Gorehounds. What's up with those guys?
Gorehounds are so much fun! They were one of my first serious attempts at creating Original Monsters! The basic idea is that the Sweetwater Mines is very, very cursed. This is because ages ago, a bunch of miners were trapped in some collapsed tunnels due to Terrible Safety Procedures. Not wanting the mines to be closed down or to pay out any kind of fee to the families or government, this was simply covered up! In fact, it was so covered up that several of the miners were simply left in that tunnel, trapped!
Their hunger and rage turned them into the first gorehounds, terrible creatures that are like a cross between a human and a cat in appearance, with traits of a very hungry rabid wolf. People who are in the mine for any length of time start to change into them; this happened to a bunch of the miners from repeat exposure to the ‘cursed’ mines.
And oh, hmm! Where is Austin at right now??? Gasp! Could he be in the mines???
Theoretically, the curse can be ‘halted’ by simply leaving the mines and never going back but you also need to keep up a steady diet of raw meat. Plus, halting the curse doesn’t actually undo the curse, which means that you’re still at least partially transformed into a gorehound.
Gorehounds live in packs in the mines but aren’t social animals, they will turn on each other without hesitation. They were also the first creature that I used the term ‘silver dollar eyes’ with. I then promptly started using that term for pretty much every monster creature that I wrote about, because I just thought (and still do) think it’s neat.
