Stohls were first regarded as a nuisance, albeit an attractive one. Their soft pelts and innate curiosity made them a hunters' favorite. As the stohls could not move quickly, they became easy prey for blaster-armed sportsmen. Shantee Ren, a popular holovid star, protested the carnage and even adopted three stohls as pets. With treats and loving care, she domesticated the serpentine beasts and even took to wearing them around her neck for public appearances. When an overzealous fan grabbed Shantee's arm during an autograph signing, the stohl soundly bit the admirer. Shantee weathered the public relations storm by remarking that "Needla (the stohl) has been specially trained to protect me. If not for her, I might have been killed. Who knows what that young man would've done if it hadn't been for Needla?" She than mounted a campaign to have the stohl declared an endangered species. With a tremendous publicity push and numerous personal appearances, Shantee won the support of animal activists, politicians and fans. The stohl was saved from extinction and the star's career received a healthy boost.

Following Shantee's lead, many celebrities demanded stohis of their own. The market for live stohis - and stohl trainers - boomed. Within less than a standard year, stohl killing went from common to criminal. Now the beasts - somewhat rare and quite expensive - grace the shoulders of thousands of ultra-rich star-travelers.

In its natural habitat, the stohl is a hideaway, living in crevasses and feeding on small rodentlike smarls. Its natural curiosity leads the stohl from its den when new and interesting beings approach. According to accounts dating from the planet's first settling, dozens of stohls emerged from hiding to examine the settlers' crafts and dwellings. The creatures' initial reaction to spacefaring visitors was friendly; numerous accounts describe stohls wrapping themselves around an explorer's arm and purring, or driving away the plague-ridden illorts (now believed extinct) that threatened the first colonies with a contagious virus.

Other accounts, however, depict the visiting stohls as scavengers with a nasty taste for table scraps, pets and small children. Shantee's "Save the Stohl" campaign claimed that such tales were fabricated to justify hunting the beasts, but some of the darker reports do have the ring of truth.

Sadly, the beautiful stohl pelt nearly proved the species' undoing; within five years, stohls had learned to fear Human contact. Docile stohls could be found only around virgin land, and hunting them for any reason became difficult. Shantee's agent claimed that Needla and Shen, two of the starlet's pets, had approached her of their own volition while Shantee turbo-skied on the slopes of Mount Quavaar. The trapper who claims to have sold her the pair tells a different story. In any case, stohls became hard to find. Their burrows, tunneled into ice or hard-packed snow, remain notoriously difficult to locate.

Stohls average about a meter to a meter and a half in length; they travel through the snow by undulating on their lightly-furred bellies. Their heavier top coats protect them from cold weather. Despite their propensity for thin caves and fissures, stohls do not dig their tunnels themselves; their pointed fangs are made for biting, not burrowing. They feed on small warm-blooded creatures when available, and attack larger prey when their normal food is scarce. It is possible that settlers in some places disturbed or killed the stohls' natural prey, forcing the creatures to attack the settlers themselves. Stohls feed in the wild by injecting a virulent poison through their fangs, then feasting. Some small animals are too tiny even to bite; these are swallowed whole and digested later.

Trained stohls often have their poison sacs removed; wearing a poisonous stohl is not only illegal, but stupid as well. An attack-trained stohl hisses loudly when its mistress is threatened, then uncoils and rears up; beings who do not get the hint are then bitten repeatedly until either the target flees or the owner calls a halt. Some especially vicious trainers teach their pets to wrap around a target, biting until he either falls unconscious or dies. Stohls encountered in the wilderness rarely entrap their prey; if a large target resists, the stohl flees.

Stohl eyes have transparent layered membranes to protect them against driving snow or crushed ice; they allow the animals to see with relative clarity even in their dim burrows, magnifying whatever light is present. Their fangs are sharp and strong, with a small poison reservoir running down the inside of each large fang. The heavy mane of fur behind the creature's head allows it to push through loose snow, while the more sparsely-furred body follows. The lower jaw hangs on a drop-hinge, and the gullet expands when necessary, allowing the stohl to swallow and digest large bits of meat. An effective digestive system breaks down all components of the stohl's meal, fusing all indigestible bones and skin into a large ball, to be choked up later. Seasoned stohl-hunters can detect their quarry's lair by the lumps found outside or around the fissure; they can even tell how old the stohl may be and when it last fed.

The warm-blooded stohls are noted for their curiosity. An old hunter's trick is to dangle jingling trinkets in front of the lair, or to tie a string to a smarl, let it wander in a ways, and then drag it out, hopefully with a stohl in tow. Various mechanical traps have been tried on Ichtor 8, but few such traps have ever succeeded in catching the elusive beast. Reaching into a crevasse is asking for trouble of many different kinds, including cave-ins, quick freeze and severe bites. Training a captured stohl is a long process but not especially difficult. Unless the stohl has been abused in some way, it quickly bonds with whoever feeds it by hand. Such bonds are hard to transfer, though a skilled trainer can do so. Stohls often enjoy playing with shiny objects (much to their owners' amusement). Stohls purr contentedly when happy or well-fed and spit when annoyed. Their fur is luxuriously soft, and is still prized by some black-market buyers.

Stohls are expensive and difficult to obtain. Only one known world, Ichtor 8, has stohls native to it, and the settlers and trappers there know the demand for attack stohls well. Prices vary from 2,000 to 5,000 credits, depending on the animal's health and training. Owning a stohl is a mark of status and distinction, especially within the Core Worlds, far from Ichtor 8. Shantee Ren still lives on Mhatma 5, a cold frontier world with a large preserve of transplanted wild stohls.