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5e Homebrew Setting: Malebolge, Post-Apocalyptic Fantasy
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<blockquote data-quote="QuietBrowser" data-source="post: 6949347" data-attributes="member: 6855057"><p>Hmm... that suggestion actually made me start thinking.</p><p></p><p>See, from the beginning, I've basically thought of the Rodushi - Malebolge's Ratfolk - as kind of a "second genesis" species, a race born just out of the sheer raw magic inundating the world after the Black Dawn, who happened to strike it lucky. The first generations or Rodushi evolve in the ruins of what had been a city of great libraries and learning; they mastered language and culture by studying philosophical texts and social notes left over by the humans before the Doom War. That's why they have the Great Work philosophy they have; they know the world could be better, and so they've built their culture around the idea of making it happen. They lucked out a lot.</p><p></p><p>So, between that idea, what you've said, and my own fondness for both the 4e fluff, where gnolls are defined by their deep spiritual/cultural struggle between the Demon and the Beast, and the Dach'youn (inoffensive, moon-worshipping, matriarchal hunter-gatherer gnolls from Wicked Fantasy), I think I found the seeds of an idea for gnolls.</p><p></p><p>What if gnolls are the foils to the rodushi? The ratfolk lucked out and had all that high-minded, goodly human cultural artifacts to build their new culture on. The gnolls didn't get that. They just had their ancestral instincts to use as the basis for their rise. Add in some kind of spiritual contamination - necrotic energy giving them a natural affinity for necromancy with the attendant drawbacks, and/or planar radiation from this setting's Hell-equivalent - and, perhaps, that might be something I can use to shape the gnolls into something distinctive?</p><p></p><p>When it comes to what I want, I don't want them to be always chaotic evil - 5e has turned me <strong>quite</strong> off of that, thank you - but I don't want them to be cute and cuddly hugbugs, either. (At least, not unless you've spent a lot of time befriending one.) They can still feel positive emotions; loyalty and teamwork, friendship and love, tenderness and patience. But they are, like the hyenas they came from, pragmatic, even brutal, aggressive, domineering. They crave the pack, but they need to find a social hierarchy to function.</p><p></p><p>...I don't know, maybe I should start by listing up traits I'd like my gnolls to have and then work backwards from there?</p><p></p><p>Also, I could really use some help exorcising that idea of using the subraces to reflect genders, simply because of that potent cocktail of reasons for first considering it.</p><p></p><p></p><p>On a somewhat different topic, should I share my basic concept/summary/outline of who and what the various races in Malebolge are?</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="QuietBrowser, post: 6949347, member: 6855057"] Hmm... that suggestion actually made me start thinking. See, from the beginning, I've basically thought of the Rodushi - Malebolge's Ratfolk - as kind of a "second genesis" species, a race born just out of the sheer raw magic inundating the world after the Black Dawn, who happened to strike it lucky. The first generations or Rodushi evolve in the ruins of what had been a city of great libraries and learning; they mastered language and culture by studying philosophical texts and social notes left over by the humans before the Doom War. That's why they have the Great Work philosophy they have; they know the world could be better, and so they've built their culture around the idea of making it happen. They lucked out a lot. So, between that idea, what you've said, and my own fondness for both the 4e fluff, where gnolls are defined by their deep spiritual/cultural struggle between the Demon and the Beast, and the Dach'youn (inoffensive, moon-worshipping, matriarchal hunter-gatherer gnolls from Wicked Fantasy), I think I found the seeds of an idea for gnolls. What if gnolls are the foils to the rodushi? The ratfolk lucked out and had all that high-minded, goodly human cultural artifacts to build their new culture on. The gnolls didn't get that. They just had their ancestral instincts to use as the basis for their rise. Add in some kind of spiritual contamination - necrotic energy giving them a natural affinity for necromancy with the attendant drawbacks, and/or planar radiation from this setting's Hell-equivalent - and, perhaps, that might be something I can use to shape the gnolls into something distinctive? When it comes to what I want, I don't want them to be always chaotic evil - 5e has turned me [B]quite[/B] off of that, thank you - but I don't want them to be cute and cuddly hugbugs, either. (At least, not unless you've spent a lot of time befriending one.) They can still feel positive emotions; loyalty and teamwork, friendship and love, tenderness and patience. But they are, like the hyenas they came from, pragmatic, even brutal, aggressive, domineering. They crave the pack, but they need to find a social hierarchy to function. ...I don't know, maybe I should start by listing up traits I'd like my gnolls to have and then work backwards from there? Also, I could really use some help exorcising that idea of using the subraces to reflect genders, simply because of that potent cocktail of reasons for first considering it. On a somewhat different topic, should I share my basic concept/summary/outline of who and what the various races in Malebolge are? [/QUOTE]
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