The Skoffin

A Creature from I cel andic folk lore for Va esen

No creature, not human nor animal, is able to resist the gaze of these monsters,
and will instantly fall dead if their eyes meet.

BY GRAEME DAVIS

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 Had it not been for quick thinking of the parish priest
and his able handling of the mirror, many more might COMBAT
have fallen to the beast’s gaze. ATTACK DAMAGE RANGE
— Niels Horrebow, July 1751
Bite, claws 2 0
The skoffin is the misbegotten offspring of a male Gaze * 0
fox and a female tabby cat. It looks like both of them,
* Kills instantly
except for its short, uneven fur and bald patches.
These creatures are vicious in the extreme, and
love to kill both humans and livestock. While they are
armed with formidable teeth and claws, their deadliest RITUAL
weapon is their gaze, which kills instantly. The A skoffin can be wounded by silver bullets, and also
strength of this power seems to vary from one by bullets made of dried sheep dung. It can also be
individual to another: some need to make eye contact killed by the gaze of another skoffin or by seeing its
with a victim to kill them, while others do not. own reflection.
Skoffins can speak human languages, and have
been known to taunt victims or to speak in riddles.

CHARACTERISTICS SECRET
MIGHT 8 BODY CONTROL 8 MAGIC 8 Kittens born with their eyes open are skoffins.
MANIPULATION 6 Fear 1 The can be killed as newborns, but if this is not
done they sink into the earth for three years, to
emerge as these monstrous creatures.

MAGICAL POWERS

♦ Enchant
VARIANTS
♦ Curse A tom cat and a vixen produce a similar creature
♦ Gaze kills instantly called a skuggabuldur (‘shadow baldur’) or finngalkn.
This creature has dark fur, often black, and preys
♦ Draws two initiative cards and acts
twice per round mainly on livestock though it will attack humans
without hesitation. Some individuals have the skoffin’s
killing gaze, and some do not. Guns are no use against
this creature, which must be killed at close quarters.
The urdarköttur (‘ghoul cat’) is of uncertain
CONDITIONS parentage. They are shaggy, with white or black fur,

□ Angered
and can grow to the size of an ox. It kills everything it
meets and digs up corpses from graveyards to eat, but
□ Mad +1 is otherwise quite similar to a skoffin.
□ Dazed -1 In some sources, usually later (and including The

□ Wounded and cautious -2 (acts

Witcher video games), the skoffin is a cockatrice by
another name. This version is hatched from a rooster’s
on only one initiative)
egg that has been incubated by a toad, and looks like a
□ Furious +2 (Enchants or
mix of both creatures. This vision of the creature is not
Curses)
supported by Icelandic folklore, but it might be an
□ Broken (flees and re-appears amusing way to mislead and confuse player characters
after 1d6 minutes)
who have not done their research properly.

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 EXAMPLES OF CONFLICTS
♦ A skoffin has moved into a small ravine by
Gudbrandsdal, and is killing all the sheep that
wander into it and all the shepherds sent to
protect them.
♦ Thorarin Helgison and his wife Berta are
arguing over a litter of kittens that were just
born to one of their barn cats. A hand reported
that they were born with their eyes open, and
must surely become skoffins. Thoriarin wants
to drown the kittens and burn their bodies to
prevent this, but Berta dismisses his concerns
as empty superstition. She has hidden the
litter and will not say where. If Thorarin is
right, the kittens will sink into the earth any
day now, and emerge in three years’ time as
skoffins. And there are eight of them….
♦ The graveyard at Liefsby has been dug up by
some kind of animal. Dismembered, chewed
corpses are strewn everywhere, much to the
distress of the parishioners. More worrying,
though, are the massive, cat-like tracks left in
the loose earth around the open graves. The
old folk whisper that an urdarköttur is to
blame — but where is it now, and who will
hunt it down?
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TRADITIONAL STORIES
♦ A skoffin climbed to the roof of a church
during Sunday services, and from this vantage
point it killed more than twenty people as they
left. More would have died had the village
priest not tied a mirror to a long pole and
showed the beast its own reflection, which
killed it instantly.
♦ A skuggabaldur was tracked down and killed
in a canyon. With its dying breath it charges
the hunters to tell the cat at Bollastadir of its
death. When one man did so, a tomcat leaped
at his throat with its teeth and claws. It only
released its grip when its head was cut off, but
the man was already dead by then.
NEILS HORREBOW
Niels Horrebow was a Danish lawyer who visited
Iceland to study its flora and fauna. His book
Tilforladelige efterretninger om Island (The Natural
History of Iceland) was published in Danish in
1752, with an English translation in 1758.
Like Carl Linnaeus, Horrebow was a real person,
and like Linnaeus, in the world of Vaesen he was
a member of the Society, in whose archives he
deposited all the notes that could not be
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