Deep beneath the surface of Golarion where the unclean children of the Darklands sleep, the gugs dwell in festering vaults and bottomless pits. Banished to the Darklands in an age long past, this savage race of flesh-hungry creatures celebrates grotesque rites of carnal slaughter, praising foul deities beyond the knowledge of the world above.

Gugs typically stand 16 feet tall, though they often crouch in the constricted tunnels of their eternally dark underworld. They are completely covered in coarse, dark fur, constantly matted with filth, excrement, and the remains of past meals. Each arm splits at the elbow into a pair of fully articulated and functional forearms ending in claw-tipped, four-fingered paws.

Ecology
The alien morphology of gugs suggests they do not originate from Golarion, but rather some distant elsewhere. Despite their origins, these giants of the Darklands have dwelt in their rancid subterranean realms for countless generations, establishing themselves in the deepest nooks and pits of the world. They are so well adapted to these terrifying depths that their bone structure tends toward flexibility and strange joints, allowing them to squeeze through much smaller spaces than would be expected of a creature of their size.

Gugs have a voracious appetite and, as a result, are almost always hungry. They favor flesh—especially that of sentient creatures—but primarily subsist on barely palatable fungi, slimes, and molds that grow below the surface. Rare among most predators, gugs don’t seem to mind consuming undead creatures, savoring the flesh of such profane prey just as they would any other meal. The only exception to this comes in the case of ghouls, for which the Darklands giants harbor an inexplicable fear. In times of poor hunting, they are not above chewing on rocks to assuage their hunger pangs, and one of the first signs of gugs nearby are teeth marks high on stalagmites and other rock formations.

Habitat & Society
It is thought that Rovagug first discovered the gugs and brought them to Golarion from some dreamlike other realm. In fact, some sages speculate that Rovagug freed the gugs from a lengthy imprisonment in their native lands by boring hidden tunnels between there and the dark ways of Golarion. Whether this is true or not, gugs revere the Rough Beast in addition to a pantheon of weird and bloodthirsty deities rarely named beyond the ravenous savages’ dark rites.

Gugs typically live in small, nomadic groups due to the scarcity of food and resources. Near water and stable sources of food these bands can grow larger and more sedentary, but the insatiability of gug appetites typically depletes even the most fertile caverns or forested underground vaults in a matter of months. In rare cases, gugs have been found inhabiting vast underground cities of profane dimensions. Constructed from stones of impossible size, these gug-cities seem completely beyond the ability of the subterranean terrors to construct, yet the split-faced giants claim them as their own. While some sages accredit these terrifying architectural marvels to the abilities of some hypothetical, more civilized gug ancestor, others suspect they rose at the hands of an elder race wiped out by the gugs. Still others fear the power of the gugs’ horrific deities and wonder if these gigantic works might be divine gifts, along with who knows what other unfathomable boons.

Pathfinder 11: Skeletons of Scarwall. Copyright 2008, Paizo Publishing LLC. Author: Greg A. Vaughan