Quillbacks are a four-legged beaked creature found roaming the desert landscape of the Western Approach in western Orlais. Its body is burgundy in color, with feathers protruding from along the spine.

Background

Those men of learning who claim dominion over the cold, weirdly angled laws of this world would deny that unutterable savagery of nature, conjuring their knowledge as a man in repose draws a blanket over himself, somnolent, to distract from cognizant mind the lethargic caliginosity of this world. Such mendacity is made manifest in the quillback.

Its hooked beak describes a smile that makes mock of the laws of man and Maker, and in the sagging folds of its rough and squamous hide lies no elegant simplicity. But look upon its dorsal ridge for the proof, if logic be your refuge, for in the ebon spines that jut uncaringly from its back, no man of learning can fail to see the cold and twisted spires of the Black City itself.

What Maker would give mock to our ebullient transgressions by marking His domicile into the flesh of this repugnant eater of flesh, this scavenger of wastes and deserts? What message can any man read in this carrion feeder's decrepit spines than that the Golden City of which we dream is Black, always Black, the swollen infection poisoned from time beyond the knowledge of our insignificant minds, awaiting only our unheeding touch to afflict us with understanding of our true place in this vast, uncaring world?

—From An Anatomie of Various Terrible Beasts, by Baron Havard-Pierre d'Amortisan^[1]

Master means that it's pointy.

—Footnote in the margins of the manuscript by the baron's scribe, Dunwich^[1]

Quests

How to Lure a Dragon

Locations

Western Approach

Notable loot

Alpha Quillback Spines

Quillback Fang

Quillback Intestine^[2]

Quillback Leather

Fade-Touched Quillback Leather (Health)

Codex entries

Quillback

Trivia

• Quillbacks are eaten in the Western Approach.^[3] The official cookbook implies that they are also eaten in Tevinter.^[4]
• In the game files, Quillback Leather is called "Buzzard Hide".
• At one point in development, quillbacks were referred to as "hyena vultures" and as scavengers they had grown large and confident by feeding off the scraps left by high dragons.^[5]

See also

• Fauna and flora

References