Dog Breeds of Creation

Domesticated Dogs

Sheperd Hound

Origin: Widespread
Features: Mottled white and black, medium size, long fur and snout.
Description: Sheperd Hounds are a common breed in use by peasants who must herd large numbers of livestock. Often trained to bark and nip at such beasts in order to guide them, and to sound the alarm if approaching predators are seen, though these have been bred-in partially as natural tendencies.

Brushwood Dog

Origin: Pangu, Juche Prefecture
Features: Light brown with white necks and bellies, small-medium size. Naturally favour cleanliness.
Description: Brushwood Dogs are loyal, goal-oriented dogs used for hunting and guard duty. Dominant personalities require an equally dominant master.

Shar-Pei

Origin: Lord’s Crossing Dominion
Features: Light brown fur, large head, wrinkled skin
Description: The Shar-Pei breed is stubborn and domineering if not properly trained. Considered by some to be ineffective fighters, they are deemed more useful as ‘display dogs’, though the looseness of their skin allows them to twist so they can kick and bite even when an attacker thinks they have been restrained. It is said by some that they have been bred to share some aspects of appearance with Lion-Dog spirits, but the Immaculate Order has voiced displeasure without (yet) declaring the breed a heresy.

Red Setter

Origin: Eastern Threshold, Juche Prefecture
Features: Rich, lustrous red fur.
Description: The Red Setter is a bird hunting dog, with an excellent ability to retrieve fowl shot by a huntsman’s arrows.

Sausage Hound

Origin: Juche Prefecture
Features: Short legs, long ears and snout, cylindrical body
Description: Bred specifically for hunting tunnelling rodents, Sausage Hounds have an excellent sense of smell and ability to crawl through tight spaces in pursuit of quarry.

Techichi

Origin: Gem, Paragon
Features: Tiny dog, with short fur of light colour. Paragon Techichis tend to coats of white and grey, while Gem Techichis lean to brown and sand coats.
Description: The Techichi is a dainty lap dog, commonly kept as a pet by Dynasts or members of the Southern nobility. The Techichi is, by nature, a loud dog despite its size, but breeders in Paragon tend to apply medical techniques to render the dog mute. Some Scavenger Lords excavating First Age ruins in the South have found similar breeds depicted in art and sculpture, though such depictions seem to show the breed being used as a food dog rather than a pet.

Terrier

Origin: River Province
Features: Small dog, brown-black curly fur.
Description: The Terrier is a hot-headed lap dog, with a watchful attitude that makes it well suited as a sentry dog, sounding a warning alarm at an intrusion.

Foxhound

Origin: Great Forks
Features: Medium-large size, white bellies, legs, tips of tails, brown or tan upper parts and ears, long muscular legs, excellent sense of smell.
Description: Foxhounds are a specialized breed of hunting hound, bred for speed, endurance, sense of smell, and social acceptance of living in packs. Hunters tend to keep such dogs in large packs (between a scale and a talon in military terms), unleashing them to flush out and pursue prey, whom they catch and kill for their masters. Foxhounds are regularly employed to hunt other dogs (commonly Coyotl, Jackals, & Gravehounds, with wolves pursued but rarely attacked without direct aid from their keepers) and large rodents or birds, but their name points to the quarry they are most famed for, the Fox, as the breed is a key part of traditional Fox Hunts.
Due to the good reputation of this breed, and local association of the fox with the Realm, some ranger and counterintelligence units of Lookshy’s Seventh Legion term themselves ‘Foxhounds’.

Starlight Mastiff

Origin: Traiter (Lord’s Crossing Dominion)
Features: Black fur, broad chests, long legs, small ears.
Description: Starlight Mastiffs are the most prized guard dogs in Creation, whose exact breeding remains a secret of the Starlight Patrician Clan. Owners must be carefully introduced to a dog before taking possession, as it reacts to strangers with savage aggression.

Portee Lapdog

Origin: Portee (Lord’s Crossing Dominion)
Features: Long white silky fur, bird-like cries, multicoloured eyes.
Description: Portee Lapdogs are pet dogs whose exact breeding remains a secret of the Whitecloud Patrician Clan. Their eyes change colour according to their moods. These lapdogs are a current fashionable trend amongst the ladies of the Scarlet Dynasty.

Moonlit Hound

Origin: Greenharbour, Verdant Rivers Prefecture.
Features: Short, silver-sheen fur, long legs, thin body. Excellent eyesight.
Description: Moonlit Hounds are dogs whose exact breeding remains a secret of the Academy of Blood and Husbandry, under sponsorship of House V’neef. An excellent breed of hunting dog which is both swift and maneuverable, well suited to hunting game such as rodents or small animals in open fields.

Greenfang Mastiff

Origin: Cherak
Features: White fur, broad chests, long legs, small ears. Resistant to Quat.
Description: Greenfang Mastiffs are a breed created from various hounds and Omen Dogs, used to guard the slave-farms of Cherak and hunt escaping slaves. Their fangs, like the rest of their bodies, are not green: this name was given them because the use of the drug quat on slaves stains their lips geen, and the Mastiff has a habit of devouring those it is set to track.

Dwarf Herder

Origin: Blessed Isle
Features: Sable and white, medium-small size, low-set with short legs, intelligent and eager to please.
Description: While some folk myths in Juche Prefecture speak that these dogs are named for their role of keeping the Mountain Folk in their proper place below the surface, Dwarf Herders are in fact named for their short, stout stature and their intended purpose as herding dogs. While the Sheperd Hound dominates elsewhere in Creation, Dwarf Herders are perhaps the most common dog in this role on the Blessed Isle. Rather than circling herders, the dogs guide their charges by nipping at their heels, an approach that allows them to guide animals great and small, from Cattle to Mountain Horses to Geese to Ducks.
Dwarf Herders are also bred as lapdogs, this variant tending towards pudgier physiques, cleaner markings, and shorter, finer coats. While not the most popular of lapdogs within the Scarlet Dynasty, they see favour amongst the scions of House Ragara and House Mnemon, for their status as a working dog fit for the lap… prince Ragara is said to have been the first to keep them as lap pets, and in his retired senility he is still kept company by a number of the dogs.

Meat Dog

Origin: Blessed Isle (mostly around Chanos and Eagle Prefecture)
Features: Short yellow fur with darker faces and lighter bellies, medium-large size, not considered particularly hardy or intelligent, but the flavour of their meat is said to be good.
Description: Meat Dogs are livestock animals raised to produce Dog Meat for human consumption.

Sled Dog

Origin: Northern Threshold
Features: Wolf-like appearance, thick double-coat fur with white underparts and black or grey overparts, bright eyes of differing colours.
Description: While many dogs can pull sleds, the Sled Dog is the breed bred specifically for carrying out that task in the chill environments of the North (particularly south of the White Sea. Said to be bred directly from Gray Wolf stock, and remaining close to them in many ways, these dogs are bred for endurance and speed, able to undertake long journeys through harsh, cold terrain. Some Northern traders prefer dog teams to Iceboats as they do not depend on wind or surface conditions, and can be eaten along the journey, reducing the supplies which need to be brought along.

Malamute

Origin: High Northern Threshold
Features: Wolf-like appearance, large size (often above 100lbs in weight), very thick double-coat fur with white underparts and black or grey overparts & collar, resistant to cold.
Description: Malamutes are a breed closely related to the Sled Dog, bred to pull sleds across the chill environments of the North. Unlike the Sled Dog, the Malamute is not bred for speed but for strength and hardiness. They are said to be bred directly from Gray Wolf stock. The breed originates in the lands north of the White Sea, but has spread southward due to its capacity as a freight dog, able to haul sleds weighing upwards of one ton. Though a quiet, affectionate creature, the Malamute has strong instincts as a hunter, and those tribes who keep the breed know to bed their dogs distant from their young children.

Wild Dogs

Gray Wolf

Origin: Northern Threshold
Features: Thick, coarse grey-white fur, plumed tail, blue eyes. Resistant to cold. Excellent eyesight. Prone to obesity if given access to too much nourishment.
Description: The Gray Wolf is a wild dog (its own god would insist ‘[canine]’) of the snowy North. Once, it was considered the type animal of all Canines, and its god was Alpha of the Canine Conclave, before being usurped from the post. Today some barbarian tribes form relationships with wolves, though they shy from true domestication. In more civilized areas, breeders still capture the animal to add its traits to their breeds.

Forest Wolf

Origin: Eastern Threshold
Features: Coarse red-brown fur, plumed tail, dark eyes. Excellent hearing and sense of smell. Prone to obesity if given access to too much nourishment.
Description: The Forest Wolf is a wild dog (its own god would insist ‘canine’) of the Eastern and Northeastern forests. Today some barbarian tribes form relationships with wolves, though they shy from true domestication. In more civilized areas, breeders still capture the animal to add its traits to their breeds.

Coyotl

Origin: Blessed Isle, River Province, Northeastern Threshold
Features: Small-medium size, omnivorous, grey-dusted sable or red fur. .
Description:.Coyotl are wild dogs found in the open fields of the Blessed Isle & Scavenger Lands, and the meadows of the Northeast. Coyotl are omnivorous, and while they tend towards rodents, small animals, and insects, they will approach settlements to scavenge when opportunities present. Though they are difficult to train to follow commands, some cultures such as the Linowan will tame Coyotl by raising them from pups, producing close (if disobedient) companions.

Jackal

Origin: Southern Threshod
Features: Small-medium size, red-yellow fur with black back, highly vocal
Description:.Jackals are wild dogs found across the Southern Threshold, from the fields of the Coastal South to the open deserts to the savannahs of the the Southeast. Their diet consists of insects and small mammals, though they will also seek larger prey such as Gazelles. Cattle and other livestock are frequently taken as prey, which makes relations between Southerners and jackals rather antagonistic. The cult of Ahlat has particular strictures that all jackals ought be hunted and exterminated, a position which has caused acrimony between the Bull God and even the domesticated dog gods of the Friends-of-Humanity Conclave.

Eight-Tailed Mole Hound

Origin: Southern Deserts
Features: Grey to brown fur tones, tinged with white. Hard, stone-like armoured plates over face and back. Eight tails. Can tunnel through loose sand. Slightly melodic howling.
Description: Eight-Tailed Mole Hounds are a breed of magical creatures devised during the days of the Shogunate, by Dragonblooded leaders seeking to suppress the raids of the Dune People in the far South. Now gone feral, they are a danger to travelers and villages in sandy regions, perfectly willing to hunt and eat humans. They travel in packs of one to two dozen, and while not considered san or ata-beasts according to Haltan classifications they show superior tactical instincts. Many Western communities offer bounties for those who can bring in eight tails, as a consequence of which a number of other dog breeds in the South are hunted and combined for purposes of fraud.

Omen Dog

Origin: Northern Threshold
Features: Long legs, small ears, broad chests, height up to 4 feet at the shoulder, oversized teeth.
Description: Omen Dogs are large dogs native to the North, ranging south to the coastal regions around Cherak and Madura. Ferocious and aggressive, a single Omen Dog can take down a warhorse, while packs can overcome whole caravans.

Gravehound

Origin: Sijan (River Province), Shadowlands.
Features: Ash-grey, thin and cadaverous. Heightened sense of smell and hearing. Immunity to several corpse-borne diseases. Said to be able to sense the presence of ghosts, and touch them as if material.
Description: Gravehounds are a breed of dog thought to have been deeply touched by the necrotic essence of the tombs and Shadowlands around Sijan, and sometimes reported dwelling in other Shadowlands as well.