Aurumvorax

The aurumvorax (; ), sometimes known as the golden gorger, was a small, shaggy hole-dwelling creature with eight legs that was able to eat gold. It was sometimes used to locate gold, being able to detect and find its veins in the ground. It was not fearful and could become vicious, able to defend itself against formidable creatures like chimerae.
==Description==
When fully grown, an aurumvorax measured around in length and in height. It had a hide of -long, golden fur, It weighed around . Its eyes were silver with golden pupils, and both its whiskers and its mane guard hairs were bronze-colored. Its claws and teeth were coppery.
==Combat==
When the aurumvorax attacked, it would first lock its powerful jaws onto an opponent, then rake with its claws. Its death was usually the only thing that could unlock its jaws once gripping a victim. If it attacked from its den, it would likely catch its opponent by surprise. Those at the business end of its claws, when it pounced, would be attacked with all eight legs. Very few materials could be fully protected by their hardness against the bite of an aurumvorax.
Normal fire-based attacks, due to its unique biochemistry, were useless; magical fire only half-worked. Poison and most gases simply wouldn't work. Slaying it with bludgeoning weapons took twice as long. Some sources claimed that adamantine slashing weapons were the most effective at harming it.
==Behavior==
The aurumvorax would usually tolerate small animals and creatures that did not pose a threat, but would become wary and possibly aggressive near humans and other larger creatures, using a growling bark to warn off whatever it did not just eat. Its jaw muscles were incredibly strong and once it had a grip, it would not normally let go until it or its victim was dead. Despite its small size, it was capable of dragging a creature up to its own body weight. Those that smelled gold or which were protecting kittens were even more ferocious.
The aurumvorax west of Archenbridge along the Dawnpost Road were reported to show some minor cunning, attacking caravans for their gold: the creatures ran out from under cover, immobilized horses by striking at their legs, and then went after the riders, whose flesh they ignored in favor of the gold they carried.
==Ecology==
The aurumvorax was found in light forests or near the timberline of mountains. Although it occasionally lived at the bottoms of ravines, it was more usual to find an aurumvorax burrow in the side of a hill. The burrow would normally extend through the top soil and into the rock beneath where its enormous weight could be supported. Where possible, the aurumvorax would burrow into rock rich in gold ore. Its claws made the burrowing possible; as the creature followed gold seams while digging, its burrows were capable of stretching for miles. Aurumvorae had the ability to smell gold. It drove them into a frenzy, becoming even more aggressive when it was nearby.
The aurumvorax had to eat gold in order to survive (except the Cormanthor aurumvorax), although it would also eat meat and other metals. Without gold, a kitten would become ill and die in around a week, though platinum could prolong its life by three weeks. The gold in its diet gave the aurumvorax the color in its golden fur, and its incredibly dense mass. The copper in its diet also added to the bronze in its whiskers and the alloys of bone on its claws.
Except when mating, the aurumvorax was solitary, patrolling an area of around . They only sought mates once every eight or nine years, spending three or four weeks with a partner. The female usually gave birth to around half a dozen offspring. The young of the aurumvorax were called kittens or kits and were born hairless, with their eyes closed for the first two weeks. Most would die due to lack of gold, and it was rare for more than one or two of the strongest kittens to survive: a given female seldom produced more than three through her life. The survivors stayed with the mother for up to six years before becoming fully grown and independent, although they could reach full maturity much faster if their diet was rich in gold, which was not normally an option in the wild. It was not unknown for the mother to eat its own young when gold was scarce.
Aurumvorae were the only large predator of the Serpent Hills, where their rarity and dull hide indicated a general lack of gold in the area.
==Uses==
The golden-furred hide was highly prized, capable of fetching between 15,000 and 20,000 gold pieces in . Some sources placed it at only 2,000 gp; By the year , the pelts were priced at around 3,000 gold pieces instead. The eyes of the aurumvorax were used to create magic items related to seeing into the future.
The meat of the aurumvorax was highly toxic to other creatures, resulting in metal poisoning. Aurumvorax alone could eat their own kind safely. If its corpse was incinerated, up to of gold could be left behind, per sources of . Sources of 1372 DR instead claimed a total of 20-200 gp to be retrievable from the body as a whole instead.
Dwarves found golden gorgers particularly offensive, due to their habit of inhabiting areas close to dwarves and scratching the stonework, as well as its appetite for gold. Dwarven bands often set out to hunt those creatures, using a mixture of goat's blood and powdered gold as bait, then pinning it with a pike to the back of the head and cutting off its feet so that it did not damage them in battle. Some dwarves, however, preferred to raise the creatures in order to employ their advanced senses for gold prospecting. Aurumvorax kittens could fetch a price of 8,000 gp per kit in 1372 DR; Training a grown one was impossible, but those who were caught before they opened their eyes, were they fed gold, other metals, and given much attention, could be made to bond with a trainer.
Aurumvorax hide could also be adapted to be worn as armor. Such armor could provide defense equal to plate at the cost of having a weight also identical to plate, with radically lighter versions providing slightly less protection, but the intricate and time-consuming process of turning its hide into armor was very costly. The hide was sometimes made into a bed fur or a cape for a dwarven wedding. Parts of the aurumvorax, due to their combination of bone and metal, could be made into decorative objects or jewelry. Such fare was appreciated in the region of the Storm Horns; though aurumvorae were native to the area, the local aarakocra lust for their valuable pelts kept the creatures rare, when the nobility of Suzail was not sending mercenaries after the merest rumor of "walking gold".
Garagos would sometimes send aurumvorae to show favor. Aurumvorae served many gods of the gnome and dwarven pantheons, including Garl Glittergold, Segojan Earthcaller, Vergadain, Moradin, Clangeddin Silverbeard and Abbathor. Garl Glittergold granted a spell to his clerics which conjured an aurumvorax. Priests of Segojan bore the names of animals as their rank, with aurumvorax representing his top servants. Gnomes of great renown were, in the rarest of ceremonies, wrapped in the pelt of an aurumvorax for their burial. The Golden Gorger, Suntunavick, a hero of the Battle of Keeper's Dale, got his title because his ferocity in battle was renowned to rival that of the beast.
==History==
It was introduced to the Cormanthor forest in the 1000s DR by a group of treasure hunters from Ylraphon, in an attempt to discover gold in the area. Although the aurumvorax found gold, they became very protective over it, and devoured their masters when they tried to get to the gold. They ran out of gold within a decade, and compensated by adapting to eat other metals, creating the first exemplars of the Cormanthor aurumvorax.
During Waukeentide, in Tarsakh of 1367, four aurumvorae escaped from Undermountain into the Old Xoblob shop and rampaged into the Purple Palace festhall next door, killing three patrons and four festhall girls before they were disabled. Their hides were distributed to the families of the dead (and to the festhall) as a little recompense. The owner of the store was at a loss as to how the aurumvorae got through his wards, suspecting foul play.
==Subspecies==
===Cormanthor aurumvorax===
The Cormanthor aurumvorax could be found in the rimwood and midwood areas of the forest of Cormanthor. Although the aurumvorax thrived in the plains of the rimwood east of the River Lis, making many holes in the ground in that area, the gold on which their diet was based was gone within a decade, and they were forced to adapt to a different diet. Their digestive systems adapted to allow it to eat iron ore, onyx, and other minerals. Its hide also changed as a result, becoming mottled with dull red and blue streaks.
As another adaptation, members of the Cormanthor species hibernated, usually during the winter, and during this time they buried themselves in the ground. Although an aurumvorax usually breathed through its nostrils, while hibernating it breathed through its skin, a small patch of which it left exposed, above the ground. This could easily be confused for gold. It could be woken easily at any point during its hibernation, reacting fiercely and angrily to any disturbance. As a strange side-effect from the Cormanthor aurumvorax's non-native surroundings, about one in five suffered from allergies during the spring, causing them to sneeze, expelling their highly corrosive saliva up to 10' (3 m). That saliva was as aggressive as gray ooze liquids.
The exotic hides only fetched 7,500 to 10,000 gold pieces, about half that of a regular aurumvorax hide in 1367 DR. Cormanthor aurumvorax claws were usually bright green or purple, and could fetch up to 100 gold pieces and 1,000 gold pieces, respectively. Like regular aurumvorax hides, Cormanthor aurumvorax hides could be turned into armor, which granted a type of near-immunity depending on the diet of the aurumvorax. It could potentially provide near-immunity against azurite, copper, gold, jade, onyx, opal, silver, or turquoise; its fire resistance and physical defense were both slightly lesser than the ones granted by the armor from a normal aurumvorax.
==Rumors==
An aurumvorax the size of a dragon was rumored to live in the Marching Mountains on Ruler's Ridge. Some suspected that the Cormanthor aurumvorax had eaten the jade in the tombs of Myth Drannor royalty.
==Appendix==
===Gallery===
Aurumvorax.png|An aurumvorax emerging from its lair.
===References===