Mammoth

The mammoth is a colossal herbivore of the Freljord, one of the largest beasts to roam that frozen realm. Grown mammoths are covered in matted, russet hair and carry jagged, sword-like tusks, each capable of goring a warrior to death with a single blow. A wounded bull's bellow can shake snow from mountain trees and echo across the peaks, loud enough to rival a war-horn whose blast carries for miles. Its front legs stand as thick as ironwood trees, and a single beast can feed a hunting tribe for a week. To the peoples of the Freljord, the mammoth is both prey and prize. The Winter's Claw hunt them across the foothills and timberlines to stock their stores against the harshest winters, a pursuit that can take a war party the better part of a week and cost lives. In "Dead of Winter," Sejuani, riding her drüvask Bristle and joined by Olaf and the masked warrior Urkath, ran a wounded mammoth to ground near the timberline of the mountains claimed by the Volibear, ordering it to rise and giving it a king's death rather than let it die on its knees. Nothing of the animal is wasted: its hide is stretched into the yurts that shelter Sejuani's bloodsworn, and its tusk-spikes are driven into the mud to raise those tents. The mammoth is also a creature of war. Sejuani's host counts mammoth riders among its ranks, and huge war mammoths, veterans of battles against men, trolls, and the skard vastaya, march with her army, though even these giants trembled before the avatar of the Volibear, a beast taller than a mammoth itself. Trolls hunt and devour them as well, feasting on their furry meat and ribs, a habit that boastful troll kings like Trundle and Yettu inflate into ever more outlandish tall tales. Far to the south, mammoth ivory travels the trade routes as a prized good, stacked among the plunder in the warehouses of Bilgewater.