Gnolls

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History

Highly adaptive, gnolls are found throughout most of the former Silver Moon Empire, save Oceanuus specifically, and much of the Badlands except the Dune Wastes, the Catharga Salt Flats, and the Chilia'mati and islands southeast of it. The gnoll heartland is the Great Steppes of the northern Badlands. Here one can find the most ancient of the gnoll clans, following the herds as their ancestors did. Where the herds go, so do the gnolls.

Physical Description

Gnolls are large, tailless humanoid beings who resemble canines with clawed hands and feet. Although they walk upright, their long arms allow them to move on all fours easily. They possess pronounced muzzles, with powerful jaws and although their mouths are not truly built for it they can speak common. Gnolls are mostly carnivorous and range from six to over seven feet tall with powerful but varied builds. Their eyesight is on par with that of humans with better senses of smell and hearing.

Young children physically mature twice as fast as humans. They often lead hard lives, and so few reach old age, but under similar circumstances they possess nearly the same lifespans as humans.

Culture

Virtually all gnolls come from nomadic or hunter/gatherer societies, mostly the former. Some conduct raids on others, but this is no more prevalent than it is in humans. Their hunting and war parties can be deadly efficient, in part due to their complex hunting language, which has the added benefit of frightening foes often with its many howls, yips, and eerie yowls and laughing sounds. Gnoll claws and jaws are deadly in their own right, and it is a note of distinction to use only one's natural weaponry in battle or the hunt.

Gnoll tribes carry most of what they need on their own backs or on sledges, occassionally keeping pack animals from which they can also get wool and milk; they kill these beasts of burden only as a last resort, preferring the hunt. Gnolls are often tolerant toward other races, however gnolls have strict taboos against interspecies mating between their race and others.

Among gnolls, there is a great love for non-sentient predators, and sometimes one even comes upon tribes made up of gnolls and more gregarious predators such as wolves and hyenas.

Gnoll tribal organization is kin-based and divided into individual packs with leadership falling to the most powerful of the group regardless of gender. This pack leader carries a symbolic weapon of leadership similar to the flail called the yrrgarll, a weapon with a flexible middle and two ends of equal length capable of tying up weapons and striking powerful blows. These weapons are usually decorated and carved to be works of art in themselves. The leader of a gnoll pack is widely known by the name of flail hound, or in short the flaind or flind.

Gnolls use a form of pyromancy to create semi-permanent decorations on their fur out of ash, burning symbols of significance into their fur. The flind usually bears symbols representing the immediate preceding line of flinds and its earned flind name.

 

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