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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Stormrunner" data-source="post: 1582451" data-attributes="member: 13471">Eyup. Not so much "oversized" as "identical in appearance to a male's".  Telling the two hyena genders apart is extremely difficult, even for trained scientists, unless the female is pregnant or nursing, or the individual is tranked and examined up close and personal.  Furthermore, the females are bigger, stronger, and generally more dominant and agressive than the males (one thing Lion King got right, anyway).SO why does D&D assume gnoll society follows the usual stereotypical, patriarchal, treat-females-like-<img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> pattern?Well, "identical in appearance to a male's", remember?  Most adventurers are NOT going to closely examine the intimate bits of a smelly, filthy, flea-infested, soaked-in-its-own-blood-and-urine gnoll corpse (and if they do, it's time to start backing away slowly).  If the dead gnoll leader looks like a "he", most will assume it's a "he".But if the chief is a beeyotch, why are the other females so badly treated?Because they're her rivals.  As top dog in a chaotic evil pack, she doesn't dare show the slightest weakness or mercy, or she's dead.  Which means, among other things, that she doesn't dare get pregnant - it would hamper/weaken her too much.  Conversely, she needs to keep her rivals "barefoot and pregnant" as much as possible, for the same reason.  Hence all the abuse heaped on subordinate females - who will look much more "female" to human eyes, with visible teats, etc., due to being pregnant/nursing.  She can't just kill them all, someone needs to have pups if the tribe is to survive.This implies that the tribal shaman, as the predominant source of contraceptive/fertility potions, holds great political power within the tribe.  Undoubtedly it's quite common for the shaman to act as an eminence gris (shadow ruler), with the queen b!tch as muscle/figurehead.  It also does much to explain why gnolls tend so strongly towards stupidity and brutality - the best and brightest females are the very ones who don't dare have pups.</blockquote>

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