In the heart of the Creaton Kingdom’s extensive network of colleges and universities, there exists a creature loved by all known as the Prose Wolf. An elegant hybrid born of living spellbooks and a canine familiar, this wild hound roams the gardens and nature preserves around and between schools with fur woven from the pages of books and adorned with quills that fill their paper with text.
Revered as "Man's best friend twice over," the Prose Wolf is a creature of steadfast loyalty. Even the wild variant that descend from a generation of Prose Wolves that escaped their captivity for the college yards often befriend students and reveal to them the secrets of magic written in their fur.
Arcane, Canine, Arcane-ine
Domesticated prose wolves often serve wizards and clerics as something similar to a familiar, but much more capable in combat. Members of these classes can use these creatures as both their spell book and spellcasting focus so long as the prose wolf is conscious and willing. Developing the bond with a prose wolf that allows for this union is one that takes years, forged in hundreds of hours of commitment, dedication, and kindness.
Despite the altruistic circumstances of their creation at the hands of a wizard professor who sought to design a powerful ally in the fight against evil – and their generally good nature – some prose wolves have been seen in the service of evil warlocks and clerics of evil gods. When this happens, their masters have often ripped the magic from the beast’s pages and subjected them into fonts of magic, nothing more than vessels in which to store their wicked wisdoms. Such wolves cannot help but absorb the evil in the spells written on their fur. They become evil variants that try to trick less perceptive people into casting spells laced with vile curses.
Natural Order
Of the prose wolves that live freely beyond the reach of students in class, an order develops, a hierarchy of prose wolves where those that inherited the most powerful magic in their fur take charge over those with pages upon pages of only cantrips or lesser magic. These powerful wolves are the Alphas in their group and can control not only the spells in their pages, but also the paper itself. Prose Wolf Alphas can fold their fur into powerful origamic shapes – most notably into huge wings that grant them flight.
Such beasts never appear among the domesticated variant, and scholars cannot deduce why they always fail to magically invoke or breed for this change in power. That said, the alphas are still keen to befriend powerful caster and most colleges of magic have one or two alphas that roam their property as guardians and protectors, referred to by the students as the school's mascots.
