Creature Concept - Cironuppe or Spinemarten
Cironuppe (si-ron-oo-pay) / Scowl Bear or Spine Marten
4-5ft tall and 9-12ft in length (perhaps 9ft standing). When left alone this omnivorous mammal is harmless. It will go about it’s solitary business, or in small familial groups (eg three or four adults and several younger animals - sometimes a group of adventurers or merchants might stumble across a group of several young males engaged in their mating challenges, this is best to avoid as you may get caught between then as they fight each other.
The Scowl Bear’s diet is extremely diverse in nature. Some common staples of this creature’s diet include nuts, seeds, bark, herbs, roots, shoots, tubers, foliage, tree bark, crabs, fish, grass, fruit, mollusks, birds and their eggs, fungi, spiders, mice, snakes, tortoises, lizards, worms, frogs, snails and scorpions. Some believe the eating of poisonous frogs and scorpions is what gives the creature its poisonous barbs. It also is known to eat scavenged meat. Some people believe them to be responsible for the digging up and desecration of human graves.
Occasionally young Spinemartens are captured by trappers and sort to gladiatorial arenas, where they are bred for aggression and size.
Spinemarten threat display showing its porcupine like spines, some of which (unlike a porcupine) can be fired at creatures at its rear.
The more usual placid look of the Spinemarten, showing it’s brightly coloured snout.
Very young Spinemarten “kits”, found in the back of a trafficker’s waggon, no doubt destined for the breeding farms attached to an arena in The Disputed Lands
A full-size male Spinemarten, bred for its size and aggression, painted with war-paint and powder by its keepers before being pushed into the arena.
An adult Spinemarten with human for scale.