The tundra winds blow hard across the surface and the temperatures are deadly. A group of hunters stop under a boulder to seek shelter from the bitter winds and light a fire to warm their bodies. As they sit around the fire sharing what rations they have available, a terrible creaking is heard, audible over the howling winds and the icy ground begins to swell, cracking and breaking. A massive creature springs forth, with a huge mouth, filled with several jagged rows of teeth. It slithers out of the hole it made; its body long and scaled, tapering into a long whip like tail with no hindlegs, and two stout arms that end in bladed cusps. It rears its head around, its black beady eyes staring into nothingness, and sniffs. It opens its mouth and emits a horrible scream, piercing the ears and minds of the hunters, who fall to their knees before they can grab their bows.

The ormdage are serpentine monstrosities and are covered in thick, hard scales, with a massive head and an even more impressive mouth. Their bodies taper into a long slender tail. They have no legs, but have two stout, powerful arms that form bladed shovels at their ends for tunnelling under thick ice. Their eyes are small and are mostly blind. Ormdage are typically a gray in color with dull white highlights with a hint of blue and are difficult to discern from their snowy favored terrain. They are deaf and rely on the thousands of tiny whiskers on their body to pick up vibrations on the surface.

Ormdage live in snowy and icy tundra terrain, tunneling under the ice. They only emerge above ground when they have sensed prey above and need to feed. They can go months, and even years, without eating or drinking, often sleeping in underground ice caverns they have formed themselves by digging and tunnelling. Ormdage are solitary creatures and only interact with others of its kind when it is time to procreate, which occurs about once every ten years or so. When breeding season for ormdage occurs, hundreds of the creatures migrate to one central place and will spend several months mating. When a female ormdage lays its eggs, she will nest in place during the gestation process, which can take up to two years to complete.

Ormdage make their lairs in ice caverns they have formed themselves by digging and tunnelling. Their lairs are typically connected by a network of underground ice tunnels the ormdage has formed over centuries of tunnelling. Within these lairs, refuse of an ormdage's prey can be found in select piles where it has defecated the parts of the creature that cannot be digested into beneficial nutrients. Depending on the location of the specific ormdage, these piles of refuse can sometimes contain weapons, armor, wood, metals and, most commonly, bones.