NOTE: You'll have to forgive me a bit for rambling here. This particular page is one that indulges some of my own interests, and so has detail that I doubt many folks other than me are actually interested in. However, it seems a shame not to put the information up, since I have thought about it, at least. So, this page describes in some detail the fauna, or animal life, of the Bloodlines campaign setting. In keeping with the idea that the geography of the area is based loosely on the ancient Lake Bonneville of the prehistoric American west, I decided that I should use a prehistoric animals as well. So, the fauna here is very loosely based on the Hemphilian fauna of the late Miocene North America. I didn't however, try to be too strict with that. Some creatures from later Pliocene faunas, earlier Oligocene faunas and completely different geographical areas were added here and there to spice things up, and in general, I didn't pay any attention to geographical distribution of historical animals either. So, I'll happily mix in Central Asian indricotheres, for example, or South American phorusracids, to the mix just because I think indricotheres are cool.

Of course, it helps that I didn't necessarily restrict my fauna to actual attested creatures. For example, my nimravid saber-tooth is very much like Barbourofelis fricki but I never claim anywhere that that's exactly what it is. In general, I speak in a more generic sense of things like machairodont cats, borophagine dogs, and the like. And for the non-specialists out there, don't worry! I don't slip too often into "technicalese" paleontological terms, although I do provide them for those who understand them, at least.

Why go to all this trouble? It's all about feel, really. I don't want a completely alien world, but I don't want a completely familiar one either. Although the Bloodlines campaign setting doesn't have lions, wolves, horses, antelopes, cows or other familiar creatures, it does have creatures that are similar in terms of ecological niche, at least. The fact that there are relations between say a lion and a Machairodus makes for some familiarity, but the differences are then brought out in sharper highlights because of the similarities.

Each of the creatures here will have its common name in the campaign setting (often derived from a Criadoc orcish word, since orcs settled the area before humans and many animal names are therefore borrowed from local orcish dialects in ancient history), a small description of what the creature "really" is in our world, and then a fuller decription of the creature and how it fits into the setting. When possible, I've also tried to find good illustrations, but surprisingly, it's actually quite difficult to find good illustrations of extint animals except for dinosaurs, but I'll do what I can for those who aren't familiar with the creatures from earlier times when it was easier to see what they were supposed to have lookd like.