Basic Information
(mustelinopsis subitivorax)
The Snow Wasset is a large, migratory animal, about four times the size of a wolverine, dwelling in the lumbering region between the Great Lakes and Hudson Bay. Like many North American mammals, it changes color with the seasons. Its coat turns white in the winter to blend in with its surroundings. Unlike most mammals, however, it turns green in the summertime when it hibernates in cranberry marshes.
Its body is long and otter-like, evidently a species of mustelid like the mink or the weasel. During the summertime, when it is not hibernating in cranberry bogs, it creeps around on rudimentary legs. These legs apparently are shed in the wintertime, when it is most active, and it uses its preferred form of locomotion which is to swim through the snow drifts like a giant eel. Lurking under the snow’s surface, it will surprise small prey animals like grouse and rabbits and pull them under to devour them. As prey becomes more scarce the Wasset will attack larger creatures like wolves, or even occasionally man.
Sources
Game and Story Use
- While traveling through a dense forest in winter, the party’s camp is raided by a seemingly invisible creature which leaves no tracks; only a strange burrow in the snow…
- A famous naturalist hires the party to capture a live wasset in order to prove his theories about migratory cryptids. It’s never been done before, but the pay he’s offering is good…
- A fugitive thief has been found dead in the woods, mostly eaten and buried in a melting snow bank. Locals figure that a wasset got him. But the bag of stolen jewels the thief had been carrying is missing. Mustelids are notorious thieves themselves; could the missing loot be secreted away in the wasset’s lair? If so, how can to find it?
