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Message: <blockquote data-quote="QuietBrowser" data-source="post: 6944343" data-attributes="member: 6855057">So, just to swing the topic back to Gnolls... the problem I'm having with them is that, whilst I would enjoy having them, and I have a perfect place to put them in, there's no real ideas in my head for defining them. I do't know whether they come from, or how they live or anything else that really defines them.For comparison, Orks I know for a fact where they come from (mutated elves), how they came to be (dwarves mutated them from elves as expendable warrior slaves) and I have some significant cultural/background hooks to build them from (their struggle against the "bludga", the Red Rage, and shamelessly stealing the Cult of Pain from Wicked Fantasy). The Draega are rabbits mutated into humanoid form to serve as cannon-fodder by vengeful elven lich-wraiths (inspired by the "Suel Lich" from that Greyhawk Creature Catalogue in Dragon) and culturally based on the Shin'hare. Heck, even the Fangwyrms managed to work by spinning "voraciously predatory snake-infused kobolds abandoned by their disgusted creators" to a logical(ish) conclusion.But I don't have anything like that for Gnolls....In fact, I've come to realize Gnomes have a similar problem, in that I know vaguely where they came from - the truly mutated descendants of dwarves - but not how they mutated, or how they differ from their ancestors in any ways other than the physical. I'm fairly confident I want a magitek tinker gnome angle to them, avoiding the comic relief aspect that made Krynn's gnomes to cringingly awful, but beyond that, I could really use someone to spitball ideas with.But, to get back on topic, I really could use someone to talk to about figuring out what to do with gnolls.Part of that also revolves around their racial crunch. See, I did a writeup for gnolls I'm quite proud of based on their 4th edition lore (the best lore that WoTC ever gave them), dividing them into Butcher's Brood and Hyena's Soul subraces, plus with the addition of a more magical "Bouda" subrace. Figuring out how to make use of these subraces - whether they're all present, or only one or two exist - will play some part in figuring out a proper "identity" for Malebolge's Gnolls.In fact... I'm not set on this, just to get it out of the way, but, when one remembers the infamous spotted hyenas, with their bigger, more aggressive and socially dominant females, contrasting the egalitarianism of the striped hyenas, combined with the anatomical issues of the spotted that earned them their mythological reputation as hermaphrodites & genderbenders, and the prominence of striped hyenas in still-practiced African folk magics aimed at bestowing success in love & sexual congress, an idea forms. That the stronger, more aggressive Butcher's Brood "subrace" is used to depict the females of Malebolge Gnolls, with the sleeker and wiser Hyena Souls being males and the Boudas being some third gender - intersex, hermaphrodite, androgynous, whatever - to reference how they stand apart physically and spiritually from the males and females.Really not set on this idea, gender oddities are fitting for the kobolds and those races descended from them by extension, but I don't want to make every race some kind of sexual oddity - dwarves, orkoids, gnomes, aranea, humans, ratfolk, calibans (okay, maybe there are individual exceptions, but that's because they're mutants), draega, these are all standard humanoid binary gendered races. But, as I tried to say, I can see reasons to support gnolls possibly having some kind of third sex, especially if this is represented by their "magical" race, given how often duality and non-standard sexuality/gender was associated with magical power or divine blessings in real world cultures.</blockquote>

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