduction: 5/adamantine

Offense

Melee: bite +25 (2d6+8), 2 claws +25 (1d8+8), gore +25 (2d6+8 plus push)
Reach: 15 feet

Special Attacks: ambush, burrowing charge, Push (gore, 10 ft.), quick strike, skull-splitting roar

Statistics

Str	Dex	Con	Int	Wis	Cha
26 (+8)	7 (-2)	20 (+5)	4 (-3)	17 (+3)	7 (-2)

Base Attack Bonus: +19
CMB +29 (+31 Bull Rush)
CMD 37 (39 vs. Bull Rush, 41 vs. Trip)

Feats: Awesome Blow, Cleave, Great Cleave, Powerful Maneuvers, Improved Iron Will, Iron Will, Run, Stunning Assault, Toughness

Skills: Acrobatics +10 (+18 when jumping), Climb +15, Perception +16

• Racial Modifiers: +8 Acrobatics when jumping, +4 Perception

Languages:

Special Abilities

Ambush (Ex)

When a feranth charges, instead of making an attack at the end of the charge, it can instead use its skull-splitting roar ability, although the DC to resist this ability is 4 lower when the ability is used in this fashion.

Burrowing Charge (Ex)

A feranth can use the charge and run actions while burrowing.

Hardened Body (Ex)

A feranth's natural attacks count as adamantine for the purpose of overcoming damage reduction and hardness.

Quick Strike (Ex)

Whenever a feranth successfully dazes a creature using its skull-splitting roar ability, it can make an attack of opportunity against that creature. A feranth can use this ability against only one target per round, no matter how many creatures it successfully dazes.

Skull-Splitting Roar (Ex)

As a standard action, a feranth can unleash a terrible roar, affecting all creatures in a 15-foot cone. Any creatures in the area of the cone must succeed at a DC 24 Fortitude save or be dazed for 1 round and deafened for 1 minute. A feranth can use this ability once every 1d4 rounds. This is a sonic effect, and the save DC is Constitution-based.

Ecology

Environment: Warm Deserts or Mountains
Organization: solitary or pair
Treasure: none


A feranth uses its devastating sonic attack to incapacitate foes and follows up with its powerful bite, vicious claws, and sharp horns to tear its prey asunder. This massive ambush predator is covered with hardened ridges and mottled black skin. Its limbs end in powerful claws that it uses to dig through tough terrain. When burrowing, a feranth uses its rear legs to smash the sides of its burrow, collapsing the passage behind it. A feranth's head is adorned with two massive, forward-facing horns and four bulbous, constantly humming sacs that amplify its mighty roars. A feranth stands 25 feet tall and 40 feet long, and weighs between 9 and 11 tons.

Ecology

The feranths that now roam Numeria are the descendants of a group that were abducted from a far-off planet and brought to Golarion as part of an ill-fated voyage. They remained locked in their containment pods for many years after their arrival on Golarion, but the damage sustained by the pods eventually became too much—they finally failed, releasing the feranths into the unsuspecting world. Using their sharp claws, the creatures burrowed through the structurally weakened hull of the starship in which they were contained, emerging onto the surface of a strange new planet.

On their native planet, feranths were apex predators that devoured prey with endless appetite, and the few living on Golarion remain true to this behavior. Feranths move on to a new location only after exhausting most sources of available food. While feranths do eventually return to previous hunting grounds, they instinctively wait many years for food sources to replenish before terrorizing those regions once again.

Because of feranths' highly territorial nature, battles between two rivals are vicious affairs that can take hours or even days to resolve, and almost invariably end with one of the combatants bloodied, limping, and nearly dead. Yet deaths are surprisingly rare during these trials, despite the ferocity with which they are fought. It seems that feranths prefer to simply frighten and weaken their rivals rather than killing them outright.

When hunting prey, feranths tend to use ambush tactics. They often charge up through the ground once they have pinpointed their prey's location using tremorsense, and then unleash a mighty roar to further discombobulate their victims. Feranths often repeat this tactic many times during an encounter with prey, diving beneath the ground only to erupt back up a few seconds or even minutes later.

Fortunately for the inhabitants of Numeria, female feranths are rare on Golarion—a fact that keeps the beasts' numbers low. It's uncertain whether this same discrepancy in the ratio between the sexes exists on the feranths' home planet. Females are by far the most ferocious members of the species, especially in the few months following the hatching of their eggs. During this time, a female feranth can be identified by her mottled red-brown skin tone and vicious temperament. For 3 months after their eggs hatch, female feranths have the blood rage universal monster ability. A female usually mates multiple times during her lifetime, laying two eggs each time. She cares for her offspring for 3 years before the juveniles abandon their mother, leaving in search of their own territories in which to hunt. Juvenile feranths that have just left their families are often about 12 feet tall and 20 feet long.

Habitat & Society

Scholars believe that feranths' behavior on Golarion is much the same now as it was on their home planet, with one key difference: their range. Rather than roaming great swaths of territory like their ancestors did, feranths on Golarion remain primarily in Numeria. Some of these creatures have wandered into the Worldwound, however, and every now and then one rampages through the northern reaches of the River Kingdoms, across the southern border of Mendev, or along the eastern edge of Brevoy. For unknown reasons, feranths avoid treading into Ustalav.

Feranths prefer to carve their lairs out of hillsides where they can monitor the passage of potential prey, but they sometimes dig dens deep underground to protect themselves from ambush by rival feranths. It is most common for a feranth to construct its home underground when other feranths threaten its territory, but females of the species also dig underground lairs when they are ready to lay and hatch their eggs. Thus, the presence of an underground feranth lair is a sign of greater danger: either the nearby area is infested with other feranths, or the den belongs to a ferocious feranth mother.

Crafty Kellid tribes have learned some tricks, such as the use of earplugs or silencing magic, to counteract the beasts' advantages. They also bait feranths into traps or enclosed canyons using livestock or other large animals. The Kellids use these tactics not only to fight these alien beasts, but also to capture them—a few captive feranths have even been trained for warfare by various tribes. Powerful alchemical concoctions are mixed and fed to a captive feranth, as it is necessary to cloud the creature's mind to tame it. In this state, the feranth becomes docile and seemingly forgets how to burrow, making it easy for the tribe to keep its prized beast nearby. Once the feranth's mind is clouded, blinders can be attached to limit the creature's field of vision, allowing a brave barbarian rider to guide it in battle. When the time comes for the feranth to fight, a second concoction is fed to the beast to give it a burst of energy, sending it into a rampage.

The Red Dog tribe in Numeria's Sellen Hills was renowned for many years for its control of a feranth, a feat that its leaders parleyed into an alliance between a number of nearby tribes. This alliance—and the entire Red Dog tribe—ended abruptly when the captive feranth eventually developed a tolerance to the alchemical concoctions used to keep it docile.