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Message: <blockquote data-quote="DrunkonDuty" data-source="post: 9204547" data-attributes="member: 54364">My second bunch of gnolls are from my never used Beyond the Keep on the Borderlands campaign setting. The gnolls of the Spikes are much closer to the classic vision of gnolls. The Spikes, a region named for the many tall basalt rock formations that dot the dry landscape, is home to about 20 clans of gnolls. They predominantly make their livelihoods as raiders. They raid each other and all their neighbours, but their favourite targets are the hobgoblins who drove them from their homelands in the nearby steppe about 500 years ago. They are also hunters, hunting the big horn sheep and antelope of the region. In both raiding and hunting they use trained hyenas and hyenadons.They live in heavily fortified fortresses that they carve into the highest peaks. Their only real industry is mining the silver and gem bearing quartz seems of the region. The work is done by slaves and used for trading, mostly for weapons. Their religion is a mix of ancestor veneration and the worship of a demon god called Heeyihee. (I wish to point out that although I recycled the name for my gnolls above, the two are not meant to be the same being, nor avatars, nor nothing. I just  liked the sound of it and wanted to use it. Plus laziness.) Anyhoo, Heeyihee is a war and death god who demands cannibalism on Her holy days. Acquiring captives for this is one of the reasons the gnolls raid.They also practice cannibalism of their own dead, but this is a much more solemn ritual than the blood soaked feasts of Heeyihee. In battle they will go to great lengths to retrieve fallen comrades, or at least their livers. They believe that the soul resides in the liver and that by eating the liver of their fallen they continue to give their strength to the clan. It is eaten raw, finely chopped and rolled into balls with a coarse barley flour.These gnolls place immense value on personal honour. Like crazy amounts. Above and beyond personal survival and even the survival of the clan.  This touchiness about personal honour makes the internal politics of a clan a web of personal debts and insults that is impossible for outsiders to understand. Think trying to make head or tail of 30 years of intense soap opera plot twists from watching one episode.The following is lifted from my campaign notes:Sheelaghru was a champion of the Tearing Teeth Clan, their foremost warrior and the greatest warrior of all the gnolls. On a raid against the Yildiz hobgoblins she was cut off and surrounded and would certainly have died had not a pack of warriors from the Blood Snout Clan rescued her.Later the two clans fell into a dispute over hunting rights and a feud developed. The Blood Snouts led the whole Tearing Teeth tribe into an ambush. Sheelaghru prepared to lead a charge to break out of the trap when the Blood Snout chief called on her blood debt. Many Tearing Teeth warriors had already fallen in the ambush and the survivors were outnumbered, without the legendary Sheelaghru they would never survive. Among the remaining Tearing Teeth warriors was Sheelaghru’s mate. He and Sheelaghru embraced and she promised to eat his liver then walked away from the battlefield. With a howl the Tearing Teeth warriors charged to their deaths.At the funeral rites of her tribe Sheelaghru devoured the livers of all her dead comrades. Then she called on Heeyihee to help her gain vengeance. At the next dark of the moon, when Heeyihee’s power is at its greatest, Sheelaghru attacked the Blood Snout bastion. By the dawn there were no Blood Snouts left alive. With the dark power of Heeyihee to help her she had slain them all, even their slaves. Sheelaghru climbed to the top of the Blood Snout's fortress and at the first touch of the sunlight flung herself to the jagged rocks below, in payment for her demon-god’s aid.This episode, which resulted in the total destruction of two whole clans, is the most revered of all the gnolls’ folk tales. An outsider might see it as a nihilistic tale but to the gnolls it encapsulates all their beliefs in one epic: longing for the steppes and hatred of the hobgoblins; paying of blood debts; death in battle; the rites of farewell; revenge; the supremacy of Heeyihee; and above all personal honour. The full tale takes three nights to tell (it is never told during the day) with the details of the funeral rites of the Tearing Teeth taking the whole of the second night.And luckily for one and all, that's it for my gnolls. <img src="http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/glasses.png"  class="smilie" loading="lazy" alt="B-)" title="Glasses    B-)" data-shortname="B-)" /></blockquote>

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