Skeggit

The skeggit is a large bovine similar to a musk ox. It can be found in the far northern reaches of Ruvera, where it is well adapted to the long and bitter winters and brief summers.

The skeggit is a very shaggy beast, with extremely long outer guard hairs and a dense woolly undercoat. More unusual than the coat itself, however, is the layer of moss that grows on top of it. This moss, nearly as long and shaggy as the skeggit's coat, adds a light but still warmer layer to the creature's defenses against the cold. Young skeggit start to be lightly splotched with this moss at an early age, and the oldest skeggit in a herd can easily be distinguished by their luxuriant green-grey trappings. The skeggit has a large head topped with pronged horns, which are longer and more heavily pronged in males than females. It lacks the bony head shield of its cousin the musk ox, and instead of fighting for dominance by head-butting one another, they instead seem to compete by attempting to intimidate other bulls with a head-swaying display that shows off the spread of their moss-festooned horns.

Wild skeggit live together in herds of a dozen to two dozen animals, larger in the summer than the winter. The winter herds mix males and females together, but after the breeding season's battles for dominance among the bulls, the victor will drive the other bulls off from the herd and leave only the females. Calving occurs in the spring, but following the hardest winters conception does not occur in female skeggit and no young are born the following year. Skeggit typically wander with the seasons, following their seasonal food sources of willows, lichen, and other nutritious browse.

Skeggit have been at least partially domesticated by the Qalqesh tribes of Angrosh that make the far north their home, and some of the Frekki have done the same. Although the tamed skeggit may be only lightly tended by these pastoralist peoples, they show a mysterious bond with their tenders which some say is due to some sort of sympathetic shamanistic magic. Skeggit herders will drive their animals to areas of better browse in the hardest months of the year to ensure better breeding outcomes for their herds, and in the summer the skeggit allow them to harvest the wool of their undercoats to be made into warm garments and blankets. The Qalqesh and Frekki also harvest the moss that grows on the skeggit's coats, as it is said to have both medicinal and nutritional value.