Thoracifer Lupus

Scattered tales from mountain villages speak of 'two-throated hounds' that hunt along old deer routes and ruined cairns. Naturalists debate whether the chest-mouth is a congenital deformity, a parasitic graft, or a product of deliberate occult breeding. The caravans of the Road Guild report losses where packs of Thoracifer Lupus learned to drag caravans' strays into the brush to be swallowed alive. An attested field note by the tracker Vhalgrim of the Iron Ledger describes witnessing a chest-mouth force open a boar's ribs and drag its belly inward; the sight drove him from the field for months.

Roughly the size of a large wolf but broader through the chest, the Thoracifer Lupus' fur is mottled charcoal and stained yellow at the throat. Its head is wolfish, with eyes like polished bone and a snout bristling with crooked teeth; the chest-mouth sits where the sternum should be, a vertical, lipless aperture lined with concentric rows of small, chisel-like teeth and a dark wet maw that seems to belch steam in cold weather. Musculature around the chest is exaggerated and corded, as if the ribs are reinforced to push the second mouth open. Scars, old cured wounds, and pale stretched skin around the chest suggest repeated strain; when it opens the chest-mouth the skin parts in a slick, ribbed flare and a small, fleshy tongue darts like a probing snake. Overall scale: stands about knee-high to a human (roughly 3 1/2 feet at shoulder), chest as wide as a man's torso, jaws capable of splitting an adult boar's ribcage.