Fearsome critters are beasts, not monstrosities, since they play a perfectly normal ecological role. Since this is fantasyland, those ecological roles may be very strange compared to reality.
For example, the axehandle hound subsists on the clean, worked wood found in weapons and tools--they particularly love the taste of sweat after heavy usage. This raises the question of how the hounds subsisted before lumberjacks arrived. Simple: they did not. Because of spontaneous generation, numerous animals are born all the time and die when they fail to find a niche. When their niche finally opened, they survived and thrived.
The axe handle hound appears in Wayfinder #7 for the Pathfinder rules. Here is an excerpt:
Axe handle hounds are the bane of cutyards throughout Darkmoon Wood. Nocturnal prowlers, they sneak into lumber camps after nightfall looking for axe and pick handles, which they voraciously devour. The hounds’ diet consists entirely of clean, worked wood – staves, polearm hafts, shovels, picks and axes, anything that has salt sweat left on the handles after having been used repeatedly.
They make for excellent pets; however, the cost of feeding them can be exorbitant.
The skull of a dead axe handle hound can be used for a bone battleaxe.
Relevant Links
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fearsome_critters
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axehandle_hound
- https://abookofcreatures.com/2017/02/08/fearsome-critters/
- http://www.lumberwoods.com/fearsome_critters.htm
- https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FearsomeCrittersOfAmericanFolklore
- https://www.wired.com/2014/08/fantastically-wrong-ridiculous-mythical-critters-dreamed-up-by-19th-century-lumberjacks/
- https://zapatopi.net/treeoctopus/
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