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The Golden Slugbear — Description
Related to the lazy, arboreal slottern , slugbears are far larger and more specious in the Barvern Rainforest to the southeast. The Golden Slugbear is the only resident species in the Pyreplume Valley. They are high browsers, aggregating in small harem-herds lead by a bull and his cows or small bachelor herds of related males. During the breeding season, these bachelors reintegrate and attempt to persuade the dominant bull's females away with intricate mating displays consisting of head bobbing, rearing up, and spinning around. Unlike most other otterns which rest their weight on their second digit, subsumed in a fleshy pad, slugbears are descended from arboreal ancestors who relied on their muscular first digit and claw to hold them in the trees. Slugbears alternate between a monodigit knucklewalk and rearing up onto their stout hindlegs and large zygodactyl feet, a holdover from childhood. Juvenile slugbears are highly arboreal so as to evade predators and seek alternative food sources then their parents.

Only recently descended from piscivorous turned omnivorous turned folivores, slugbears have inefficient digestive systems, needing to bulk feed on broad leaves and producing nutrient rich dung which in turn feeds the soils and their coprophagous young. To avoid over browsing, slugbears must brave the world beyond their preferred riparian forest and mixed stands. They readily scavenge or hunt small game, for a multi-ton creature that can include people. The Venery Clan who share the same forests are well aware of the slugbear's duplicitous nature. A placid browser can quickly try to trample a basilisk underfoot before eating them alive.

Still, the slugbear is not invincible. They are outsized by Lunahorn broncobills and Nocs who can reach higher into the canopy and ward off the slugbear's bravado. Their are also predated upon by their own distant kin, Dirernes , and Venitors . These oversized birds and bats target slugbears while out in the open on at the forest's edge. Dirernes try to run them down before they can flee back into the brush while venitors dive down and are more willing to give chase among the trees. Both target the slugbear's long neck with sharp beak or saber tooth. The slugbear has wrinkly, loose skin along it's neck, used to increase surface area so it can better dissipate heat during the summer as well as deflect purchase from a bite, giving the slugbear enough time to rear up and swipe with it's long claws.