Gulon: the ravenous pack hunters of Vanaheim

The Gulon were massive feline like canine creatures that roamed the Nine Realms in the final years before Ragnarok, most numerous in the jungles of Vanaheim. They hunted in packs, killed with their teeth, and carried themselves with the hunched, low slung menace of scavengers grown to monstrous size. Kratos met them again and again on his travels through the Vanir wilds, and Mimir, who recorded what could be learned of them, judged them beautiful creatures whose beauty was best admired from a very safe distance.

Beasts of hunger#

The Gulon was a creature built for appetite rather than elegance. It moved low to the ground in a hunched, predatory stance, its frame wiry yet heavily muscled, with its strength gathered in its jaws and its claws. In shape it resembled a monstrous wolverine or hyena, a mingling of scavenger, predator, and carrion eater, and beside the more majestic winged beasts of the realms it looked filthy and brutish, an embodiment of hunger given legs.

Its face was grotesque and animalistic. The muzzle was crowded with jagged, uneven teeth that always seemed too large for the mouth that held them, and the jaws were made for tearing rather than for any clean bite. The snout was short and pushed forward, somewhere between wolf, rodent, and carrion beast, and above it sat small, beady eyes that glowed with hunger. Those eyes gave the creature a feral intelligence, the look of a rabid predator rather than any noble animal.

Patchy fur covered its body, bristling in tufts along the spine and neck and giving way in places to thickened, leathery hide. Its coloring ran to dark browns, grays, and sickly earthen tones, so that the whole beast carried a dirty, matted look. The forelimbs were powerful and ended in long, hooked claws suited to slashing and to digging into prey, while the hind legs were built for lunging, letting the Gulon spring forward with vicious speed despite its lumbering posture. Behind it dragged a thick, rat like tail, sometimes patchily furred, sometimes ridged with bone.

Packs of Vanaheim and beyond#

Gulon were most often found in hunting packs, and their manner of killing was simple and savage. They made quick and dirty use of their teeth as their main method of attack, closing the distance in a rush and tearing at whatever they caught. Mimir, cataloguing the beasts of the realms, allowed that they were beautiful creatures, yet warned that anyone close enough to admire that beauty was likely to pay for the privilege with an arm or worse. He also mused that if anyone among their company could find a way to tame one it would be Atreus, a boy who, in Mimir's estimation, would grow attached to a dragon if he thought there was half a chance of befriending it.

Though Vanaheim was their heartland, the Gulon were not confined to it. Some prowled the outskirts of Asgard, where they stalked the green expanse of the Plains of Ida, and others ranged the fringes of Midgard and Svartalfheim. The beasts proved useful to hunters as well as dangerous. When Kratos and his companions tracked the great drake called Slag Horn through the jungles of Vanaheim, they used a Gulon as a lure to draw the drake back to its lair, where it was finally slain. Long after his journeys through the living realms, when Kratos walked the shifting shores of Valhalla, Gulon were among the beasts that met him in the sanctuaries shaped after Asgard and Jotunheim.

The cursed breed#

Beyond the common kind there existed a fouler variant known as the Cursed Gulon, a more vicious animal that carried poison in its mouth and strengthened its already savage bite with venom. Rather than hoard that poison for the bite alone, the Cursed Gulon preferred to vomit it onto the ground around itself, laying pools of the stuff to keep enemies at a distance. Even in death the creature remained dangerous, for a slain Cursed Gulon could burst, loosing its foulness one final time.

Mimir found the habit fascinating, a defensive strategy built from the beast's own innards. He wondered whether the substance was truly stomach acid or whether it was brewed in sacs within the mouth and throat, which would have spared the animal any harm from carrying it. He admitted he had never managed to get close enough to a living specimen to settle the question. Cursed Gulon were counted among the beasts that haunted even the fields of Asgard in the last days of the Aesir.

The sled runners of Alfheim#

Not every Gulon lived and died by the hunt. In the desert of Alfheim dwelt two peaceful Gulon that had been trained to pull, and they hauled a sled across the dunes for travelers in the manner of sled dogs. Kratos rode that sled with Atreus and with Freya in turn as they crossed the sands of the elven domain. These Alfheim beasts wore a different aspect from their wild cousins, feline in form with purple skin and a scaled, reptilian tail.

Their presence in Alfheim was itself a small mystery. Freya recalled that her brother Freyr had loved to breed Gulon pups in Vanaheim, and she wondered aloud whether the two sled pullers were descendants of creatures Freyr had brought to Alfheim long ago. Mimir, riding along, suggested that the pair might be carried back to Vanaheim or to Midgard to keep company with Speki and Svanna, the great wolves stabled there. Freya refused the idea, saying it would be cruel to uproot animals that had grown accustomed to Alfheim, and whether Gulon and wolves could ever have lived peaceably together remained unknown.

The glutton of old tales#

The name Gulon was older than the beasts Kratos fought. In the stories told among the northern folk of Midgard there was a legendary creature called the Gulon, known in some tongues as the Jerff, described as a confusing mixture of animals, the size and shape of a dog but with the head, ears, and claws of a cat, wrapped in a thick coat of shaggy brown fur and trailing a tail like that of a fox. The creature of those tellings was an infamous symbol of gluttony. It was said to make a kill and gorge itself until it was swollen and could eat no more, then squeeze its body between two trees to force the meat through itself, and return to the carcass to begin again. The great pack hunters of Vanaheim dwarfed the beast of the old stories, but they shared its name and, by every account, its bottomless appetite.