Lords of the Tundra – Planescape: I am the Mimir

Lords of the Tundra — Animal Lords of Adlivun

The savannahs and jungles of the Beastlands may be perfect for the likes of the Cat Lord and Lizard Lord, but animals who favour more frigid climates tend not to do so well on that plane. Instead, they’ve migrated across the planar border to the frosty lands of Adlivun in the Hinterlands. In fact, many cold-loving migratory creatures make this journey every year, heading for Adlivun during the philosophical summer when the snows are least frequent, to get respite from the heat of the Beastlands. The animal lords described below can be found in either the tundra regions of the Beastlands or Adlivun itself. While animal lords themselves tend not to pick names, the hardy cutters of Adlivun have names for each of the Lords in their own local language.

Beaver Lord

Amishkaupeu. Planar animal lord [he/him] NG

Realm: Outlands / Hinterlands / Adlivun / The Beaver Lord’s Dam

In his human form, the Beaver Lord appears as a broad-shouldered lumberjack with ruddy cheeks, strong white teeth, thick fur-lined clothing, and hands calloused from years of outdoor labour. His eyes gleam as he goes about his business enthusiastically tending the forests, felling trees, chopping up lumber for building and firewood, and damming rivers. In Inuit mythology, Beaver embodies the ingenuity and hard work that’s required to thrive in harsh climates, and he teach cutters to harness the scarce resources of the land by fostering hardy vegetation and finding a use for absolutely everything. The Beaver Lord embodies the spirit of the pioneer. He’s brave enough to strike out and work on his own, he’s self-sufficient, but he’s also a good team-worker when a project needs more pairs of hands. Offerings are made to the Beaver Lord to ensure the yearly floods that follow the thawing season will spare settlements of the Hinterlands—Beaver and his wards work diligently to dam waterways and direct floodwaters away from humans and towards where they’re needed.

Caribou Lords

Papakashtshihku and Tekkeitsertok. NG animal lord (He, She)

Realm: Outlands / Hinterlands / Adlivun / Atiku-Mitshuap

You can tell how important the caribou are to the Inuit, because there are not one but two Caribou Lords. They embody the dual concepts of sustenance and survival in Adlivun wilderness. In his humanid form, Papakashtshihku is a towering figure with braids woven into his hair, a helmet crowned by horns, strong legs from trudging through deep snow, and eyes that reflect the shifting auroras of the night skies. He governs the caribou’s migratory cycles, ensuring herds safely traverse the ancestral routes across the frozen plains to follow the pastures. His companion Tekkeitsertok appears as a sinewy woman clad in hides etched with runes. Her voice is a low rumble akin to stampeding hooves. She watches over the agreement between the caribou and their hunters, teaching mortals the rules of how to to honour the animals’ sacrifices and avoid waste. Together, they inhabit Atiku-Mitshuap (the “House of Caribou”, actually a seemingly endless snowy plain). Their roles complement each other perfectly—Papakashtshihku sustains the herds’ abundance, and Tekkeitsertok ensures their gifts sustain the people. Inuit tales depict them as stewards who punish greed but and reward mindful hunters. In their mythology the caribou are practically sacred beasts—although fortunately ones that it is acceptable to eat.

Mink Lord

Atshikash-napeu. Planar animal lord [she/her] CN

Realm: Outlands / Hinterlands / Adlivun / The Mink Lord‘s Bound

The Mink Lord manifests as a sharp-featured woman with pure white hair that’s streaked with silver like a morning frost. Her body is lithe and her movements fluid and unpredictable. Her attire of fluffy white furs mirrors the shifting ice floes giving her perfect camouflage whether in her humanoid or beast forms. When she’s dressing to impress she wears fish-scale jewellery that glitters with iridescent colours. Her laughter sounds like the crackle of thin ice underfoot—and laugh she does. A chaotic trickster, Mink delights in pranks, especially ones that play on the hypocrisy of her victims. She loves to lure greedy hunters into labyrinths of meltwater channels or swap their metal tools with brittle replicas. Curiously though, Inuit myths also credit Mink as one of Adlivun’s foundational architects: Chant goes that it was Mink who dived deep to retrieve the first clods of earth from the ocean’s abyss, and it was she who shaped them into the realm’s first scattered islands. While her antics test mortal wits, the shamans warn that crossing her or retaliating risks Mink delivering her ultimate punishment—they say she can steal a cutter’s shadow. This fate is said to curse its victims to become lost on the pack ice. But despite her mischief, her name is invoked during hunts for her uncanny ability to reveal hidden paths through the ice, and to guide cutters back home through the featureless white terrain.

Polar Bear Lord

Nanook, Nanurjuk, Sila-taghak. Planar animal lord [he/him]

Realm: Outlands / Hinterlands / Adlivun / The Polar Bear Lord‘s Lumber

The Polar Bear Lord appears as a towering, broad-chested man with skin like wind-carved ice and eyes that glow like the midnight sun. His humanoid form retains the bear’s primal power—his fingers end in claws of translucent blue ice, and his voice rumbles like calving glaciers. By day he appears as the human Nanook, wrapped in white furs, but at night his body shifts from solid to spectral, mirroring the dance of the aurorae, and he takes on his second role as Nanurjuk the psychopomp. Inuit myths cast him as both judge and executioner in the frozen underworld, and he’s said to patrol the boundary between the living ice and the abyssal ocean depths. Petitioners who fail in their year of purification face his wrath: Nanurjuk drags them beneath the ice to join Sedna’s drowned retinue, their souls frozen into jagged crevasses on the sea floor.

Hunters also revere the Polar Bear Lord in his third form as Sila-taghak (“storm’s claw”), a capricious patron who tests mortals by conjuring blizzards to obscure their prey or thinning the ice beneath their feet. Those who survive his trials will gain his favour—their spears never miss their quarry when they hunt for sustenance, and their sleds will glide through the snow as swift as seals. In rituals, shamans depict Sila-taghak astride a throne of icebergs, flanked by the spectral forms of bears. These “ice-walkers” are said to guide lost hunters home, leaving pawprints which glow faintly in moonlight. His myths warn against hubris; even the Caribou Lords defer to his authority during the Long Dark, when his howl freezes creatures into hibernation as they wait for the thaw of Spring.

Seal Lord

Agloolik, Imarulik. Planar animal lord [they/them] N(E)

Realm: Outlands / Hinterlands / Adlivun / The Seal Lord’s Dive

The Seal Lord spends most of their time swimming in the icy waters of Adlivun, acting as the self-appointed guardian of sealkind. Their temper is as unpredictable as the weather in this frigid part of the Hinterlands—things might look placid one moment but a storm can blow up in a minute. Fisherfolk offer Seal prayers and the choice morsels from their catch, for they can be a generous patron, and placating the Lord this way is said to ensure a plentiful harvest on your next voyage. However, Seal has also been known to curse entire villages with failed hunts or shipwrecks, if the offerings are deemed unworthy or the customs of the ocean are disrespected.

Shamans often appease the Seal Lord with festivals of singing and storytelling. Once the ancient rituals have been performed, Seal will guide hunters in their favour towards seal herds, to ensure a successful hunt that will feed a family through the long dark winter. But if the Seal Lord catches you hunting seals wantonly or wastefully, they’ll flip over your boat and tip you into the frigid water.

Toad Lord

Anikapeu. Planar animal lord [he/him] N(G)

Realm: Outlands / Hinterlands / Adlivun / The Toad Lord’s Leap

The Toad Lord is a stout, warty-skinned man who wears clothing woven from moss and bracken. He’s a secretive cutter, preferring to hide and work from the shadows rather than out in the open. His expertise on the healing properties of the herbs and fungus of Adlivun is second to none, and his wisdom is sought by shamans on matters both medicinal and ritual. Offerings are made to the Toad Lord to ensure the snows melt when they should, and that the plants and insects return when the tundra thaws. Along with the Beaver Lord, Toad protects the lands of Adlivun from flooding—but chant goes he’s also not averse to ‘rescuing’ drowning cutters, and then demanding that they marry him as his reward. Be careful out there in the marshes, berk!

Winter Wolf Lord

Amaguq. Planar animal lord [he/him] N(E)

Realm: Outlands / Hinterlands / Adlivun / The Winter Wolf’s Blizzard

The Winter Wolf Lord is a trickster spirit and frequently shape-shifts into human form to carry out pranks, some of them amusing—and some of them dangerous. He’s feared for his sharp mind and unpredictably dark sense of humour. In his human form, he’s a tall and wiry cutter cloaked in wolf pelts. His hair is wild and silver-edged, and his piercing eyes shine with the eerie light of a winter moon, even during the day.

Winter Wolf’s tricks are range from amusing pranks to dangerous games of survival. He delights in toying with hunters and planewalkers. He may lead a cutter to a trail of perfectly carved footprints in the snow, only for the trail to end abruptly at a cliff’s edge—in a blizzard. Or he might mimic the voice of a sod’s friend or loved one, luring them into a harmless (but humiliating) snare. He enjoys exposing human hubris, reminding mortals of their frailty in the face of nature.

However, Winter Wolf’s sense of humour also take on a darker tone. His pranks can often turn into perilous tests of wit and endurance. Winter Wolf is a master of disguise and transformation, appearing perhaps as a wandering shaman, a raven, or even an icy gust of wind. In one tale, he transformed himself into a starving wolf pup to gain the sympathy of a hunter, only to reveal his true form and demand the hunter either outwit him in a game of riddles or face the wrath of his wolfpack. In another story, he created an illusion of a frozen lake, and tricked travellers into crossing it, only for the ice to crack beneath them, dumping them unceremoniously into the frigid waters.

More Lords of the Tundra

Animal Lord	Inuit Name	Notes
Bear Lord	Mashkupeu	This may well be the same Bear Lord that appears on the Beastlands. Cutters think he’s hibernating but it looks like he actually splits his time between the Beastlands and Adlivun pretty efficiently. Or perhaps there are two Bear Lords—nobody’s figured that out yet, but neither have two been seen at the same time together.
Fish Lord	Missinaku	The Fish King of the Threefold Ocean pops up under the ice here often, to monitor the state of their enormous portfolio. They are eternally chased by the Seal Lord but thus far Fish has never been caught.
Goose Lord	Nisk-napeu	The Snow Goose Lord is a symbol of the sacred circle of cooperation, communication, and knowing when to lead and when to follow. This is actually the Swan Lord of the Beastlands, who becomes Snow Goose when she migrates to Adlivun.
Owl Lord	Uhuapeu	This is the ancient Owl Lord of the Beastlands, who becomes the Snow Owl when he visits this frigid realm. He is a keeper of wisdom in Adlivun like he is in Karasuthra, and the Deep Dark of the Winter, where the light goes away for months at a time, he’s right at home.
Partridge Lord	Uapineu-napeu	A nervous, jumpy cutter, the Partridge Lord has a right to be afraid—his ground-dwelling wards are mercilessly hunted by predators. Fortunately, the numbers are on the side of the snow partridges; they breed quickly and their black and white speckled plumage gives them great camouflage.
Porcupine Lord	Kakuapeu	The Porcupine Lord teaches cutters to be hard on the outside and soft on the inside. He’s also a liaison between the immortal and mortal realms; not so much a psychopomp, as a spirit guide.
Skunk Lord	Maskhu	The Skunk Lord embodies the idea that a cutter doesn’t have to be aggressive to defend themselves, they can also be cunning. Good at hiding, but even better at releasing a spray so noisome that it makes attackers retch, a predator only hunts a skunk once.

Source: Jon Winter-Holt, Alex Roberts. Canonwatch: The animal lords of the tundra are homebrew, but based loosely on Inuit mythology.