Bristleback Soghog

Soghogs are a group of medium-sized thorngrazers related to monstrocorns. They have smaller guts that are less specialized to process plant foods, and longer legs to let them run. Their hide is now nearly hairless, reducing the hiding places for ectoparasites to take hold, and covered in small osteoderms both above and below the skin for defense. Like earlier monstrocorns, soghogs have a keratinous sort of sharp tooth-hair along their backs and necks, forming a mane that breaks off in the jaws of anything foolish enough to try and bite one. Their horns are all small and relatively lightweight, with four small ones on the upper snout used in combat with one another, while rows of smaller ones along the mouth perform a crude shearing action as it bites. This comes in handy, as they are the most carnivorous thorngrazers, and are now primarily predatory, often feeding upon their relatives and using these blade-like tusks to help slice their meat.

Soghogs are lean compared to their ancestors, with long legs to rise above the flooded ground. They are mobile enough to avoid the larger gantuans, and quick enough to run in and target the slow and helpless young of herding thorngrazers, easily killing smaller animals with a powerful bite. Yet they are still omnivores and will also eat plant stems, roots, fish and worms rooted out of the mud. Animal prey is killed with a bone-crushing bite to the head or spinal cord and flesh and bone alike is pulverized to a pulp in the jaws rather than being sliced apart. Soghogs can digest bones and scavenge freely on kills made by other predators; their belligerent temperament and tendency to roam in bands leaves them difficult prey and makes them well-adapted as kleptoparasites, stealing from animals such as sawjaws with regularity.