You were taught from a young age that you were a freak, a monster among civilized folk, and that you should be proud of it. The first gnolls, your ancestors, were said to be the spawn of a particularly degenerate cult of goblin druids and the dire hyenas that they raised as warbeasts. Driven belowground, your kind has served as mercenaries for kobolds and other civilized beings desperate or savage to put up with the aggression and brutality of the gnolls.
A week ago you reached womanhood and suckled on the teat of the alpha who raised you for the final time. You doubt you will see her again; You are the third alpha female she has successfully reared, and her pack is strong enough to brave the surface. She will travel to the brightlands and seek either a glorious death, or some state of true depravity - bride of a nightbeast, thrall of a vampire, experimental canvas of a wicked druid, or even pet to some great monster such as a dragon or Minotaur. Perhaps someday such a fate can be yours as well, but your adventure as a mature alpha gnoll is just beginning, and very few in your shoes live to gain the strength and reputation required to face the surface.
Marching into Cimtunnels, the largest kobold settlement in this part of the underground, you begin to turn heads almost at once. The scent of an an alpha female draws almost every gnoll in town to the streets for a look. Once a crowd is gathered, you announce your intention to form a pack. This declaration alone is enough to cause a handful of younger males to kneel and declare fealty to you, but it is when you name the alpha who reared you that the support truly starts rolling in...
You Were Raised By:
Headgnasher the Mighty: Most alpha gnolls end up about the size of a human, but your alpha-nurse was a freakish physical specimen even by gnoll standards. She was the size of an average troll, and nearly had the recuperative abilities of one as well. Her milk must have rubbed off on you, as you are already 6'10 yourself and still growing. You start with laminated bone plate armor, a horned steel helmet, and a twisted maul of rusted iron.
Deathdealer: Although not the biggest or meanest Alpha Gnoll, your nurse was among the most feared. A master of poison-brewing and infiltration, Deathdealer was the foremost assassin in the wild parts of the Darklands, and she has passed these skills onto you. You start with a large steel knife, a good sized collection of iron throwing stars, silk rope, a silk climbing harness, and a portable still, and several varieties of venom and poison.
The Alpha Trumpet: Your alpha-nurse was a true beast-mistress, and ruled over a vast territory with her mighty Calvary. She taught you how to both raise and ride the most feared denizens of the darklands. You start with a silver tipped wood pike, a copper warhorn, a Titanic Mule Scorpion as a personal mount and companion, and a breeding pair of frogsharks that can serve as guard animals, mounts for smaller gnolls, and a source of hallucinagenic secretions and edible spawn.
The Soothsinger: Although no slouch as a warrior, your alpha-nurse was best known for her ability to associate with beings who might otherwise kill a gnoll on sight. She taught you the languages of the deepest dwarves, goblins, elves, and orc, and as long as you put some effort into behaving yourself, you will be welcome in the tunnels controlled by such beings. You start with a bronze bladed whip, well tailored clothes, and a traveling companion of good birth belonging to one of the above races of your choosing.
Scartissue: Your alpha-nurse made her home in the deepest parts of the darklands, among the slade barrier and whispering pools of lava. Feared as a madwoman, even among gnolls, she partook in the gifts of hell and could command the earth and fire. At a young age, Scartissue made you pledge your worship, soul, and allegiance to sealed only meters below you. Choose two suitably 'demonic' domains or concepts, and start with related gear and magic.
After properly explaining who you are, you wind up with eleven young male gnolls armed with wood and stone weapons who are willing to serve you. Four others are willing to join you but own no weapon; It is up to you to decide if you are willing to lead troops armed only with tooth and claw into battle...
In addition to the young and eager, three older and larger males, likely reared as gift brothers to the deceased leaders of failed packs, present themselves as interested in serving as your pack's alpha male. The main role of the alpha male is to serve as your enforcer within the camp, and to stop any attempt by the pack to gang up and rape you. Many alpha males are second in command of on the battlefield as well. The true duty of your alpha male, however, will be to impregnate you so that you may produce milk when you find a girl-child worthy of nursing to alpha status; This is unlikely to happen soon, and your own gift brothers can fufill the other duties an alpha male might once you round them up, so you quickly reach the conclusion that you don't have to take an alpha male right now. This conclusion allows you the luxury of casting an extra-critical eye on the three contenders.
Potential Alpha Males: (Choose no more than one)
Woolly: A seasoned old gnoll garbed in full leather armor and equipped with an expensive looking crossbow and steel bolts. He is well scarred and missing a finger on his left hand. Woolly claims to be a troll hunter, and shows off the collection of skulls and fine wool cloth to prove it. His advanced age proves that he is a survivor, but might also prove to hinder him when you need his services.
Zit: The freakish uglyness of this particular gnoll sends your heart aflutter. His head is deformed and asymetrical, and he appears to have ripped out his own claws and replaced them with nasty barbed bronze hooks. He wields a wood staff decorated with the skulls of young gnolls, and claims to know the basics of Kobold Druidism, although he refuses to prove it on the grounds that he only ever casts with lethal intent.
Child 29: The youngest and largest of the three candidates, Child 29 speaks funny because until recently he had been a slave to more civilized folk. He claims to have fought in the gladiator pits for both the dwarves and drow, and demonstrates his impressive moves with both a chipped and rusty drowish steel sword and several unarmed martial arts.
After you get the men sorted out, the smaller beta females begin to emerge from the woodwork. Non-alpha females are farely rare amoung gnolls, as it is traditional for a chieftess to kill any young girl she decides is unworthy of being nursed as an alpha. Those few who slip through the cracks are usually raised in Kobold villages, who use them as skilled laborers and guards until they gain the opportunity to join a pack. Once in a pack, it is the duty of a beta to birth and nurse boy-children to serve as soldiers and girl-children to be judged as potential future alphas. Although like all pack members, beta females are expected to fight when able, typically only those who also have non-combat skills are invited to join in the first place; Gnoll pregnancy, although short, is particularly rough on one's stamina, so most Alpha Females prefer betas who have the means to contribute even while expecting.
You now have five beta females on their knees begging to join your pack. Your Alpha-Nurse always preached that a pack should have at most one beta female for every eight males, but nothing is stopping you from disregarding that advice.
Potential Beta Females: (Choose as Few or as Many as you Wish)
Echo: Daughter of a gnoll and a nomadic bat-person, Echo was nursed for a decade as an experiment in hopes that she would make a fine alpha female, but just didn't have the attitude for it. Capable of short ranged silent flight, and in possession of supergnollish perception, Echo is sweet and curious. She owns a copper machete, and demonstrates her skill with it, but you doubt she is cut out for the intensity of battle. She claims to be a decent cook.
Glowshine: A beta female raised in the village, skilled in making powerful recreational drugs from fungi and bug secretions. Although a bit smaller than you would like, she seems fairly wealthy for a gnoll living in a kobold village, and actually owns a steel weapon, a handaxe, which are almost impossible to find this far from the dwarf tunnels.
Dot: The current town executioner, Dot owns a lethal obsidian edged wood blade, and has been trained by the kobolds to harness a bezerker rage in battle. She claims to be a skilled butcher as well. Although powerful, you know bezerkers are dangerous, and might easily turn their weapon against friends in a blind rage.
Cra-Crawler: The youngest of the females begging to join your pack, Cra-Crawler comes across as a bit nuts, speaking mainly in riddles. She keeps a lethal semi-undead Necroid Wasp the size of your head as a pet, lover, and object of worship, and claims that it tells her the future. Some of the young males volunteer that Cra-Crawler's wasp's premonitions tend to be uncannily accurate. Most in town suspect she posses some sort of skill in necromancy or undead blood herself to control such a creature.
She-of-Matted-Fur: An older female who likely only has a few more litters left in her, She-of-Matted-Fur claims that yours would be her third pack. Her hands are shaky with age, and as such she is forced to wield a simple rock maul in battle, but claims that back in the day she was a skilled bowgnoll, alchemist, and clothesmaker, and that she can still tutor others in these skills.
With the personnel sorted out, it comes time to name both yourself and your pack. You answered to Cinnaclaw growing up, but it is custom for an alpha female to rechristen herself when forming a pack.
Feeling your pockets, you count an assortment of five well polished opals, each likely worth what the average Kobold in this place makes in a year. The town is big enough and has a market, so it is likely you could buy whatever you might need, but goods are likely to be undersized for you and made of poor material in a town like Cimtunnels, and as a general rule, once you reveal to kobolds that you have money, you must spend it or get out of town before it is stolen. You could hang around to see if you can pick up any mercenary work, but it is likely that all the good jobs here are saved for more extablished Gnoll packs.
Regardless if you intend to hang around or not, you must eventually go and hunt down your two gift brothers, the Gnolls born of your Alpha-Nurse to provide you with milk. They nursed alongside you, were your closest childhood friends, and first ever underlings. Your Alpha-Nurse sent them away eight months ago when it became apparent that you would soon reach womanhood, in the hopes that they will have already found work and contacts to benefit your pack by the time you had established it.
Gorgtooth, the meaner and stronger of your gift brothers, was sent to Camp Decay, a settlement of underground surface people so wicked that it was said to be their fellow outlaws who drove them underground. Camp Decay sits near the major trade tunnels between drow and goblin territory, and as such there is plenty of raiding work to be done.
The crafty and deceitful Lambgore was sent to Rusty Screw Village, a gremlin settlement the pays protection to your Alpha-Nurse's pack and often has other jobs available as well.
What, if anything, do you try to buy here, and where do you travel next?
You were raised by: The Alpha Trumpet
Alpha Male Choice: Zit
Beta Female Choice(s): Echo, Cra-Crawler, Glowshine
Take all the recruits. Buy them cheap spears and daggers if you must.
Go to Camp Decay.
You shall be called Venomclaw, and your pack the Wicked Song
Chieftess Venomclaw of the Wicked Song:
Healthy Adult Alpha Female Gnoll
Gnolls are savage scavengers and predators well adapted to the low light conditions of the darklands. Gnolls have higher than average endurance and agility for humanoids their size, and are impervious to most diseases and infections. Even supernatural curses and conditions are less likely to take when they target a gnoll.
As a young alpha female, you stand about 5'10, and likely have another 5-6 inches to grow. Your retractable claws can rend even the toughest skins and leathers, and your powerful jaw muscles can crunch through thin layers of metal (although doing so would likely break your teeth). Male gnolls you invite to join your pack will quickly come to see you as sister, friend, living goddess, and perfectly hideous sex symbol. You are presently unintrested in reproduction, and as an alpha female, can only be driven into heat by the extended presence of a gnollish girlchild.
Your fur is naturally soft and bright grey, but like most gnolls it is presently a matted reddish-brown due to your habit of rolling around in mud and gore and your aversion to bathing. Like most of your kind you suffer from a lack of modesty and an excess of fur that allows you to generally conduct your business naked, but as the leader of a pack, you might wear jewelry, piercings, or a small amount of clothing to flaunt your status.
Skills:
-Master arachnid trainer
-Great speaker of Gnollish (The native language of the gnolls. A Beast language with some Goblin influence)
-Accomplished rider
-Accomplished horn player
-Talented speaker of Savage Undercommon (The native language of the Kobolds, heavily influenced by Draconian and the Beast Languages)
-Talented polearm user
-Talented fish/amphibian trainer
-Skilled tracker
-Skilled reptile trainer
-Competent mammal trainer
-Novice speaker of Civilized Undercommon (A derivation of the goblin language used as a common tongue by the mighty underground kingdoms)
Inventory:
Silver tipped wood pike
Copper warhorn
Elf leather loincloth
Coinpurse
-4.75 Opal Chips (A flat cross-section of opal roughly 1 inch by 3 inches. Used as currency by gnolls and kobolds)
Pets and Allies:
-Slowdeath the Titanic Mule Scorpion (A lethal arachnid the size of a large horse. Amphibious. Highly intelligent. Trained as a mount and personal pet)
-Sir and Lady Carrion, the Frogsharks (Cow sized hybrid monsters with the body of a bullfrog and the jaws and face of a shark. Amphibious. Trained to fight on their own, or as a mount for a small male gnoll)
-Zit the Gnollish Druid (Your Alpha Male. A perfectly hideous physical specimen who claims to pratice Kobold magic)
-Echo the Halfbreed Hunter (A sweet young lady with silent flight and amazing powers of perception)
-Cra-Crawler the Mystic (A strange beta-female even younger than you. Owns a frightening pet that she claims tells her the future)
-Glowshine the Pusher (A beta female with the skill set to make, market, and sell drugs. Scrawny, but owns a mean steel axe)
You can't help but smile as you gaze upon your new pack, spread out in their fur tents and bedrolls across a small glowmushroom grove thirty minutes outside of Cimtunnels. Following the hectic formation of your pack, consoling of the rejected alpha males and beta females, and shopping trip, you decided to leave town as quickly as possible; The Kobolds now know you have money, so your opals would be stolen sooner rather than later if you had hung around, and you wouldn't put it past Child 29 or Woolly to try something stupid out of heatbreak or anger. The trip to this wild place, however, was swift and smooth, and although you have some serious problems to work out and decisions to make, you can't help but feel optimistic; This is your pack, and the thought of leading it into battle and depravity for decades to come is intoxicating.
Things completely perfect at first. Echo, who had been a virgin, provided the afternoon entertainment by inviting a quartet of males to publicly deflower her for the better part of two hours, and Glowshine enhanced the show by handing out drugs. Following that, you played your horn for thirty minutes while Zit lead the pack in bawdy gnollish songs. Once the entertainment ended and the drugs wore off, however, the cracks began to show.
First and foremost you are faced with the issues brought about by your beta-females; Perhaps The Alpha Trumpet was right in advising you not to take so many. Glowshine proves to be a fairly entitled and vain individual, and as soon as she learns your Frogsharks are trained to serve as mounts, demands to be given one on account of her small size. Although she indeed possesses the build of a rider, Glowshine's weapon of choice, her prized steel handaxe, is ill suited for mounted combat, although the petulant beta swears she can make it work.
Cra-Crawler proves an even bigger problem when she decides to pitch her tent right next to the fungistalk where you have hitched your faithful Mule Scorpion Slowdeath, who you quickly learn is absolutely terrified by the young girl's pet necroid wasp. You picked Slowdeath's spot because it had access to a pool, and Mule Scorpion's are semi-aquatic, so you are not thrilled by the prospect of moving him somewhere else. Cra-Crawler, for her part, seems oblivious to your poor beast's distress, and entertains herself reciting morbid poetry to the few males brave enough to call on her.
You decide to let Zit groom you while you consider how you might deal with these issues, at which point you discover the biggest problem of all: the nasty barbed hooks of bronze that replace his claws. The hooks are not retractable, and the barbs are nasty. It is perfectly acceptable, even romantic, gnollish behavior to inflict a few minor injuries to one's partner during grooming or foreplay, but the damage Zit can't help but inflict upon you is far from reasonable; In just the five minutes he spends on your back alone, he cuts you twelve time on accident, and several of the gnashes are rather deep. Unable to take much more, you shoo Zit away before he can move onto more sensitive areas, and call in another male to finish the job.
The substitute, a scrawny specimen with an exaggerated limp, introduces himself as Bloodcoat and does an admirable job finishing up, and even goes through the trouble of licking your wounds clean, while Zit watches on clearly hurt and confused, stareing at his hooks with a forelorn look on his face. Gnolls wear their deformities and quirks with pride, and rarely take it well when such things actually prove a hindrance.
After Bloodcoat finishes, both males depart, leaving you alone with your thoughts. Aside from personnel issues, you have a few more things to ponder. First being your earlier trip to market. Although you had only bought a few stone clubs and bone spear before making a hasty retreat from town, you had encountered several items that might be worth sending back a member of the pack to purchase.
A local scavenger was selling an assortment of metal arrows salvaged from the site of a recent Drowish purge of a gnoll pack at twenty five an opal. A handful of the males in your pack own bows, so it might be worth picking some metal up in case they ever have to shoot at armored foes. A kobold scribe is selling what he claims to be translated copies of a human primer on divine magic for two and a half opals each. A mixed breed huntress is selling a box of kitten sized spiderlings for a single opal; You cannot tell exactly what species they are, but are sure you can figure it out as they age - you do suspect that they will at least triple in size.
Lastly you were approached by an elderly and fairly well off kobold who offered to sell you the deed and map to his old obsidian mining claim near the dwarven border. He states the upper floors of the mine would be a perfect home for a gnoll pack, and that although it was flooded, the bottom floors still had plenty of obsidian left to take. You could either try and drain it to get at the valuable natural glass, or keep it flooded as a breeding ground for amphibious beasts. The Kobold's offer is unique; He will sell the mine for two opals on the condition that you accept him as an honorary pack member and provide food and housing once he becomes too old to work.
Aside from your purchasing decisions, you must also chart out your course moving forward. You have already decided that Camp Decay will be your first stop; You need Gorgtooth's strength and cruelty sooner rather than later. How you will get there is the question. There are two recognized routes from Cimtunnels to Camp Decay. The first and most direct passes through the Redshroom Oven, a portion of cavern where large glowing redstalks suck in moisture and emit heat. The trip will take only three days, but will likely leave your pack thirsty and miserable. Your other option is the barbed wire road, a section of caverns inhabited by primitive animal-men shepherds who don't take kindly to the presence of Gnolls. It is likely, but by no means guaranteed, that you should be able to avoid picking fights with any clan large enough to pose a threat to your pack should you go that route. The journey down the barbed wire road would take your pack four to five days.
Your thoughts are interrupted by a chilling giggle and a soft hand on your shoulder. "Thinking about how we might get to Camp Decay, mum?" You turn to see Cra-Crawler with a twisted grin on her face.
"My beloved and most unholy wasp has just told us a detour we might take, through wild iron canyon. There we will find a highborn elfish bridal party, spending a week at nature's mercy before the wedding as is their custom. They will only have two guards, and the bride herself is a druid about equal to your alpha, but aside from that they are defenseless... I say we go and make sure the nature they are communing with is our stomachs!"
If you decide to take up the crazed prophet's errand, you'd have to double back through the relative safety of Kobold territory for a few days before entering the sparsely populated Iron Canyon, a section of the cavern partially open to the surface. All in all, Cra-Crawler's route would take 10-12 days, plus three if you wish to avoid briefly cutting across a well patrolled goblin trade route.
Chieftess Venomclaw of the Wicked Song:
Healthy Adult Alpha Female Gnoll
Gnolls are savage scavengers and predators well adapted to the low light conditions of the darklands. Gnolls have higher than average endurance and agility for humanoids their size, and are impervious to most diseases and infections. Even supernatural curses and conditions are less likely to take when they target a gnoll.
As a young alpha female, you stand about 5'10, and likely have another 5-6 inches to grow. Your retractable claws can rend even the toughest skins and leathers, and your powerful jaw muscles can crunch through thin layers of metal (although doing so would likely break your teeth). Male gnolls you invite to join your pack will quickly come to see you as sister, friend, living goddess, and perfectly hideous sex symbol. You are presently unintrested in reproduction, and as an alpha female, can only be driven into heat by the extended presence of a gnollish girlchild.
Your fur is naturally soft and bright grey, but like most gnolls it is presently a matted reddish-brown due to your habit of rolling around in mud and gore and your aversion to bathing. Like most of your kind you suffer from a lack of modesty and an excess of fur that allows you to generally conduct your business naked, but as the leader of a pack, you might wear jewelry, piercings, or a small amount of clothing to flaunt your status.
Skills:
-Master arachnid trainer
-Great speaker of Gnollish (The native language of the gnolls. A Beast language with some Goblin influence)
-Accomplished rider
-Accomplished horn player
-Talented speaker of Savage Undercommon (The native language of the Kobolds, heavily influenced by Draconian and the Beast Languages)
-Talented polearm user
-Talented fish/amphibian trainer
-Skilled tracker
-Skilled reptile trainer
-Competent mammal trainer
-Novice speaker of Civilized Undercommon (A derivation of the goblin language used as a common tongue by the mighty underground kingdoms)
Inventory:
Silver tipped wood pike
Copper warhorn
Elf leather loincloth
Silk Anklet [Studded with Troll Knucklebones and Copper]
Map and Deed to Blackpool Shaft
Coinpurse
-4.75 Opal Chips (A flat cross-section of opal roughly 1 inch by 3 inches. Used as currency by gnolls and kobolds)
-Small Chitin Key to Blackpool Shaft
Pets and Allies:
-Slowdeath the Titanic Mule Scorpion (A lethal arachnid the size of a large horse. Amphibious. Highly intelligent. Trained as a mount and personal pet)
-Sir and Lady Carrion, the Frogsharks (Cow sized hybrid monsters with the body of a bullfrog and the jaws and face of a shark. Amphibious. Trained to fight on their own, or as a mount for a small male gnoll)
-x3 Kitten Sized Spiderlings (What could they grow into?)
-Zit the Gnollish Druid (Your Alpha Male. A perfectly hideous physical specimen who claims to pratice Kobold magic)
-Echo the Halfbreed Hunter (A sweet young lady with silent flight and amazing powers of perception)
-Cra-Crawler the Mystic (A strange beta-female even younger than you. Owns a frightening pet that she claims tells her the future)
-Glowshine the Pusher (A beta female with the skill set to make, market, and sell drugs. Scrawny, but owns a mean steel axe)
You pull both the beta-females causing trouble aside for individual meetings, and each yields a mixed result.
You try to tell Glowshine that she needs to earn the right to a mount in battle, and the vain gnoll takes it poorly. The two of you argue for the better part of a half hour, before you decide to get her out of your hair for a bit and cool down. You tell her to grab a male as an escort, and return to town to do some shopping. She agrees to do this for you, however you are turned down when you offer the drug pusher your supply of opals. Reaching into a fat coinpurse, Glowshine produces a fistfull of large dwarf-minted silver coins, each worth several opal chips. "I spent the last five years earning my keep, so that my next alpha would learn to treat me as the treasure I am!" She boasts before storming off.
Cra-Crawler seems hurt, confused, and embarrased when you explain the situation with Slowdeath to her. "B-but I was only trying to help. My love tells me your ignoble steed needs to be desensitized to his presence... Before its fear of him gets Slowdeath or yourself hurt in battle. B...But of course I'll move. Of course. Having two gods is confusing..."
...
Glowshine returns from her shopping trip with everything you had wanted and then some. The only thing she missing is a good chunk of the spiderlings - only three were left for sale by the time she got back to purchase them. You leave them in the box for now, as it is likely they are already venomous... and far from tame.
The drug pusher also hands you the map and deed to the Kobold's mine, along with a key made from some sort of Chitin that supposedly unlocks the door on the front gate. The map shows the mine is a bit closer to a major dwarven military installation than you would like, but it is far off the major tradepaths, and as such you will almost surely be fine if you refrain from antagonizing the local dwarves too much. The deed is even signed by a dwarven baron, so if you could find away to make peaceful contact and pay some taxes, you might even be able to demand some dwarven protection for your 'mining claim'.
Glowshine's last item for you is a single silk anklet, decorated with troll knucklebones and scrap copper. You can't tell if the beta-female is trying to apologize or show you up by giving you beautiful piece, which is likely worth at least three opals on its own.
Zit is given a large block of wax, of which he can break off and melt down a chunk to dip his hooks in before grooming you. She also purchased a small cask of good vintage kobold sewerbrew, which she claims to be saving for a special occasion, and a set of five good quality weighted silk throwing nets for the pack to deploy in battle.
---
The next few days are easily some of the most fun of your life so far. Traveling as part of a pack is the height of gnollish existence, and being the alpha female only makes it better. Kobold territory is safe and the hunting is easy; Kobolds like having gnolls around as muscle, and finding something to kill is as easy as flagging down a puny dragonkin on the roadside. Most Kobolds know the location of a few beasts that are too big and scary to bring down on their own, and will often sell such prey's location to gnolls in exchange for a small cut of the meat.
The routine is one you are used to. The pack wakes up, eats breakfast, packs their things, and travels together for seven to ten hours. As Slowdeath is large enough to take multiple passengers, you give the others turns in resting their legs and riding with you, which gives you the opportunity to get to know everybody. By the time the pack reaches the entrance to Iron Canyon, you are feeling the sisterly affection that an alpha female should for each of her underlings.
After travel time concludes for the day, the pack spreads out for exactly two hours, hunting and scouting for a place to camp. Everybody then gets back together, and a brief debate is held on where to rest before the pack travels to the chosen spot. After everything is set up, it is time for entertainment. Gnollish entertainment typically starts with some sort of public performance, most frequently the resolution of a grudge or some sexual tension, before moving into some sort of activity the whole pack can participate in. The Wicked Song seems to prefer tug-of-war as their form of group entertainment, which is fine by you because as the largest and strongest gnoll in the pack, your team usually wins.
Entertainment is followed by mealtime and then pre-sleep 'quiet' time for grooming and other individual activities. You usually start your quiet time by receiving and reciprocating an intimate hand grooming job from Zit. Following that you allow the three males clever enough to own combs to each take a turn working on your fur coat. You then lay on some sleeping skins, usually with Zit on your right and another male or two on your left, and listen to the sounds of quiet time. The high pitched laugh of amused gnolls, crass jokes and boasts of your bedmates, notes of various cheap string and wind instruments, and moans of any beta-females who did not already get some action during the day's entertainment serenade you to sleep.
---
You make it to Iron Canyon junction, a small Kobold village that provides housing and care for friendly caravans and gnoll packs, after three and a half days of this routine, and you give the pack the afternoon to enjoy the town. From here, you will spend six or seven days traveling the floor of Iron Canyon, and will, according to Cra-Crawler, encounter the elves on the second or third day. You will then take the third exit tunnel into the Iron Wastes.
Deciding to take the opportunity to try and make some money, you spend the afternoon trolling the inns in search of Kobolds heading your way who might be willing to pay for an escort. The results, although somewhat disappointing, are far from a complete failure.
A group of five goblin cultists returning home from a pilgrimage would much appreciate your protection, but lack the funds to pay for it. In lieu of payment, they offer to help you safely navigate the brief stretch of goblin controled tunnels that you would have to either cross or spend several days getting around. Without mentioning the elves, you ask them about connections to the various goblin slave markets, and find out, like most of their kind, they have some. If Cra-Crawler's prophecy is correct, you might be able to use the cultists as middlemen to sell your captives.
The next party is a small caravan run by a Kobold preacher and medic by the name of Rickshaw that is traveling the length of the canyon and up the far ramp to trade with the surface kobolds. You find him chatting up Glowshine, who as it turns out is an old friend of his, at a tavern. Since your pack would not be able to travel the whole way with him, Rickshaw is not willing to offer payment in cash, but he will provide daily booze rations for as long as your pack is with him. He also might be useful to have around in case somebody gets hurt fighting the elves.
The last potential clients are a group of mixed race bandits from Camp Decay who would be willing to pay you four dwarven silver or ten opals in exchange for protection on the road home. The bandits, although paying customers who might have contacts at your mutual destination, will not be ready to leave for another four or five days, so if you want the elves and the paid job, you would have to go in to catch the treehuggers before doubling back for your clients.
Chieftess Venomclaw of the Wicked Song:
Healthy Adult Alpha Female Gnoll
Gnolls are savage scavengers and predators well adapted to the low light conditions of the darklands. Gnolls have higher than average endurance and agility for humanoids their size, and are impervious to most diseases and infections. Even supernatural curses and conditions are less likely to take when they target a gnoll.
As a young alpha female, you stand about 5'10, and likely have another 5-6 inches to grow. Your retractable claws can rend even the toughest skins and leathers, and your powerful jaw muscles can crunch through thin layers of metal (although doing so would likely break your teeth). Male gnolls you invite to join your pack will quickly come to see you as sister, friend, living goddess, and perfectly hideous sex symbol. You are presently unintrested in reproduction, and as an alpha female, can only be driven into heat by the extended presence of a gnollish girlchild.
Your fur is naturally soft and bright grey, but like most gnolls it is presently a matted reddish-brown due to your habit of rolling around in mud and gore and your aversion to bathing. Like most of your kind you suffer from a lack of modesty and an excess of fur that allows you to generally conduct your business naked, but as the leader of a pack, you might wear jewelry, piercings, or a small amount of clothing to flaunt your status.
Skills:
-Master arachnid trainer
-Great speaker of Gnollish (The native language of the gnolls. A Beast language with some Goblin influence)
-Accomplished rider
-Accomplished horn player
-Talented speaker of Savage Undercommon (The native language of the Kobolds, heavily influenced by Draconian and the Beast Languages)
-Talented polearm user
-Talented fish/amphibian trainer
-Skilled tracker
-Skilled reptile trainer
-Competent mammal trainer
-Novice speaker of Civilized Undercommon (A derivation of the goblin language used as a common tongue by the mighty underground kingdoms)
Inventory:
Silver tipped wood pike
Copper warhorn
Elf leather loincloth
Silk Anklet [Studded with Troll Knucklebones and Copper]
Map and Deed to Blackpool Shaft
Coinpurse
-4.75 Opal Chips (A flat cross-section of opal roughly 1 inch by 3 inches. Used as currency by gnolls and kobolds)
-Small Chitin Key to Blackpool Shaft
Pets and Allies:
-Slowdeath the Titanic Mule Scorpion (A lethal arachnid the size of a large horse. Amphibious. Highly intelligent. Trained as a mount and personal pet)
-Sir and Lady Carrion, the Frogsharks (Cow sized hybrid monsters with the body of a bullfrog and the jaws and face of a shark. Amphibious. Trained to fight on their own, or as a mount for a small male gnoll)
-x3 Kitten Sized Spiderlings (What could they grow into?)
-Zit the Gnollish Druid (Your Alpha Male. A perfectly hideous physical specimen who claims to pratice Kobold magic)
-Echo the Halfbreed Hunter (A sweet young lady with silent flight and amazing powers of perception)
-Cra-Crawler the Mystic (A strange beta-female even younger than you. Owns a frightening pet that she claims tells her the future)
-Glowshine the Pusher (A beta female with the skill set to make, market, and sell drugs. Scrawny, but owns a mean steel axe)
-15 Assorted Gnollish Males (They vary in size and build between 'Smallish Halfling' and 'Well Built Dwarf'. Armed with Rock, Wood, and Bone weapons. Most possess basic combat and survival skills)
-Bone-Saw-Saw (Badly concussed)
You inform the bandits that you cannot afford to wait on them, and alert both the Cultists and Rickshaw's caravan to the fact that you will be departing as soon as you rest your pack. Then you track down Cra-Crawler for discussion. You explain to the younger female how she might slowly aclimate Slowdeath to the wasp's presence by camping right on the edge of the scorpion's comfort zone and moving in just a bit every night. You also request that she communicate her intentions with you in the future, to which she hesitates a bit before agreeing.
Thinking about it, it dawns on you that Cra-Crawler is actually a very poor conversationalist. You can't recall a single incident, over the few days you have known her, in which she spoke to anybody other than yourself in a manner that wasn't morbid poetry or some sort of spiritual sermon. Even when she talks to you normally, her words feel forced, and are often marred by a stutter. You have even seen her attempt to carry out orders on her own that most beta-females would have delegated. In spite of Cra-Crawler's assurances then, you are far from convinced that she will always tell you what she is planning before she acts.
---
After giving your charges a good ten hours to get ready and your pack the same to rest up, the group departs the town and enters Iron Canyon, a wide and tall tunnel partially open to the sky. The place is sparsely populated; Several human towns dot the ridges above, and although the residents rarely venture down to disturb the citizens of the darklands, and warn outsiders to travel to the floor at their own risk, the humans will eventually deploy their guard to run off any large group from below that tries to make the canyon their home. Although most of your pack and all of your other charges have been through the canyon before, a handful of male gnolls stop and stare in awe when you reach the first gap in the ceiling - their first ever encounter with sunlight.
You have fun observing how your pack interacts with the others as you travel. Rickshaw's group consists of four other Kobolds, a one armed orc, a female gnoll too old to breed, and two massive humanoids, likely mixes between various civilized beings and some of the larger troll species, who serve as glorified pack animals. The Orc, a younger specimen about your size, walks among your pack and makes conversation with the handful of males that speak its language. You haven't the faintest idea what they are talking about, but everybody seems amused by the conversation, and you are happy that you have some budding orcish translators at your disposal. The old female gnoll travels and converses with echo; It seems the two were once part of the same pack, and that your half-breed beta-female vaguely remembers her elder. They trade stories, mostly about their old alpha-male named Screamer who apparently had a penchant for childish pranks.
The pilgrims, as you had sort of expected, quickly find themselves in a heated religious debate with Cra-Crawler. The strange young gnoll finds herself verbally outmatched and flustered, but just as you begin to consider stepping in, she snaps, lashing out at them in some strange language that is completely alien to you. The pilgrims fall silent for a spell, and when they speak again it is in the same tounge. Although you can't make it out, their tone is clearly both deferential and apologetic. Cra-Crawler spends the rest of the day speaking with the goblins in the strange language, which she is clearly far more comfortable speaking than she is gnollish, and the pilgrims listen to her intently. Rickshaw, who is riding atop Slowdeath with you and Glowshine, reckons the tongue used is Seraphic, spoken by the gods of the human pantheon, some of the more sinister members of which are also worshiped by goblinkind, and their servants.
Glowshine and Rickshaw ride with you for the whole journey, and you spend a good chunk of it grooming the former as she holds the reins. It is a biological fact that Glowshine is no threat to your authority, so you see no issue in occasionally showing submissive behavior towards her to reward her intelligence and feed her massive ego. She is more wealthy than you are, so aside from the Frogshark, the only thing you have of value to her is your praise, which you can tell she desperately craves. As the day progresses, Glowshine opens up to you, and between her and Rickshaw you learn her life story.
On the day Glowshine and her three female littermates were deemed unworthy to be reared as an alpha, her pack was escorting a Kobold Caravan lead by Rickshaw's father, who spared the girlchilds the death that usually awaits unworthy females by buying them from the pack. Daddy Rickshaw's plan was to sell the three gnolls to goblin slavers, and while this panned out for her sisters, Glowshine was too puny for his buyers, so he kept her as an apprentice. Glowshine spent seven years with Rickshaw's business, learning to handle money and make drugs, before joining her first pack.
Pack life proved miserable for a runt like Glowshine, who was constantly picked on by her fellow females on account of her size, and physically and sexually assaulted by the males as she was the rare female small enough to push around. After several months of this she discovered she was pregnant, and slipped away so as to spare her litter the same fate, vowing to never again be part of a pack until she could make herself so valuable that everybody from the alpha on down would treasure her.
That was eleven years ago. Since then she has run and work for several caravans, including Rickshaw's, taught herself nearly everything there is to known about the kobold arts of pharmacy, spent three years working as a goblin slave driver to toughen herself up and the basics of almost every civilized language, built herself a small fortune, and trained intensely with a lethal steel axe to make up for her small size. She had felt that she was ready to give pack life a try for about a year now, but had been rejected by four alpha females before you came along. She tells you that she wants nothing more than to prove the alpha's who abused and rejected her wrong by making your pack mightier than theirs.
Glowshine reveals that her four surviving children, as well as much of her wealth, are tied up working for the various Kobold caravans she invests in. She suggests that she would like to keep her sons employed in the trade to maintain her contacts, but would be honored if you accepted her daughters once the pack was big enough to support more females. Rickshaw jokingly begs you to take her sons as well, as one of them works for a competing medical supply caravan.
---
After traveling for the day is complete and camp is set up, entertainment begins. Today's exhibition is a traditional clawboxing match between two males, Dingo and Bone-Saw-Saw. From what you understand the pair are fierce rivals who share the same mother but are not of the same litter. You are not expecting much of a fight, as although Bone-Saw-Saw is a healthy and good sized gnoll, Dingo is the third largest member of the pack (behind only yourself and Zit), and built like a well chiseled dwarven statue.
As expected, Dingo dominates his brother, landing punch after punch and knocking Bone-Saw-Saw down within the first two minutes. To your surprise, however, the smaller gnoll is quick to get back on his feet and resume the fight, hurling vicious insults at his brother. This happens again, and again. For the better part of an hour, Bone-Saw-Saw eats punches and slashes, all the while talking trash as if he was the one winning. Eventually Zit has jump in and break the fight up, declaring Dingo the winner over Bone-Saw-Saw's protests. You can't recall ever watching a clawboxing match that was either longer or more onesided.
The fallout quickly turns into a headache for you. Bone-Saw-Saw is clearly woozy, or in possession of a 'boxers high' in Doc Rickshaw's words. It is unlikely he will be anything more than a liability during the upcoming elf hunt in his condition, but telling such a clearly prideful gnoll he can't fight would clearly be a grievous insult.
Your beta-females then proceed to step in and further complicate things. The sweet and kindly Echo hovers over the defeated Bone-Saw-Saw, licking clean his wounds and whispering words of encouragement in his ear. He whispers something back that makes her blush, and then rise to declare that "I have decided that I would like my first litter to have the iron will and tongue of brave Bone-Saw-Saw. Until he gets me pregnant, no other male shall enter me!"
This in turn inspires the vain Glowshine to step up and triumphantly raise Dingo's arm. "Dingo is the victor here, and deserves a superior prize to that which his brother won. My offspring shall be WINNERS, so until I next fall pregnant the most treasured parts of my perfectly hideous body will by Dingo's and Dingo's alone."
On the surface, neither Glowshine nor Echo has done anything too unusual. A female has every right to pick the father of her next litter so long as at least one beta-female in the pack remains open to all comers, and as she is the youngest beta female, it is more than acceptable for the others to leave Cra-Crawler bearing the brunt without first consulting her. Cra-Crawler, however, is only ever taken by a handful of the bravest males, as she insists on including her deadly wasp in all aspects of sex and courtship. You can see this arrangement leaving most of the pack high and dry, which would render the left out males rowdy and frustrated. You see a look of glee spread across Cra-Crawler's face, (she clearly dosn't mind the prospect of more playmates), and panic across those of some of the males as others begin to put two and two together. You even catch Glowshine briefly wince, as if she has just realized what she has done, but you know she is too proud and Dingo too scary for her to take it back.
Bone-Saw-Saw breaks the tension by staggering to his feet, spitting some blood from his mouth, fetching a length of rope, and woozily proposing a game of tug-o-war to celebrate his and his brother's good fortune.
Chieftess Venomclaw of the Wicked Song:
Healthy Adult Alpha Female Gnoll
Gnolls are savage scavengers and predators well adapted to the low light conditions of the darklands. Gnolls have higher than average endurance and agility for humanoids their size, and are impervious to most diseases and infections. Even supernatural curses and conditions are less likely to take when they target a gnoll.
As a young alpha female, you stand about 5'10, and likely have another 5-6 inches to grow. Your retractable claws can rend even the toughest skins and leathers, and your powerful jaw muscles can crunch through thin layers of metal (although doing so would likely break your teeth). Male gnolls you invite to join your pack will quickly come to see you as sister, friend, living goddess, and perfectly hideous sex symbol. You are presently unintrested in reproduction, and as an alpha female, can only be driven into heat by the extended presence of a gnollish girlchild.
Your fur is naturally soft and bright grey, but like most gnolls it is presently a matted reddish-brown due to your habit of rolling around in mud and gore and your aversion to bathing. Like most of your kind you suffer from a lack of modesty and an excess of fur that allows you to generally conduct your business naked, but as the leader of a pack, you might wear jewelry, piercings, or a small amount of clothing to flaunt your status.
Skills:
-Master arachnid trainer
-Great speaker of Gnollish (The native language of the gnolls. A Beast language with some Goblin influence)
-Accomplished rider
-Accomplished horn player
-Talented speaker of Savage Undercommon (The native language of the Kobolds, heavily influenced by Draconian and the Beast Languages)
-Talented polearm user
-Talented fish/amphibian trainer
-Skilled tracker
-Skilled reptile trainer
-Competent mammal trainer
-Novice speaker of Civilized Undercommon (A derivation of the goblin language used as a common tongue by the mighty underground kingdoms)
Inventory:
Silver tipped wood pike
Copper warhorn
Elf leather loincloth
Silk Anklet [Studded with Troll Knucklebones and Copper]
Map and Deed to Blackpool Shaft
Coinpurse
-4.75 Opal Chips (A flat cross-section of opal roughly 1 inch by 3 inches. Used as currency by gnolls and kobolds)
-Small Chitin Key to Blackpool Shaft
Pets and Allies:
-Slowdeath the Titanic Mule Scorpion (A lethal arachnid the size of a large horse. Amphibious. Highly intelligent. Trained as a mount and personal pet. Object impaled, pinning mouth-part to face.)
-Sir and Lady Carrion, the Frogsharks (Cow sized hybrid monsters with the body of a bullfrog and the jaws and face of a shark. Amphibious. Trained to fight on their own, or as a mount for a small male gnoll)
-x3 Kitten Sized Spiderlings (What could they grow into?)
-Zit the Gnollish Druid (Your Alpha Male. A perfectly hideous physical specimen who claims to practice Kobold magic)
-Echo the Halfbreed Hunter (A sweet young lady with silent flight and amazing powers of perception)
-Cra-Crawler the Mystic (A strange beta-female even younger than you. Owns a frightening pet that she claims tells her the future)
-Glowshine the Pusher (A beta female with the skill set to make, market, and sell drugs. Scrawny, but owns a mean steel axe)
-15 Assorted Gnollish Males (They vary in size and build between 'Smallish Halfling' and 'Well Built Dwarf'. Armed with Rock, Wood, and Bone weapons. Most possess basic combat and survival skills)
-Bone-Saw-Saw (Badly concussed)
'Quiet Time' begins following tug-o-war, and you manage to pull Glowshine aside before she the opportunity to invite Dingo to her sleeping skins. You inquire if she can make a drug that can disable but not kill and can be used to coat weapons and ammo. She considers the question silently before a moment before promising to get back to you and scampering off to Doc Rickshaw's camp.
You next check in with Cra-Crawler, and ask if there have been any further revelations regarding the elf hunt. She nods shyly and answers. "Y-yes, yes your awesomeness. Once we pick up their trail, you should take Glowshine's advice. Her ambition will yield the greatest possible results in this enterprise."
Nodding, you pause to consider her words, and figure that if Cra-Crawler is right about finding the elves, that you shall trust her to be right about catching them.
Returing to you sleeping skin, you instruct Zit to heat up some wax to coat his barbed hook-claws so that he may safely groom you. While you wait, Glowshine scurries in to report on the drug you requested. "I have almost everything needed to make what you request, but after checking in with Rickshaw and some of the males who know the herbs, bugs, and fungi of Iron Canyon, it seems my best option is to buy what else I need at Camp Decay. Once I have the ingredients, we will need to find a place to settle down for a bit, as the formula needs to cook continuously for several days. I wouldn't recommend lingering at Camp Decay though... There will likely be other gnoll packs around looking for work, which potentially means more extablished alpha females to steal our males, and the presence of girlchilds to draw you into heat prematurely."
You thank Glowshine, and wish her and Dingo only the most perverse pleasure before sending her on her way so that you might settle into your evening routine.
---
Bone-Saw-Saw and Echo ride with you today. You want them on hand to receive your specific instructions should the pack encounter signs of elves. You listen in on your passengers, and it is clear why Echo's alpha gave up on nursing her; The poor girl has fallen head over heels into the trap of romantic love, a condition undesirable for any Gnollish female and especially an Alpha. You can't entirely blame her; Bone-Saw-Saw's face is a heartmeltingly hideous mess following last night's fight, but Echo seems just as existed about the prospect of caring for his injuries as she is about the aesthetic enhancements they afford her new mate. Although such devotion to a male is more than strange, her nurturing attitude at least affords you confidence that she will make a great mother - so long as she is preventing from coddling her litter too much.
Echo questions her mate about his background and life story, and manages to draw a somewhat coherent narrative from him. He was born to a particularly fertile mother who was still nursing her previous litter, including Dingo, to adult size. Forced to compete with much larger siblings for a very limited supply of milk, Bone-Saw-Saw was the only member of his litter to survive infancy. Shortly after Bone-Saw-Saw reached adult size, the alpha of his pack declared a female of Dingo's litter as worthy of your nursing as a future alpha. This earned Dingo's entire litter preferential treatment, and Bone-Saw-Saw, who nursed the same teat, benefited as well.
Numbering six in total, plus Bone-Saw-Saw, the members of Dingo's litter were groomed as the personal lackeys of the pack's alpha male, and accompanied him into battle. One fateful day, his pack aligned with several others to attempt to attack the den of a far more powerful alpha female, but was thwarted in battle, hunted, and destroyed by victor. Of the siblings, only Bone-Saw-Saw and Dingo survived the destruction of their pack, and have since been inseparable friends and fiery rivals, cooperating and competing to define and carry on the legacy of their mother's bloodline.
Bone-Saw-Saw is oddly vague about the identity of the pack he was born into, as well as the circumstances of its destruction, but perhaps because of the concussion he lets just enough information slip for you to make the following disturbing inference: The pack that raised the brothers was one of the three that tried to attack Mastiff Nest, the massive anthill where The Alpha Trumpet's pack made their den. The battle of Mastiff Nest took place in your second year on The Alpha Trumpet's teat, and resulted in the deaths of your natural mother and siblings before the invaders were repelled. After ensuring her den was secure and properly burying her dead in the stomachs of the survivors, The Alpha Trumpet hunted down and destroyed the packs who wronged her without mercy. You traveled with the hunters so as not to be separated from the milk of your Alpha, and were even allowed to strike finishing blows on several occasions.
The Alpha Trumpet later told you that she chose to dole out such harsh justice so that your eventual reign as pack chieftess would not be tainted by a thirst for revenge. "A good pack is lead on whim and instinct," she implored you, "never emotions or grudges. Prey should be chosen by present circumstances, never by past."
These thought and memories sour your mood, and a lack of elf signs does nothing to settle it by the time camp is set up. For the day's entertainment, the four Goblin missionaries try to pressure Cra-Crawler into giving a sermon by telling everybody that in Goblin Country she is considered a child prodigy in the fields of oration and theology. Cra-Crawler refuses the call, however, by saying that her audience is primarily gnolls, and that she doesn't feel her grasp of the gnollish language is solid enough for casual conversation, much less public speaking. Instead, Bone-Saw-Saw and Dingo compete once more, to see who can please their new mate the most times in a half hour. Bone-Saw-Saw wins this time, having the distinct advantage of a younger and more energetic partner.
You know Cra-Crawler, although shy and awkward, speaks very well, even poetically, and that her only real verbal fault is a stutter. You wonder what sort of upbringing she might have had if Gnollish isn't her first language, and how high her personal standards might be if she considers her ability to talk to her own race subpar.
It takes an extended grooming effort on the part of several males to silence the thoughts of the day long enough for you to fall asleep.
---
The following day, the pack starts picking up elf signs in the second hour of travel. Cra-Crawler soon repeats her prophecy that the elves are a bridal party, defenseless save for two guards and a Druid. Her word is enough to convince the pilgrims that hunting the elves is a good idea, but Rickshaw seems less than sure, especially when you propose the dangerous business of trying to take them alive. This is when Glowshine chimes in with a suggestion.
"Give me two males for protection, venerable Vennomclaw, and five hours. I know this canyon. The elves will be camped at a spot called the Ferrous Falls about an hour ahead. I will approach them as a humble traveler, and when I learn they are a bridal party, I shall join the celebration by handing the elves drugs to hinder their judgement and fighting ability, and lure them into swimming in the pool beneath the falls. If you time your approach then, the prey will be both hindered by my gifts, and completely at the mercy of your aquatic beasts."
Rickshaw likes the idea, so much so that he offers Glowshine a bottle of Steel Cobra venom, said to hinder druidism, to mix into her batch of drugs. You, keeping Cra-Crawler's prophecy in mind, agree to the plan as well. You give her your two largest non-alpha males, which includes her mate Dingo, and send Glowshine on her way, agreeing to follow in five hours.
The wait is excruciating. Tensions are high, and many worry about Glowshine. Cra-Crawler dosn't help things when she publicly refuses to guarantee the smaller female's survival, and only states that her going 'is for the better'.
The one-armed orc who travels with Rickshaw reveals herself to be female, and noting that your pack seems frustrated and pent up, spends the time selling herself for what few opal-chips exist among the males of your pack. This inspires envy and further frustration, to the point where Zit decides to shut the enterprise down for fear of a gang rape on the prostitute and/or her clients.
You have to position your beasts between the pack and Rickshaw, who refuses to distribute alcohol as he dose not want his protection blundering drunk into a fight.
Eventually the time passes, and the group marches, tensions still high. 30 minutes out from your destination, you deploy Echo to scout ahead, and leave the pilgrims and merchants behind, 'guarded' by Bone-Saw-Saw and Bloodcoat. Fifteen minutes out, Echo returns to the group, and reports that pretty much everybody is either in or immediately around the pool. With the water in play, you put Rotbreath and Two-Fangs-Missing on the frogsharks, warning that this is only a temporary honor, and that there will be hell to pay if they let their mounts needlessly taste elf meat.
Your pack surrounds the pool before the drugged elves can figure out what is going on. When they do figure things out, one of them grabs tiny Glowshine, who seems to have used the drugs herself, and threatens to drown her. You respond by riding Slowdeath into the pool. The Titanic Mule Scorpion is a halfbreed, created by crossing a fully aquatic arachnid known to gnollkind as the 'Cavern Whale' with the cat sized yet borderline sentient Sorcerer's Scorpion. On land, Slowdeath is a lumbering giant, useful more for caring capacity and killing potential than speed, but in the water, your prized pet is the functional equivalent of a large, armored, and venomous shark that happens to consider you its mother.
Spurred on by only a few basic commands from its master, the clever bug charges the elf holding your underling, latches a pincher around Glowshine with the utmost care, and easily prys the small gnoll from her captor. You and your mount then circle the pool, feinting charges at various elves. The Frogshark riders join you, while those on the ground threaten all who try to flee the water with weapons drawn. After several minutes of this, the prey surrenders.
As they leave the pool with their hands above their heads, you line them up against a natural rock wall and take a head count. Eight female elves, one male elf, and one male dwarf. You figure the latter two must be guards. Glowshine and Great-Bruise, your third largest male, are accounted for, but Dingo is nowhere to be seen. Glowshine explains that she noticed the bride had looked curious, so she gave her mate permission to seduce the elf, and the pair had wandered up the canyon thirty minutes ago. Glowshine points the way, you nod, and Zit follows after them with a few males in tow. Echo is sent to give the all clear to the merchants and pilgrims.
Once they leave, things quickly get interesting as the dwarf works up his courage, breaks from the wall, dodges a few arrows fired by your pack, grabs a steel sword from the ground, and charges you and Slowdeath. The dwarf manages to bury his blade into your mount's head, and the scorpion lets out a bloodcurling scream of agony. You panic for a second, as blows to the head are seldom good and you couldn't see exactly where it landed from your position perched atop the victim. Your fear largely dissapates when your beloved pet responds by pinning his attacker down with his pinchers and killing the naked dwarf by shoving a stinger the size of a pike-head into his brain stem.
Those assembled fall quiet as you climb down and inspect the damage. The sword has pinned Slowdeath's right upper mouthpart to his face. The injury will likely hinder your steed's eating speed, cause it terrible pain, and could become infected, but Slowdeath's life is in no immediate danger. Your old friend wines for your help, but all you can do is console it; You know well enough that impaled objects should be left to more talented medics than yourself. You hope Rickshaw is not too cowardly to try and work on a set of jaws about as big as he is.
While you deal with your animal, you send a few gnolls to where the elves had set up their tents. They report back that the elves keep five Pegasus and two unicorn. Although valuable and highly useful creatures, you know that surface grazers cannot survive underground for long, so they will likely best serve your pack as meat. Glowshine suggests that you could try to sell them to Rickshaw, who is heading to conduct business on the surface, but tempers you expectations by stating that he likely couldn't afford even one of the animals at their true price, and might not be willing to assume their value in debt either.
Likewise you must ponder the fate of the elves. There are ten of them, more than half the amount of Gnolls in your pack. You doubt it will be long before escape attempts and other hijinx begin with that ratio of prisoner to guard. Killing some now would further anger the rest, but you don't feel entirely safe keeping this many around.
As you are pondering this, Zit's party returns with Dingo and a kicking, screaming bride. She is easily the most dangerous and valuable thing procured. Druidic magic varies wildly from caster to caster, so there is no real way to anticipate how she might do your pack harm while held captive.
Zit start organizing the other males to take turns raiding the camp area, while the rest guard the prisoners by the pool. It is custom that the males get first dibs on all non-meat loot, a good chunk of which will eventually be given to you and the other females in the form of gifts and tribute.
A fight breaks out over the steel armor belonging to the dwarf who hurt Slowdeath, which he had apparently taken off to go swimming. Great Bruise and Dingo are both about the right size. Great Bruise claims he should get it as it fits him better, while Dingo claims it on the grounds that he is bigger than Great Bruise, and that he needs it to better carry out his important duty of protecting Glowshine. If neither you nor Zit step in, the matter will likely be decided during entertainment time at some point in the near future. The wood armor of the elf guard is too tall and narrow to be a good fit for anybody in the pack.
You decide to call it a day here. The elves have already kindly set up food and tents for you pack, and you are sure the merchants and pilgrims will have plenty of ideas for your find, if you don't have proposals for them first. After celebrating the successful hunt, however, it might be wise to drive your pack to travel longer than normal each day. Doing so would give the gnolls, who tend to have better endurance than elves, further advantage over their prisoners, and the thought of loitering too long in a canyon overlooked by civilized surface villages while keeping civilized surface prisoners seems a bit dangerous.
Chieftess Venomclaw of the Wicked Song:
Healthy Adult Alpha Female Gnoll
Gnolls are savage scavengers and predators well adapted to the low light conditions of the darklands. Gnolls have higher than average endurance and agility for humanoids their size, and are impervious to most diseases and infections. Even supernatural curses and conditions are less likely to take when they target a gnoll.
As a young alpha female, you stand about 5'10, and likely have another 5-6 inches to grow. Your retractable claws can rend even the toughest skins and leathers, and your powerful jaw muscles can crunch through thin layers of metal (although doing so would likely break your teeth). Male gnolls you invite to join your pack will quickly come to see you as sister, friend, living goddess, and perfectly hideous sex symbol. You are presently unintrested in reproduction, and as an alpha female, can only be driven into heat by the extended presence of a gnollish girlchild.
Your fur is naturally soft and bright grey, but like most gnolls it is presently a matted reddish-brown due to your habit of rolling around in mud and gore and your aversion to bathing. Like most of your kind you suffer from a lack of modesty and an excess of fur that allows you to generally conduct your business naked, but as the leader of a pack, you might wear jewelry, piercings, or a small amount of clothing to flaunt your status.
Skills:
-Master arachnid trainer
-Great speaker of Gnollish (The native language of the gnolls. A Beast language with some Goblin influence)
-Accomplished rider
-Accomplished horn player
-Talented speaker of Savage Undercommon (The native language of the Kobolds, heavily influenced by Draconian and the Beast Languages)
-Talented polearm user
-Talented fish/amphibian trainer
-Skilled tracker
-Skilled reptile trainer
-Competent mammal trainer
-Novice speaker of Civilized Undercommon (A derivation of the goblin language used as a common tongue by the mighty underground kingdoms)
Inventory:
Silver tipped wood pike
Copper warhorn
Elf leather loincloth
Silk Anklet [Studded with Troll Knucklebones and Copper]
Map and Deed to Blackpool Shaft
Coinpurse
-4.75 Opal Chips (A flat cross-section of opal roughly 1 inch by 3 inches. Used as currency by gnolls and kobolds)
-Small Chitin Key to Blackpool Shaft
Pets and Allies:
-Slowdeath the Titanic Mule Scorpion (A lethal arachnid the size of a large horse. Amphibious. Highly intelligent. Trained as a mount and personal pet. Object impaled, pinning mouth-part to face.)
-Sir and Lady Carrion, the Frogsharks (Cow sized hybrid monsters with the body of a bullfrog and the jaws and face of a shark. Amphibious. Trained to fight on their own, or as a mount for a small male gnoll)
-x3 Kitten Sized Spiderlings (What could they grow into?)
-Zit the Gnollish Druid (Your Alpha Male. A perfectly hideous physical specimen who claims to practice Kobold magic)
-Echo the Halfbreed Hunter (A sweet young lady with silent flight and amazing powers of perception)
-Cra-Crawler the Mystic (A strange beta-female even younger than you. Owns a frightening pet that she claims tells her the future)
-Glowshine the Pusher (A beta female with the skill set to make, market, and sell drugs. Scrawny, but owns a mean steel axe)
-15 Assorted Gnollish Males (They vary in size and build between 'Smallish Halfling' and 'Well Built Dwarf'. Armed with Rock, Wood, and Bone weapons. Most possess basic combat and survival skills)
-Bone-Saw-Saw (Badly concussed)
As soon as Rickshaw arrives on the scene you show him Slowdeath's injury. The Kobold is far from thrilled by the prospect of preforming a painful procedure on a creature that could kill him without even a hint of difficulty. He softens a bit when you show him the horses, and begins to haggle. The Kobold drives a tough bargain, and agrees to preform the procedure if you will sell him the entire lot for two hundred dwarven gold in interest free credit. Glowshine, still too drugged to be of much help with the actual haggling, mentions that the steeds are likely worth ten times that amount... a piece. Rickshaw counters that he will be risking his life on the procedure, that he isn't even sure he will be able to find buyers for the merchandise before his travels bring him back underground, and that two hundred gold is still a significant windfall for a Gnoll pack your size. You know at least that his last point is correct.
Before you can answer, Rickshaw draws a bit closer to Slowdeath to examine the injury. "It is impaled through both the thing's face and mouthpart. Artery or not, I'm going to cauterize the wound on the face to be safe once the sword is out, so no point looking that up. But the mouthpart complicates things... if it is damaged beyond repair, it would be much quicker and safer for me to amputate rather than try to remove an impaled object from two separate bodyparts. He has three spare bitey bits, and should be fine either way. I think I have an anatomy chart for the Cavern Whale on me... hopefully that is close enough for me to figure out where the facial nerves and muscles are on your crossbreed. I'll need to do some studying, so you have a few hours to consider my final offer."
Leaving the good doctor to his studies, you make sure your injured and agitated pet is properly tied down and as comfortable as possible before going to reward the beta-females who made today's victory possible. You dare some of the more frustrated males to brave the wasp and mate with Cra-Crawler, promising to observe the act and provide your blessing and protection. It doesn't take long before you get a couple of hesitant takers.
This private show kills a good amount of time; Cra-Crawler receives mates with a refinement beyond her years, warming them up with seductively gory poetry before moving into foreplay, which she drags out so as to let her wasp familiarize itself with its new plaything. Once the main event begins, the insect starts prodding both participants with jaws and stinger, never injecting venom or even drawing blood.
What little you know about the wasp terrifies you. In your birth pack, bug training was strictly divided by gender, so you always studied arachnids rather than insects, but the males would always speak of the cat sized Necroid Wasp with the utmost fear and reverence. Dwelling in parts of the cavern so deep that even gnolls rarely visit, its sting is said to bring swift death; No cure, no exceptions. the best treatment is said to be dismemberment, as sometimes victims rise as the sort of swift undead husk that only the greatest necromancer could hope to create or control. Furthermore the wasp is said to exist in a state of life and undeath at the same time, which means neither druidism nor necromancy can break its will, and this, when combined with the insect's lethality and aggression, makes domestication completely impossible. The more you dwell on it, the more frightened you are for both parties.
As if reading your mind, Cra-Crawler breaks her gaze away from her partner and locks eyes with you. Stretching her neck, she places her finger on a major artery between her chin and torso, made flush with blood and highly visible by the current strenuous activity she is partaking in. As if on cue, the wasp climbs to the indicated spot and delivers its legendary sting, pumping an entire load of venom into its master's bloodstream. After a few seconds, Cra-Crawler pulls her pet loose and licks the blood and venom from its sting before placing it on her partner's head, which is currently buried in her lap and oblivious to what has just occurred. The female holds a claw to her lip, to indicate a secret, before breaking eye-contact with you and returning her undivided attention to her mate.
You observe for the next several minutes, transfixed, as Cra-Crawler concludes her mating session. The only ill effect from the sting that you notice is that the small wound is slow to clot, to the point that can use it as a source of red coloring to draw what you think is a goblin character meaniong 'to be above fear' on her partner's forehead before thanking him for sharing a moment of depravity with her and sending him away.
Unsure of what to say, you simply tell Cra-Crawler that she has proven herself and that you value her insight, before promising that you will consider her advice quite carefully. You then ask if she has anything new to reveal. She pauses for a second, as if weighing her words. "For now... for now only about myself. And about yourself. We are going to goblin territory, where I was raised. As the pilgrims say, I am known there. Much loved as well. They will tell you I was weak and stupid for... for giving into my baser insticts and running off to join a pack. Th-throwing away my education and potential."
She shakes her head. "T-they don't understand. I-I'm doing this because it makes me wiser. An Alpha Chieftess... You are god to us and for us and over us. You will not understand this, but there is revelation in your eyes and your breath and your movement, just as there is in the wasp. My theory is that more concrete revelation can be found by c-cross referencing that of a life deity and a death deity... Perhaps even a road-map to miracles. Exceptional fortune granted me a physical link to a death goddess, but all a gnoll needs to gain the same with a life-giver is to join a pack."
Cra-Crawler rubs the wound on her neck and offers a weak smile. "The language of our race though... it is ill suited for revelation. Goddesses like you talk to followers like us as fellow mortals, so the language never needed to d-develop the cadence and reverent tones that others have. I know you are trying to look after my worldly needs... y-you want revelation to help with that. I will d-do what I can, but it is hard to find things important enough to share, but not so sacred that I would pay your divine nature an insult by speaking them in Gnollish. Rest assured that I will act in your best interests even w-when it is wrong to share what I know and hope and see."
---
Your conversation with Glowshine is far less strange. Luckily all the time you spent watching Cra-Crawler and her lucky mates has given the smallest female in your pack plenty of time to sober up. The first thing she does is apologize for getting wasted in the first place, explaining that the elves invited her to partake and she didn't want to come across as insulting or suspicious by refusing.
You ask about the Druid, and the beta-female tells you the plan is to keep her so high that her spells will likely miscast. She has some proper sedative, but not enough to get the dangerous cargo all the way through the canyon completely unconscious the whole time. The crafty merchant has already spoken to the four missionaries, and between them has come up with several ideas for the captured elves.
The goblin run Toadcotton Plantation where Glowshine used to work as an overseer is only a two day's march from Camp Decay, and would likely be looking to buy with the planting season coming up. Glowshine is confident she could negotiate the best possible purchase price for all the non-casting elves, and perhaps even turn her former employers into a useful contact for her new clan. The catch here is that to get from Camp Decay to the plantion one must navigate well patrolled goblin roads for the majority of the trip. Two days on civilized roads without running into a patrol is a bit of a stretch, so some cash and luck would be required at Camp Decay to secure safe passage for both pack and prisoners.
One of the Pilgrims happens to be the heir to Troll Tusk Fortress, the closest military installation to Camp Decay which happens to sit just off the stretch of goblin road the Pilgrims were going to help you pass anyway. Said pillgrim thinks his father would be willing to buy, either for himself or to take to market in the city. A Goblin commander could be a good friend to make, but once you enter the fort, your small pack will be at the mercy of his heavily armed installation, and you imagine there might be at least some temptation to enslave your pack along with the elves.
Another pilgrim is interested in a few elves for personal use. He would purchase three of them in exchange for a eight hundred silver debt owed to him by the stable master of camp decay. Glowshine tells you the price is a bit low, but that the transaction would be quick and safe, and that you could likely take your payment directly in beasts from the stable master.
Yet a third pilgrim knows where to find a seeder, an practitioner of the art of magical reproduction among his all male race. The seeder would break the elves down and grow multiple goblins from the useful aspects of their minds and souls. Seeders pay top price for casters, and even the fact that the other elves are highborn would make them of more value to him. The Seeder makes his home somewhere in the Saurian Shaft, a stretch of cavern controlled by goblin rebels who are less hostile tworads gnolls than the government they oppose. The pilgrim refuses to give the exact location, and offers to guide your pack to the seeder for a 25% cut of the sale price. You note that the Saurian Path, although not the most direct route, would eventually lead you to Rusty Screw Village, where your other gift brother is waiting, and is home to many impressive reptiles to hunt and tame.
Glowshine adds that if none of the offers are appealing, you can likely find a buyer for your catch at Camp Decay itself, although the bandits know a gnoll pack cannot easily travel to the major slave markets, and as such cannot be expected to give a fair price.
Sensing a pause in the speech of your most driven underling, you cut Glowshine off and thank her for her service so far. You know well by this point that she craves praise above all else, so you inform her that you like the cut of her jib. This alone likely makes the vain Gnoll's day, but you take it one step forward and inform Glowshine that although the mounts are still off limits at this time, you would like to reward her and are taking suggestions on how that might be done.
The beta-female falls silent, calculating her options, before speaking again. "I... I'm kind having trouble breaking the ice with the other females. They are both so young and niave, while I was already a cynical little shit at their level of development... I just can't relate. Could you help me fix that? Perhaps a private lunch just us girls? You, me, Echo, and Cra-Crawler... We can treat ourselves to one of the elves if you want to make it fancy. The little one with the heartwarming mole on her chin is already utterly terrified... I'm drooling to find out how she reacts to joining us for girl time."
The request is touching. That she can swallow her pride and admit her issues reflects well on your merits as an alpha; You should be mother and sister and goddess to all in your pack. On a personal note, sharing a live meal is among the most intimate of Gnollish bonding experiences, only equaled by grooming and surpassed by sex and wound-licking. Meal sharing, which easily accommodates more gnolls at once than the other three, is typically used to foster a close circle of platonic friendship outside the ties of blood, sexuality, and divinity that bind the pack. What Glowshine is really saying is that you would be worthy of her friendship even if you were not her pack leader, and what she is asking is if you feel the same about her.
You promise to consider the request, and return to the prisoners, who you order bloodletted to drain their stamina. Only the one Glowshine wants to eat is spared this fate for now, as if you decide to oblige your friend you would like the fun to last as long as possible before the meal bleeds out.
Rickshaw approaches. It is time to make up your mind on his and the other offers and requests you just fielded. You should also plan tomorrows travel. You have five days left in the canyon at this pace. If you want to push the pace to wear down the prisoners and minimize the chances the humans above catch on to your cargo and decide to mettle, you could likely complete this leg of the journey in three days. This, however, would be unpopular with the pack, and even less popular with the non-gnolls you are traveling with.
(Barring random events or the sort of fun, crazy, derailing, suggestions I know the b12 hivemind is capable of, the next turn should get us out of the canyon, and the following turn should get us to our destination. As you may have noticed, travel turns may yield background/flavor information on whoever you are riding with/near, so feel free to suggest who that is.)
Chieftess Venomclaw of the Wicked Song:
Healthy Adult Alpha Female Gnoll
Gnolls are savage scavengers and predators well adapted to the low light conditions of the darklands. Gnolls have higher than average endurance and agility for humanoids their size, and are impervious to most diseases and infections. Even supernatural curses and conditions are less likely to take when they target a gnoll.
As a young alpha female, you stand about 5'10, and likely have another 5-6 inches to grow. Your retractable claws can rend even the toughest skins and leathers, and your powerful jaw muscles can crunch through thin layers of metal (although doing so would likely break your teeth). Male gnolls you invite to join your pack will quickly come to see you as sister, friend, living goddess, and perfectly hideous sex symbol. You are presently unintrested in reproduction, and as an alpha female, can only be driven into heat by the extended presence of a gnollish girlchild.
Your fur is naturally soft and bright grey, but like most gnolls it is presently a matted reddish-brown due to your habit of rolling around in mud and gore and your aversion to bathing. Like most of your kind you suffer from a lack of modesty and an excess of fur that allows you to generally conduct your business naked, but as the leader of a pack, you might wear jewelry, piercings, or a small amount of clothing to flaunt your status.
Skills:
-Master arachnid trainer
-Great speaker of Gnollish (The native language of the gnolls. A Beast language with some Goblin influence)
-Accomplished rider
-Accomplished horn player
-Talented speaker of Savage Undercommon (The native language of the Kobolds, heavily influenced by Draconian and the Beast Languages)
-Talented polearm user
-Talented fish/amphibian trainer
-Skilled tracker
-Skilled reptile trainer
-Competent mammal trainer
-Novice speaker of Civilized Undercommon (A derivation of the goblin language used as a common tongue by the mighty underground kingdoms)
Inventory:
Silver tipped wood pike
Copper warhorn
Elf leather loincloth
Silk Anklet [Studded with Troll Knucklebones and Copper]
Map and Deed to Blackpool Shaft
Coinpurse
-4.75 Opal Chips (A flat cross-section of opal roughly 1 inch by 3 inches. Used as currency by gnolls and kobolds)
-Small Chitin Key to Blackpool Shaft
Pets and Allies:
-Slowdeath the Titanic Mule Scorpion (A lethal arachnid the size of a large horse. Amphibious. Highly intelligent. Trained as a mount and personal pet. Facial Scars, Missing a Mouth Part.)
-Sir and Lady Carrion, the Frogsharks (Cow sized hybrid monsters with the body of a bullfrog and the jaws and face of a shark. Amphibious. Trained to fight on their own, or as a mount for a small male gnoll)
-x3 Kitten Sized Spiderlings (What could they grow into?)
-Zit the Gnollish Druid (Your Alpha Male. A perfectly hideous physical specimen who claims to practice Kobold magic)
-Echo the Halfbreed Hunter (A sweet young lady with silent flight and amazing powers of perception)
-Cra-Crawler the Mystic (A strange beta-female even younger than you. Owns a frightening pet that she claims tells her the future)
-Glowshine the Pusher (A beta female with the skill set to make, market, and sell drugs. Scrawny, but owns a mean steel axe)
-15 Assorted Gnollish Males (They vary in size and build between 'Smallish Halfling' and 'Well Built Dwarf'. Armed with Rock, Wood, and Bone weapons. Most possess basic combat and survival skills)
-Bone-Saw-Saw (Badly concussed)
You would trust Slowdeath with your life under ordinary circumstances, but Rickshaw is not you, and surgery is far from ordinary. You tell Rickshaw that you will take him up on his offer, and instruct him to wait until his patient is properly restrained. You pick a good spot and tie off each of your beast's pinchers to nearby boulders and his deadly tail to a rock pillar, before summoning the doctor.
Rickshaw is fairly certain that there is no salvaging the impaled mouthpart, so the first step is to amputate. Too tiny to do the deed quick and clean himself, the Kobold medic summons his one-armed orc, who cuts the offending bodypart loose with a single swipe of her bronze sword. Slowdeath flinches, and briefly struggles against its bindings, but you are quick to calm it by complimenting its delightfully hideous new look.
The next step is to pull the sword, and the now amputated mouthpart it is pinning, out of Slowdeath's face. Rickshaw recomends yanking it out quick, and again notes that he is too small to preform the job himself. This time you volunteer, gripping and removing the dead dwarf's weapon with a mighty tug. Trusting in its master, the beast hardly reacts to the removal of the blade at all, but as ichor begins to spurt from the wound, you know the hard bit is just around the corner.
Approaching with a lit torch, Rickshaw begins to cauterize the wound, causing Slowdeath to emit screams of sheer agony and struggle hard against its bonds as its flesh is seared. You can tell it is trying to grab and crush the doctor with its three remaining mouthparts, but Rickshaw is able to stay just out of reach until, satisfied with his work, he hastily retreats.
Once Slowdeath is sufficiently calmed, you free the creature from its restraints and sit on the ground next to it, examining the weapon that did the damage. It is a simple short sword, but the craftswork is good and the metal itself seems to be high grade dwarven steel. Despite being of inferior quality and material, your weapon is better suited for mounted combat, but there is no reason why you couldn't keep the blade as a gruesome keepsake or to aid in any hand to hand battles you find yourself in. Of course, you could always use it to make one of your males more dangerous as well.
---
Flanked by your beta females, you singlehandedly drag the 'lucky' elf selected to join you for dinner some distance up the path until you find a private spot. Once the party arrives, you hold the meal still while your friends disrobe her, at which point the games begin. Having borrowed the four least effective looking wooden weapons owned by the pack, the first fifteen minutes are spent chasing and prodding at the elf, until she is too injured and exausted to continue. A few minutes are then devoted to taunting an teasing; Glowshine speaks to the elf in its own language, while you and the other two lick her wounds and groom her hair as if she was a close friend. Eventually, however, hunger becomes too great, and the games give way to the meal.
Traditionally this would start with the largest gnoll (you) tearing right into the meal's body cavity, but Cra-Crawler helpfully foresees that the guest of honor is a bit squeamish, so you instead hold her steady again while the young prophet carefully removes the screaming elf's eyes so that she will not pass out at the sight of her own guts. Then you climb on top of her, and gesture for the others to grab the arms and legs before you turn your powerful jaws against the victim's flesh. At once the familiar copper taste of fresh blood tickles your toung, prompting you to burry your snout in the wound to root around for her entrails. Once you get hold of the elf's intestines, you begin to pull them carefully from her body while keeping them as intact as possible. As the wound widens and the meal weakens, the other three join you in this task, pressing their blood soaked muzzles against yours so that all can fit inside.
Once the intestines are removed, you note the elf is almost gone and decide to take matters into your own jaws, ripping through her breast and ribs to reach the heart, which you tear free and swallow almost whole. With the elf dead, the group turns to other entertainment, and begins to wrestle over the intestines; Your size gives you a huge advantage, but you hold back so as to keep the game interesting. The frail and unassertive Echo winds up scoring a shocking victory here, grabbing the largest piece and flying to an outcrop that none of the others can reach. After finishing the intestines, the next hour and a half is spent tearing apart the corpse, rolling around in the mess, and licking each other clean. By the time you are finished, all of the meat and over half of the bone is consumed. The four of you return to camp and all fall asleep together on your sleeping skins.
---
Today you conduct your business while you ride.
Cruelaxe, one of the pilgrims shows you a signed document which declares the owner is owed 800 silver by stables of Camp Decay. It is written in Goblin, so you can't quite understand all the words, but Glowshine verifies that everything is in order. Cruelaxe agrees to give it to you in exchange for three of the remaining elves when you part ways.
The second goblin you do business with is Thumbscrews, who seems to be the defacto leader of the pilgrim group. Thumbscrews is more than willing to travel with the pack, and help you both find and negotiate with the seeder in exchange for a quarter of whatever you make selling him the elves. Like the others, he is clad only in unprotective travelers clothes, but he does wield a sling and demonstaits the ability to fire off both rocks and lead sling bullets with decent accuracy, so he should be able to pull some of his own weight on the road. He agrees to allow you to stop at Camp Decay before embarking down the Saurian Shaft, so that you may resupply the pack and hopefully find your gift brother.
---
The rest of the trip through the canyon is largely uneventful. Your riding partner, more often than not, is the tiny and gimpy male Bloodcoat, who seems to do everything in his power to please you and win your attention. You are almost positive that his intention is to win your favor and mate with you behind Zit's back when you go into heat, but in spite of his transparency you find him fairly charming nonetheless.
He is one of the older males in the pack, pushing middle age, which considering his size and injury is a pretty impressive feat. A bit of a wanderer, Bloodcoat has been part of many packs, usually moving along when times get rough and he is unable to compete with other males for food and mates. He tells you he was part of the Alpha Trumpet's pack while she was nursing Wildbone, the previous alpha female to hail from your nurse's teat, and picked up a bit of insect training and beast riding. He also knows how to safely handle and detonate dwarven powder, but cannot say how the terrifying weapon is made other than it has something to do with the yellow rocks in the Brimstone Broadtunnels.
On your third day of riding with Bloodcoat, he admits why he tells you why he is being such a suck-up. His limp, as it turns out, is not a birth defect but an injury he received three weeks before joining the pack. The Kobold doctor he saw thinks that it might get a bit better, but is unlikely to heal completely. The small male worries that he might no longer be able to fend for himself if things with this pack get rough, and hopes that you will protect him. You choose to confront his other intentions now as well, and he does sheepishly admit that he does hope to make a mate out of you and a fool out of Zit if he can get away with it, but earning your protection is of higher importance to him.
Glowshine seems to have gotten her wish. Between the shared meal and the shared blood of their mates, she and Echo are beginning to become close friends. They are usually found near the front of the pack with their mates while traveling. Dingo has managed to bully Great-Bruise out of the fallen dwarf's armor, and although he typically dosn't wear it while traveling, you have to assume his new steel skin makes him the most dangerous thing in the pack behind only the massive Slowdeath and perhaps the magical Zit. Bone-Saw-Saw does is best to hide it, but you can tell his concussion is proving slow to heal. Dingo seems to have picked up on this as well, and now seems a bit worried for and protective of the gnoll who is typically his heated rival.
---
After five and a half travel days, the large party makes it to the Joker Road Turnoff. Setting up camp, you know that tomorrow you will take your leave of Rickshaw before making the somewhat risky quarter-day journey down the well patrolled Joker Road until you reach Decay Tunnel, at which point all of the Goblins, save for Thumbscrews, will leave you as well. It might be prudent to make some sort of plan to meet up with Rickshaw in the future and collect the gold he owes you for the elfish mounts, and tackles any other final busniess you might have with his party or the pilgrims before going to bed tonight. If all goes well, after tomorrow Camp Decay should be one long day or two short ones away.
So far the prisoners have behaved, and you don't expect them to make trouble tonight with all the extra manpower around; A band of nine pilgrims heading the opposite direction has wound up joining the pack to make camp for the night.
The combined effort of all thirteen goblins is finally enough to get Cra-Crawler to give a sermon for tonight's entertainment. She gives her speech in Goblin, so few in the pack can understand it, but you and the others who do translate to the best of your abilities. The main topic is the merit of dying a good and properly gory death, but Cra-Crawler also spends a good deal of time defending the pratices of the traditional gnollish pack as being in line with the teachings of a Goblin death deity called Hammerhood. The entire assembly erupts in applause when she concludes, as even most of those who could not understand were drawn in by her confidence, fiery tone, and poetic meter.
Chieftess Venomclaw of the Wicked Song:
Healthy Adult Alpha Female Gnoll
Gnolls are savage scavengers and predators well adapted to the low light conditions of the darklands. Gnolls have higher than average endurance and agility for humanoids their size, and are impervious to most diseases and infections. Even supernatural curses and conditions are less likely to take when they target a gnoll.
As a young alpha female, you stand about 5'10, and likely have another 5-6 inches to grow. Your retractable claws can rend even the toughest skins and leathers, and your powerful jaw muscles can crunch through thin layers of metal (although doing so would likely break your teeth). Male gnolls you invite to join your pack will quickly come to see you as sister, friend, living goddess, and perfectly hideous sex symbol. You are presently unintrested in reproduction, and as an alpha female, can only be driven into heat by the extended presence of a gnollish girlchild.
Your fur is naturally soft and bright grey, but like most gnolls it is presently a matted reddish-brown due to your habit of rolling around in mud and gore and your aversion to bathing. Like most of your kind you suffer from a lack of modesty and an excess of fur that allows you to generally conduct your business naked, but as the leader of a pack, you might wear jewelry, piercings, or a small amount of clothing to flaunt your status.
Skills:
-Master arachnid trainer
-Great speaker of Gnollish (The native language of the gnolls. A Beast language with some Goblin influence)
-Accomplished rider
-Accomplished horn player
-Talented speaker of Savage Undercommon (The native language of the Kobolds, heavily influenced by Draconian and the Beast Languages)
-Talented polearm user
-Talented fish/amphibian trainer
-Skilled tracker
-Skilled reptile trainer
-Competent mammal trainer
-Novice speaker of Civilized Undercommon (A derivation of the goblin language used as a common tongue by the mighty underground kingdoms)
Inventory:
Silver tipped wood pike
Copper warhorn
Elf leather loincloth
Silk Anklet [Studded with Troll Knucklebones and Copper]
Map and Deed to Blackpool Shaft
Coinpurse
-4.75 Opal Chips (A flat cross-section of opal roughly 1 inch by 3 inches. Used as currency by gnolls and kobolds)
-Small Chitin Key to Blackpool Shaft
Pets and Allies:
-Slowdeath the Titanic Mule Scorpion (A lethal arachnid the size of a large horse. Amphibious. Highly intelligent. Trained as a mount and personal pet. Facial Scars, Missing a Mouth Part.)
-Sir and Lady Carrion, the Frogsharks (Cow sized hybrid monsters with the body of a bullfrog and the jaws and face of a shark. Amphibious. Trained to fight on their own, or as a mount for a small male gnoll)
-x3 Kitten Sized Spiderlings (What could they grow into?)
-Zit the Gnollish Druid (Your Alpha Male. A perfectly hideous physical specimen who claims to practice Kobold magic)
-Gorgtooth the Gnollish Goon (Your Gift Brother. The largest and heaviest gnoll in the pack. Fights along his three pet ants in full steel gear)
-Echo the Halfbreed Hunter (A sweet young lady with silent flight and amazing powers of perception)
-Cra-Crawler the Mystic (A strange beta-female even younger than you. Owns a frightening pet that she claims tells her the future)
-Glowshine the Pusher (A beta female with the skill set to make, market, and sell drugs. Scrawny, but owns a mean steel axe)
-15 Assorted Gnollish Males (They vary in size and build between 'Smallish Halfling' and 'Well Built Dwarf'. Armed with Rock, Wood, and Bone weapons. Most possess basic combat and survival skills)
-Bone-Saw-Saw (Badly concussed)
-6 Members of 'Mandible Squadron' (Goblins and Gnollblins under Gorgtooth's command. The wield bronze swords, leather slings, leather armor, bronze helmets, and bronze chain shirts.)
You consider Gorgtooth's offer for a few seconds, before giving him a nod and stating you will gladly hunt in the name of the rebel cause if the goblins agree to support you. This brings a sadistic smile to the face of the strange female commander, who displays teeth as sharp as any Saurian beast. "Vvvveeeeery good to hear, mighty Venomclaw." She replies with a silky and almost elf like voice, "The rebellion looks forward to a long and frrrrrruitful relationship with Wicked Song. May you grow mighty in our service."
Something about her voice, alongside the fact that you hadn't spoken your name or pack name yet, makes you shudder. The unusual woman disregards this and continues. "It will be some time before rrrrrrebellion is ready to march into your homeland, so you will be frrrrrrree to do as you wish for now. In the meantime, if you would like to help the cause, in exxxxxchange for suitable payment of course, you can seek the rebellion out."
The speaker steps down from her throne, and pats you lightly on the shoulder. Her skin is cool to the touch. "Prince Crazyscrews, who reigns out of Cold Egg Keep on the Saurian Path specializes in planning raids agaiiiiiiiinst the hated oppressors. I'm sure he would let you liberate any gnollish slaves you encounter while working for him to join your pack. My mother, the Drow Silentkiss, handles most of the rebellion's non military affairrrrrrs out of Dinofang, and is always looking for muscle to help her out with small things that the rebel military is too busy to help with. Lastly High Priest Spike-Driver, our spiritual leader, can be found at the Saurian Circles and should have work for you... I hearrrrr you are good with beasts, correct?"
The woman pauses for a second. "Gorgtooth is already a captain in the rebellion. So I shall let him keep his rank and men while he travels with you. This should allow you to move through rebel territory unhindered."
Although you still need to get to Rusty Screw Village, and likely Blackpool Shaft as well, at some point in the near future, your new alliance has already opened up doors for you. Cold Egg Keep sits at the intersection of the Decay Tunnel and the Saurian Path, only a day's travel from your current location. The Saurian Circles are much further, At least a month and a half of travel if you just took Saurian Path straight down, but is said to be a place of great magical power and mighty beasts. Dinofang is a major goblin city and the rebel capital, the kind of place a gnoll pack wouldn't be allowed to visit under normal circumstances. It sits at the very top of Saurian Path, about five days from Camp Decay.
---
Gorgtooth leaves the tent with you, and agrees to show you about the camp. The first stop is a drinking tent, where he rounds up his troops to provide an escort. Gorgtooth's goblins are six strong, and fight under the name 'mandible squad'. They wear mail, helms, and swords of bronze, but the rest of their gear is leather; A step above the average member of your pack, to be sure, but not as well equipped as members of the regular goblin army. You are fairly sure most of them are actually half gnoll, but it is tough to tell; Gnollblins are functionally particularly savage goblins if male.
Once 'the boys' are gathered, you ask to be shown to the stables, as you have a debt to collect. Your gift brother nods, grins, and cracks his knuckles. Gorgtooth is a rather dull and hateful creature, even by Gnollish standards, and possesses only a handful of redeeming qualities: He is good at getting smaller creatures to obey him through threats and force, he has a knack for training animals (particularly insects), he is a large motherfucker (even by non-gnollish standards to an extent), and is completely devoted to you. In short, debt collecting suits him.
At first the stablemaster, an ancient human, denies the debt he owes you. He quickly changes his tune when Gorgtooth threatens to eat his wife alive, and offers the one hundred silver that he currently has, only an eighth of the debt owed. "Not good enough. My sister will be taking the rest of the payment one way or another..."
Gorgtooth leads you past the area where the stable-master puts up the mounts of various paying guests, to a small area within the stables where every pen has a pricetag on it.
The only cheap mounts for sale are the Saurian Kangaroos, large bipedal lizards that hop around on powerful hind legs and are large enough to give rides to the smaller races. Although far from harmless, their kicks are less impressive than the teeth of a frogshark, but on the plus side, they are slightly larger, stronger, and better balanced than your amphibians. Any member of your pack, save for yourself, Zit, Dingo, or Great-Bruse (the largest), could easily ride a Saurian Kangaroo with a bit of practice. There are eight for sale, six males for 60 silver each, and two females for 80.
Also available are trolls, large humanoids that can serve as pack-animals or fighters, but are improperly shaped to make good mounts. Two green seven-foot common trolls sell for 150 silver a piece. Three adolescent shaggy trolls, which are presently about your size and might grow another half foot, sell for the same price; Although smaller, shaggy trolls can be harvested for their thick wool. A single eight footer with skin of stone and claws of rusted iron, the feared deep troll, is offered for 650 Silver.
Also available are a few amphibians. One pen contains dozens of Dartsharks, the smaller, brightly colored, cousin of your frogsharks. Although too small to ride, they can still be trained as war animals, and their poisonous skin would give you a leg up against other gnoll packs that lead carnivores into battle. As their 15 silver a pop price tag indicates, they are also easy to breed. On the opposite end of both the price and size spectrum, the stablemaster is selling a single horse sized white frogshark and a three headed fire breathing bull sized Cerberus Toad for 500 silver each.
Lastly, you note three sentient oddities, too bestial for the standard slave market, on sale. A male assling (to hafling and donkey what a centaur is to man and horse) tries to seduce you into buying him with crude jokes about his equine sized manhood, and seems quite put out when you inform him you are not in heat. He seems skinny, and you suspect it is the fact that his current owner is mistreating him that has rendered him desperate enough to try and bed something as hideous as a gnoll. The note on his cell reads '150 silver for the lazy good 'fur nothing'.
The next sentient also has the lower body of a beast, a big cat, but the upper body of a sickeningly pretty fey female. Sphinx like the one before you are known for their size, cunning, savagery, and magical proficiency. You doubt this specimen is a caster, there are no magical restraints of any sort on her body, but she is already nearly as large as Slowdeath and still an adolescent; She could likely end up two to three times as large as she is now. The sign on her stall says she only speaks Fey, Elfish, and Druidic, so to the best of your knowledge, only Zit and Glowshine would be able to speak with her out of the entirety of your pack. She is listed at a sale price of 900 Silver, so to claim her you would have to bully the stablemaster and giving more than is owed.
Also a bit out of your price range, sitting at a cool 1200 silver, is an alluringly creepy ruby-red Sorcerer Scorpion. The cat-sized bug is sealed in a rune-laden terrarium; Although various races and cultures argue on weather or not a bug can be sentient, nobody can deny that the Sorcerer Scorpion is a dangerous and cunning caster. Its lethal sting is nothing to sneeze at either. Most attempts to tame a Sorcerer Scorpion end with the arachnid escaping and/or killing its master, but if anybody is capable of the feat, it is you. You can't tell for sure, but you a pretty sure the specimen before you is male, which would make it 1/2 of the formula required to breed your own titanic mule scorpions.
Beyond the animals, the stablemaster keeps various hunting and trapping supplies; If you took some of your payment in ropes, traps, nets, and throwing javalins, you should be able to capture and tame beasts of your own. You also note slimy mageblankets for sale; For eighty silver you could buy enough to ensure your three current amphibious beasts can safely make a one way trip through the brutally dry Redstalks; the quickest route back to Kobold Country.
---
Following your trip to the stables, you introduce your brother and his squad to your pack, and tensions are high right away. Never one to be diplomatic, Gorgtooth calls Zit a sorry excuse for an Alpha Male and unworthy of his respect. Gnolls, expecially large gnolls like Gorgtooth, are fairly magic resistant, so you can't imagine any showdown between the two parties ending well for Zit who fights with magic and claw. Zit for his part seems to know this, and now seems very worried for his safety.
Neither Cra-Crawler nor Glowshine are thrilled that you are throwing your lot in with the goblin rebels. Glowshine explains that many of her good business contacts are aligned with the goblin crown, but agrees to suck it up and do what is best for the pack. Cra-Crawler, when pressed, simply states that her religious views are much closer to those of the crown than those of the rebels, so she will never be entirely comfortable with the arrangement, but that she didn't warn you against taking the rebel side as she knows the union will be more profitable for the pack.
The six goblin soldiers fit in better than you had expected; Gnoll packs are controlled by family ties, friendship, and sexual supply and demand. Goblin squadrons are condrolled by pride and fear. These dynamics don't always gel smoothly with one another, but over the first few hours you see no trouble between the gnolls of The Wicked Song and the Goblins of Mandible Squad save for the tension between Zit and Gorgtooth.
Thumbscrews looks worried, and you can tell he knows that you might no longer need him. It is likely the rebellion knows where to find the same seeder he agreed to lead you to, and now that you have access to Dinofang City you might not even need to go that far to find a good price for your captives.
You eventually send Glowshine out to fetch a doctor for Bone-Saw-Saw and Bloodcoat. The medic she finds, Doc Hiccup, looks more like a bandit than a doctor, but he preforms his job admirably. He quickly perscribes an herb for Bone-Saw-Saw's concussion, before moving to the smaller gnoll's leg. After a brief examination, he informs you that fixing Bloodcoat's injury entirely is likely impossible, but surgery could greatly help improve his condition. The procedure would entail rebreaking and resetting, and would take a few months to recuperate without expensive magical assistance. You are pretty sure who want to be settled down at Blackpool Shaft or some other base of opperations before you intentionally put one of your gnolls on the self like that. Glowshine pays for the consult, and for Bone-Saw-Saw's medicine.
Chieftess Venomclaw of the Wicked Song:
Healthy Adult Alpha Female Gnoll
Gnolls are savage scavengers and predators well adapted to the low light conditions of the darklands. Gnolls have higher than average endurance and agility for humanoids their size, and are impervious to most diseases and infections. Even supernatural curses and conditions are less likely to take when they target a gnoll.
As a young alpha female, you stand about 5'10, and likely have another 5-6 inches to grow. Your retractable claws can rend even the toughest skins and leathers, and your powerful jaw muscles can crunch through thin layers of metal (although doing so would likely break your teeth). Male gnolls you invite to join your pack will quickly come to see you as sister, friend, living goddess, and perfectly hideous sex symbol. You are presently unintrested in reproduction, and as an alpha female, can only be driven into heat by the extended presence of a gnollish girlchild.
Your fur is naturally soft and bright grey, but like most gnolls it is presently a matted reddish-brown due to your habit of rolling around in mud and gore and your aversion to bathing. Like most of your kind you suffer from a lack of modesty and an excess of fur that allows you to generally conduct your business naked, but as the leader of a pack, you might wear jewelry, piercings, or a small amount of clothing to flaunt your status.
Skills:
-Master arachnid trainer
-Great speaker of Gnollish (The native language of the gnolls. A Beast language with some Goblin influence)
-Accomplished rider
-Accomplished horn player
-Talented speaker of Savage Undercommon (The native language of the Kobolds, heavily influenced by Draconian and the Beast Languages)
-Talented polearm user
-Talented fish/amphibian trainer
-Skilled tracker
-Skilled reptile trainer
-Competent mammal trainer
-Novice speaker of Civilized Undercommon (A derivation of the goblin language used as a common tongue by the mighty underground kingdoms)
Inventory:
Silver tipped wood pike
Copper warhorn
Elf leather loincloth
Silk Anklet [Studded with Troll Knucklebones and Copper]
Map and Deed to Blackpool Shaft
Coinpurse
-4.75 Opal Chips (A flat cross-section of opal roughly 1 inch by 3 inches. Used as currency by gnolls and kobolds)
-Small Chitin Key to Blackpool Shaft
Pets and Allies:
-Slowdeath the Titanic Mule Scorpion (A lethal arachnid the size of a large horse. Amphibious. Highly intelligent. Trained as a mount and personal pet. Facial Scars, Missing a Mouth Part.)
-Sir and Lady Carrion, the Frogsharks (Cow sized hybrid monsters with the body of a bullfrog and the jaws and face of a shark. Amphibious. Trained to fight on their own, or as a mount for a small male gnoll)
-x3 Kitten Sized Spiderlings (What could they grow into?)
-Zit the Gnollish Druid (Your Alpha Male. A perfectly hideous physical specimen who claims to practice Kobold magic)
-Gorgtooth the Gnollish Goon (Your Gift Brother. The largest and heaviest gnoll in the pack. Fights along his three pet ants in full steel gear)
-Echo the Halfbreed Hunter (A sweet young lady with silent flight and amazing powers of perception)
-Cra-Crawler the Mystic (A strange beta-female even younger than you. Owns a frightening pet that she claims tells her the future)
-Glowshine the Pusher (A beta female with the skill set to make, market, and sell drugs. Scrawny, but owns a mean steel axe)
-15 Assorted Gnollish Males (They vary in size and build between 'Smallish Halfling' and 'Well Built Dwarf'. Armed with Rock, Wood, and Bone weapons. Most possess basic combat and survival skills)
-Bone-Saw-Saw (Badly concussed)
-6 Members of 'Mandible Squadron' (Goblins and Gnollblins under Gorgtooth's command. The wield bronze swords, leather slings, leather armor, bronze helmets, and bronze chain shirts.)
You consider the merits of selling in the city as opposed to visiting Thumbscrew's seeder, and find them to be numerous. A major goblin town will have a proper slave market, all but guaranteeing a fair price for the standard elves. The city is also the best place to find seeders, who would pay a premium for at least the druid. It is likely that at least one seeder is directly employed by the rebellion, so you would likely have a ready made contact to boot. All in all you see no reason to not ditch Thumbscrew and conduct your busniess in Dinofang. No reason, that is, save Thumbscrew himself. The goblin has traveled with your pack as a friend, so to do wrong by him would be shameful. A compromise will have to be made.
Approaching the Goblin, you explain that the opprotunity to visit Dinofang has just become avaible to him, but you are still open to employing him as a guide and negotiator for a reduced cut of ten percent. Thumbscrew, who was clearly anticipating being told the deal is off, is thankful, and agrees to your new terms.
---
You return to the stables, this time with Zit and Glowshine in addition to Gorgtooth and his goons. This time, you make sure the stablemaster accompanies you to the back, as you suspect negotiation may be required to get what you want.
Upon reaching the pens containing the beasts for sale, you wait while your ambitious beta female and your alpha male interview the sphinx. The two gnolls each take a good fifteen minutes talking to feline girlbeast, before conferring with you. Their advice is conflicting.
Glowshine thinks that keeping what essentially amounts to a giant, curious, and playful child with the instincts and natural weaponry of a vicious predator is a recipe for disaster. She fears for her safety, as well as the safety of the other small members of your pack, suggesting that the sphinx would likely maim or even kill gnolls unintentionally.
Zit agrees that the sentient beast would likely wreck havok, but thinks it is a small price to pay. Although she cannot yet cast, your alpha male tells you the sphinx has great potential as a druid, and already understands the theory behind and basics of the magical art. Zit goes on further to add that although he is not allowed to pratice non-lethal druidism, he can teach it. He believes the feline can be taught to use magic to impregnate herself with otherwise incompatible mates by the time she reaches adulthood in a few years, which opens up endless possibilities for your monster breeding operations.
Gorgtooth then chimes in. He thinks that if you want a caster, you should take the bug. Your gift-brother notes that you are likely the best arachnid trainer in the darklands, and the sorcerer scorpion already knows how to cast. Your gift-brother then places his paw on the stablemaster's shoulder, and asks in a not-so-friendly tone what sort of magic the creature knows. The stable master informs you the bug practices necromancy and lightning magic. He also adds that he thinks it understands the goblin language as well.
Unsure of what you will purchase quite yet, you begin negotiating in hopes of landing something a bit outside your price range. You had hoped to negotiate in good faith, but Gorgtooth has other ideas. Cranking up the intimidation to eleven, your gift-brother convinces the stablemaster that between interest, fees, and tribute to the greatest living beastmaster (you), he actually owes a debt of 2000 silver. You can't protest too much; With access to a proper city, you doubt there will be much reason for you to conduct business at Camp Decay moving forward, and don't feel too bad about burning bridges. Still, you should have known better; Gorgtooth is as mean as he is devoted to you, and can be depended on to take violent or threatening initiative to further what he understands to be your interests. When your goal is to make friends, you either have to be very clear with your simple-minded gift brother, or better yet leave him out of the conversation.
Chieftess Venomclaw of the Wicked Song:
Healthy Adult Alpha Female Gnoll
Gnolls are savage scavengers and predators well adapted to the low light conditions of the darklands. Gnolls have higher than average endurance and agility for humanoids their size, and are impervious to most diseases and infections. Even supernatural curses and conditions are less likely to take when they target a gnoll.
As a young alpha female, you stand about 5'10, and likely have another 5-6 inches to grow. Your retractable claws can rend even the toughest skins and leathers, and your powerful jaw muscles can crunch through thin layers of metal (although doing so would likely break your teeth). Male gnolls you invite to join your pack will quickly come to see you as sister, friend, living goddess, and perfectly hideous sex symbol. You are presently unintrested in reproduction, and as an alpha female, can only be driven into heat by the extended presence of a gnollish girlchild.
Your fur is naturally soft and bright grey, but like most gnolls it is presently a matted reddish-brown due to your habit of rolling around in mud and gore and your aversion to bathing. Like most of your kind you suffer from a lack of modesty and an excess of fur that allows you to generally conduct your business naked, but as the leader of a pack, you might wear jewelry, piercings, or a small amount of clothing to flaunt your status.
Skills:
-Master arachnid trainer
-Great speaker of Gnollish (The native language of the gnolls. A Beast language with some Goblin influence)
-Accomplished rider
-Accomplished horn player
-Talented speaker of Savage Undercommon (The native language of the Kobolds, heavily influenced by Draconian and the Beast Languages)
-Talented polearm user
-Talented fish/amphibian trainer
-Skilled tracker
-Skilled reptile trainer
-Competent mammal trainer
-Novice speaker of Civilized Undercommon (A derivation of the goblin language used as a common tongue by the mighty underground kingdoms)
Inventory:
Silver tipped wood pike
Copper warhorn
Elf leather loincloth
Silk Anklet [Studded with Troll Knucklebones and Copper]
Map and Deed to Blackpool Shaft
Coinpurse
-4.75 Opal Chips (A flat cross-section of opal roughly 1 inch by 3 inches. Used as currency by gnolls and kobolds)
-100 Assorted Silver (Most civilized peoples trade in fairly standardized silver coins. Your current supply is a mix, mostly of goblin and dwarven currency.
Most merechants treat all silver equally, but government agencies, and busniess that contract with them, may require a specific local silver coin.)
-Small Chitin Key to Blackpool Shaft
-Invoice declaring the Camp Decay Stables as indebted 60 silver to the holder
Pets and Allies:
-Slowdeath the Titanic Mule Scorpion (A lethal arachnid the size of a large horse. Amphibious. Highly intelligent. Trained as a mount and personal pet. Facial Scars, Missing a Mouth Part.)
-Sir and Lady Carrion, the Frogsharks (Cow sized hybrid monsters with the body of a bullfrog and the jaws and face of a shark. Amphibious. Trained to fight on their own, or as a mount for a small male gnoll)
-x3 Kitten Sized Spiderlings (What could they grow into?)
-Unnamed Adolescent Sphinx (Horse sized lion with female humanoid head, torso, and arms. Naturally skilled in unarmed combat, and understands the basics of druidism.)
-x3 Unnamed Adolescent Shaggy Trolls (Average sized humanoids with great strength, lethal claws, and an impressive healing factor. Dumb as rocks, but can be trained to use weapons and simple speech. One is female, two are male.)
-x4 Unnamed Saurian Kangaroos (Bipedal reptiles with reasonably scary teeth and claws, and a deadly kick. Strong and well balanced enough to serve as mounts for all but the largest in your pack. Two are male, two are female.)
-x4 Unnamed Dartsharks (Average sized humanoids with great strength, lethal claws, and an impressive healing factor. Dumb as rocks, but can be trained to use weapons and simple speech. One is female, two are male.)
-Zit the Gnollish Druid (Your Alpha Male. A perfectly hideous physical specimen who claims to practice Kobold magic)
-Gorgtooth the Gnollish Goon (Your Gift Brother. The largest and heaviest gnoll in the pack. Fights along his three pet ants in full steel gear)
-Echo the Halfbreed Hunter (A sweet young lady with silent flight and amazing powers of perception)
-Cra-Crawler the Mystic (A strange beta-female even younger than you. Owns a frightening pet that she claims tells her the future)
-Glowshine the Pusher (A beta female with the skill set to make, market, and sell drugs. Scrawny, but owns a mean steel axe)
-'Cucumber' the Assling Good for Nothing (Body of a donkey, head and torso of a halfling, self proclaimed manhood of a Clydesdale. Can speak most subterranian languages, as well as surface common.)
-15 Assorted Gnollish Males (They vary in size and build between 'Smallish Halfling' and 'Well Built Dwarf'. Armed with Rock, Wood, and Bone weapons. Most possess basic combat and survival skills)
-Bone-Saw-Saw (Badly concussed)
-Bloodcoat (Gimpy leg)
-6 Members of 'Mandible Squadron' (Goblins and Gnollblins under Gorgtooth's command. The wield bronze swords, leather slings, leather armor, bronze helmets, and bronze chain shirts.)
After some internal debate, you decide that taking both the Spinx and the Scorpion would be irresponsible, even by gnollish standards. In the end you settle on the sphinx, the deciding factor being that you want to do something nice for Zit, who will likely be fairly miserable moving foward as the cruel and dangerous Gorgtooth seems to dislike him.
You then turn your attention to the assling, and ask what he can do, threatening to neuter the poor creature if the answer relates to his penis in any way. He thinks for a second, before admitting that he was raised to be a traveling minstrel and bard, but was kidnapped and sold into slavery underground before he could finish his training. He can play the Halfling Tripipe (not an easy instrument to find in the Darklands) fairly well, and can eventually figure out the basics of any other wind instrument given enough time. He is fluent in surface common, the language of humans and halflings, as well as most of the tongues spoken in the darklands. He claims his poetry is decent in any language, especially when it comes to lewd poems and filthy songs. He initially refuses to tell you his name, as it relates to the part of him you have threatened to cut off, at which point the stablemaster chimes in that he is called 'Cucumber'. He likely had a proper halfling name at some point, but it is standard pratice of goblin slaveholders to violently condition their property to forget or repress as much of their old identity as possible.
In the end you decide to buy him. At worst, he will make a fine meal and acceptable pack animal, and could also be of use as a back-up translator or source of biologically incompatible entertainment should Zit be unavailable at some point down the road while you are in heat.
Next you turn your attention to the trolls, and settle on the three adolescent shaggy ones; Although smaller, they should be easier to train from a younger age. Although not the smartest of animals, trolls do possess voiceboxes capable of simple speech and parroting more complex ideas, and a strong and dexterous humanoid frame that allows them to fill in for a proper sentient being in combat or unskilled labor with the proper training. Two are male and one is female, which is not an ideal configuration for breeding, but these youth are still a good half-year or so from having to worry about that anyway.
Lastly you select two breeding pairs each of Darksharks and Saurian Kangaroos. Neither species is monogamous, so you could get away with a single male each, but this way allows you insurance should you lose a specimen before the first nesting/spawning, and affords you a bit more genetic diversity otherwise.
This leaves you still owning 160 silver in stables debt. You take 100 of it in the coin the stablemaster has on hand, and have Glowshine write up an invoice for the remaining 60 before leaving.
---
Back at camp, your pack is quick to take to the new acquisitions. Bloodcoat offers to train the dartsharks as proper attack animals should you not wish to invest the time yourself. Another male, called Mutilation, claims to have taught trolls to speak and throw javelins before, and could take those duties off your hands if you wish. One of the Goblins in Mandible Squad also offers to train the trolls, stating that he can teach them to bear heavy shields as cover for the pack, as well as the arts of mining and bricklaying.
Problems arise with the Sphinx, who seems to get along better with the captive elves, who speak her language, than she does with the pack. Glowshine seems rather smug that her perdiction that the getting the Sphinx would be a bad idea is already panning out. While thinking about how you might deal with this potential issue, you ask the creature's name, which prompts both Glowshine and Zit to advise that you should just rename her yourself; The Sphinx's moniker refers to several heavinly bodies, and does not translate well into the subterranian languages of people who rarely see the sky. You might also want to think of names for your other new purchases.
---
Not wishing to stick around and risk the consequences of extended exposure to the larger gnoll pack at Camp Decay, you uproot the pack to begin the five day journey to Dinofang. The first day of the journey is spent catching up with your gift-brother.
Gorgtooth spent his first month at camp decay trying to get an in with one of the larger bandit armies run by a human named Tobias Thames, a highborn wizard chased underground for taking boychilds of his own species as lovers. He eventually got Mr. Thames to give him work running messages to and from various leaders in the goblin military, but found out the hardway that the human would have those delivering particularly secretive messages killed to cover his tracks.
He was beat up by a gang of five humans, and his pets killed or chased off by the same. Gorgtooth's assailants thought they were leaving him for dead, broken, naked, and bleeding three day's walk from the nearest settlement that might allow a Gnoll entrance, but had clearly underestimated gnollish endurance. Gorgtooth picked himself up, tracked down his three remaining ants, and started the long and painful journey. On his way, your gift brother ran into some goblin rebels, who happened to be quite interested in his story, particularly the parts regarding Mr. Thames' connections to the hated goblin government. When they learned that Gorgtooth was the son of the Alpha Trumpet and raised at Mastiff Nest, a location the rebellion desires to control, he was more or less a made man among their ranks.
Since then, Gorgtooth has participated in several small battles for the rebellion, but has spent most of his time being dotted on by Princess All-Killer, the strange dinosaur/drow/goblin hybrid in charge of the rebellion's small presence at Camp Decay. The two became close friends and part-time lovers; Gorgtooth would use her as an outlet whenever a gnoll pack rolled through the camp looking for work and the presence of their alpha female would drive him wild, and All-Killer found some enjoyable novelty in the violent nature of gnollish courtship. Outside of sex, the pair was compatible as well; All-Killer's drowish nature appreciated the wicked cruelty of your gift brother, and the goblin in her was impressed by his ability to lead through intimidation. Gorgtooth in turn appreciated having a friend who could make up for his mental shortcomings, and also reveled in the novelty of female companionship; A properly raised gift-sibling is conditioned to despise all female gnolls, up to and including their own mother, save for the alpha they are born to serve, their own female siblings (you sadly lack such a gift sister), and any beta females accepted by their chosen alpha. This hatred rarely extends to non-gnolls, so a relationship such as that between All-Killer and Gorgtooth is hardly unprecedented.
By the end of the day's journey, you have deduced that Gorgtooth carries both a devotion to the rebel cause and a thirst for revenge against Mr. Thames, although neither surpasses his single minded love for you.
---
The theme of Gorgtooth carries into the night's entertainment, as he decides to make a big deal out of formally joining your pack, and taking his first female gnollish mate. After you deliver a rousing speech on your gift-brother's virtues, it falls to Cra-Crawler to fuffill Gorgtooth's second wish, as your other two beta-females are still occupied elsewhere. You are somewhat shocked when Gorgtooth actually puts up with Cra-Crawler's elaborate courtship and foreplay, and completely floored when he begins behaving submissively towards the younger female. Thinking about it, however, your gift-brother's behavior actually makes sense; An expert insect trainer, Gorgtooth would understand better than anybody the danger posed by the wasp, and the miraculous nature of the fact that Cra-Crawler can control it.
After the performance, Gorgtooth confirms this theory to you in private, and explains his actions a bit further by explaining that he has heard of Cra-Crawler during his time in Goblin country. "There are lots of rumors about Cra-Crawler among the goblins. She was raised at the Temple of the Death Gods in the Holy City of Butchery Banks, and was supposedly being groomed as high priestess to some morbid god the greenskins stole from the humans. Some have told me that she used to preach she is like the wasp: undead and alive at the same time. Others say that she used to prove her faith by inflicting sure deaths upon herself and emerging unscathed. I have heard that she bled herself dry, let the wasp sting her, and drowned herself for hours at a time. I am glad you give her respect so that I may as well."
Before tug-o-war can begin for the night, there is an incident with the elf prisoners. You arrive in a hurry, to find them fighting amoung themselves; While the druid is spacing out under the effects of Glowshine's drugs, four of the remaining six are beating up on the other two. One of the assailants is choking out the lone male captive with the ropes binding her hands, while the other three (including both the females you have considered as potential pets so far) are stomping a female elf. You issue a few commands to Slowdeath, who breaks up the fight by tossing assailants aside before the larger males in your pack can arrive to do so themselves.
Once the situation is entirely under control, you deploy Glowshine to get to the bottom of things, and find yourself pleased with what you have dug up. Rumors had been beginning to spread among the captives that the pack intended to sell them to a seeder, but that the alpha gnoll was looking to spare one of them as a personal pet. Two amoung the captives have decided that they would rather suffer the later fate than the former, and were prepared to beg for you mercy nextime both you and Glowshine were around. The remaining elves decided this behavior was treachery, and decided to punish the two willing to submit to you.
You have the two separated from the other elves, excuse yourself and Glowshine from tug-o-war to interview your potential new toys.
The male, Hayleaf, is a lowborn mercenary hired to guide and guard the bridal party while they were in the wilderness spiritually preparing for the wedding. As a lowborn, and not even being from the same tribe as the females, Hayleaf worships different gods than the others. One of the deities in his personal pantheon relates to natures savagery as opposed to its beauty, and as such he does not feel he would have to forsake his values to travel with the pack. Hayleaf is skilled with the bow and blade, and knows how to navigate both the surface and the darklands.
The female, Waters of Purity, is the younger sister of the elf eaten by you and the beta females, and as Glowshine explains, one thing elves and gnolls do have in common is a spiritual view of the predator/prey relationship. Waters of Purity believes that her sister's spirit is now one with the pack, and that your desire to take an elf as a pet stems from sisterly desire to protect and nurture Waters of Purity that you inherited from that meal. Waters of Purity adamantly claims that you will feel unfulfilled with your selection unless you choose her. Waters of Purity claims that it must her destiny to be your pet, because she is the only elf in the group to live full time underground; She is married to her tribe's ambassador to the dwarven kingdom, and makes her home in the dwarven city of Longsword, which sits only a week and a half from your future home of Blackpool Shaft. Although for the most part Waters of Purity is a spoiled and unskilled highborn, she has taken up the smelting and smiting of gold and silver as a hobby, and can both make jewelry and decorate other objects with the valuable metal.
Glowshine, although weary of keeping a pet who could sic the dwarves on the pack should she escape, can't help but salivate at the possibilities presented by Waters of Purity. "We can use a gold and silversmith to produce counterfeit coins; A thin layer of precious metal around a coin made from a less valuable substance. Also... This is a huge risk... We ate her sister... I can't believe I am suggesting this... But I know some among the dwarves want to sic it to the goblins by supporting the rebellion. We might be able to use her husband and his ties to better our relations with both the dwarves and the rebels... But... it would mean the bloody end of our pack if it goes poorly... so risky."
Chieftess Venomclaw of the Wicked Song:
Healthy Adult Alpha Female Gnoll
Gnolls are savage scavengers and predators well adapted to the low light conditions of the darklands. Gnolls have higher than average endurance and agility for humanoids their size, and are impervious to most diseases and infections. Even supernatural curses and conditions are less likely to take when they target a gnoll.
As a young alpha female, you stand about 5'10, and likely have another 5-6 inches to grow. Your retractable claws can rend even the toughest skins and leathers, and your powerful jaw muscles can crunch through thin layers of metal (although doing so would likely break your teeth). Male gnolls you invite to join your pack will quickly come to see you as sister, friend, living goddess, and perfectly hideous sex symbol. You are presently uninterested in reproduction, and as an alpha female, can only be driven into heat by the extended presence of a gnollish girlchild.
Your fur is naturally soft and bright grey, but like most gnolls it is presently a matted reddish-brown due to your habit of rolling around in mud and gore and your aversion to bathing. Like most of your kind you suffer from a lack of modesty and an excess of fur that allows you to generally conduct your business naked, but as the leader of a pack, you might wear jewelry, piercings, or a small amount of clothing to flaunt your status.
Skills:
-Master arachnid trainer
-Great speaker of Gnollish (The native language of the gnolls. A Beast language with some Goblin influence)
-Accomplished rider
-Accomplished horn player
-Talented speaker of Savage Undercommon (The native language of the Kobolds, heavily influenced by Draconian and the Beast Languages)
-Talented polearm user
-Talented fish/amphibian trainer
-Skilled tracker
-Skilled reptile trainer
-Competent mammal trainer
-Novice speaker of Civilized Undercommon (A derivation of the goblin language used as a common tongue by the mighty underground kingdoms)
-Not speaker of Elfish (Surface Language spoken by elves and fey beings. Drow of the noble and merchant classes tend to learn this as a second language, and most reputable wizards of any race can read and write in it)
-Not speaker of Druidic (Universal Language tied to and required by the magic of druidism. Also spoken by learned practitioners of other magics, and taught as a second language in some tribes of fey or savage people)
Inventory:
Silver tipped wood pike
Copper warhorn
Spider Silk Toga [Dyed Black]
Elf leather loincloth
Silk Anklet [Studded with Troll Knucklebones and Copper]
Map and Deed to Blackpool Shaft
Coinpurse
-4.75 Opal Chips (A flat cross-section of opal roughly 1 inch by 3 inches. Used as currency by gnolls and kobolds)
-100 Assorted Silver (Most civilized peoples trade in fairly standardized silver coins. Your current supply is a mix, mostly of goblin and dwarven currency.
Most merechants treat all silver equally, but government agencies, and busniess that contract with them, may require a specific local silver coin.)
-Small Chitin Key to Blackpool Shaft
-Invoice declaring the Camp Decay Stables as indebted 60 silver to the holder
Pets and Allies:
-Slowdeath the Titanic Mule Scorpion (A lethal arachnid the size of a large horse. Amphibious. Highly intelligent. Trained as a mount and personal pet. Facial Scars, Missing a Mouth Part.)
-Sir and Lady Carrion, the Frogsharks (Cow sized hybrid monsters with the body of a bullfrog and the jaws and face of a shark. Amphibious. Trained to fight on their own, or as a mount for a small male gnoll)
-x3 Kitten Sized Spiderlings (What could they grow into?)
-Writhewomb the Adolescent Sphinx (Horse sized lion with female humanoid head, torso, and arms. Naturally skilled in unarmed combat, and understands the basics of druidism.)
-Sir Dugweed, Sir Crawlskull, and Lady Mawslab Adolescent Shaggy Trolls (Average sized humanoids with great strength, lethal claws, and an impressive healing factor. Dumb as rocks, but can be trained to use weapons and simple speech. One is female, two are male.)
-x4 Sir Shank, Lady Shank, Sir Flank, and Lady Flank the Saurian Kangaroos (Bipedal reptiles with reasonably scary teeth and claws, and a deadly kick. Strong and well balanced enough to serve as mounts for all but the largest in your pack. Two are male, two are female.)
-Sir Knuckle, Lady Knuckle, Sir Liver, and Lady Liver the Dartsharks (Half-sized frogsharks with bright colored and poisonous skin.)
-Zit the Gnollish Druid (Your Alpha Male. A perfectly hideous physical specimen who claims to practice Kobold magic)
-Gorgtooth the Gnollish Goon (Your Gift Brother. The largest and heaviest gnoll in the pack. Fights along his three pet ants in full steel gear)
-Echo the Halfbreed Hunter (A sweet young lady with silent flight and amazing powers of perception)
-Cra-Crawler the Mystic (A strange beta-female even younger than you. Owns a frightening pet that she claims tells her the future)
-Glowshine the Pusher (A beta female with the skill set to make, market, and sell drugs. Scrawny, but owns a mean steel axe)
-'Cucumber' the Assling Good for Nothing (Body of a donkey, head and torso of a halfling, self proclaimed manhood of a Clydesdale. Can speak most subterranian languages, as well as surface common.)
-15 Assorted Gnollish Males (They vary in size and build between 'Smallish Halfling' and 'Well Built Dwarf'. Armed with Rock, Wood, and Bone weapons. Most possess basic combat and survival skills)
-Bone-Saw-Saw (Concussed)
-Bloodcoat (Gimpy leg)
-6 Members of 'Mandible Squadron' (Goblins and Gnollblins under Gorgtooth's command. The wield bronze swords, leather slings, leather armor, bronze helmets, and bronze chain shirts.)
Leaning towards keeping both the willing elves as pets, you order them to be kept separated from the others for now, while also calling for another round of bloodletting, from which Purity of Water and Hayleaf are spared.
---
The remainder of your trip passes without serious incident.
Rather than spending your travel time socializing, you ride next to the Sphinx, whom you have nammed Writhewomb, and the gnolls that translate for her, doing your best to learn the languages your valuable new pet speaks. This turns out to be a stressful exercise, as neither language shares much in common with any tongue you speak. Eventually, fusterated, you decide that you must focus your attention on one tongue at a time if you want to make any real progress in either, and start weighting the advantages of both.
Druidic, on the surface, seems to be the weaker option. Most of the wild beings who speak it in the Darklands also know how to speak Savage Undercommon or even Gnollish, both tongues that you are already fluent in. It does, however, give you the advantage of communicating with any Druid you might encounter regardless of race, although, once again, the races who most commonly practice Druidism underground are Gnolls and Kobolds, whom you can already communicate with. Learning Druidic, of course, opens the door to becoming a druid yourself, however the druidic arts are rarely practiced by Alpha Females for several good reasons; To advance past the mere basics, all but the most talented of druids must take binding oaths to regulate their behavior, and doing so might impact your ability to lead. Druidism is also unsightly for an Alpha Female, who should present herself as a living god, as much of the magic lies in appeals to various higher forces. All that said, however, quietly learning the basics would further empower your ability to work with animals. Learning Druidic would mean spending lots of time studying under Zit.
The Elfish tongue offers far more immediate benefits. Not only would it allow you to speak to Writhewomb, but to any pet elves you decide to keep as well. Important drow also tend to learn the language of their surface cousins, and might look on you with more prestige if you speak the them in Elfish than they would if you presented yourself in Undercommon. Glowshine, who would likely be your main teacher in Elfish, adds that Elfish is the language of wizardly scholarship, so any wizard worth his salt will at least be able to read and write it regardless of race.
Bloodcoat begins to train the Dartsharks to fight as he had offered, and quickly proves himself to be an apt trainer. Smaller and more nimble than their larger mountable cousins, the Dartsharks will be, in some ways, more dangerous once training is complete. For both the Frogsharks and Kangaroos, you decide to use a naming convention from The Alpha Trumpet's pack, and make each breeding pair a 'lord and lady'.
Although too young to breed yet, you also decide to throw 'sir' and 'lady' in front of the troll's names, just to make it easier to pick out the sole female, Lady Mawslab; What few sexually identifying features a normal troll might have are covered in thick wool on these specimens. Training is slower for the trolls than it is for the Dartsharks, but you are not sure if this is due to lack of proper equipment or lack of skill on the trainer's part. Gorgtooth's goblin underling, lacking both tower-shields and bricks, is reduced to running basic military formation. Bricklaying is taught using roughly brickshaped pieces of frock and fugal wood in place of bricks, and mud in place of mortar.
One thing you do notice is alliances being drawn, hinting at a potential power struggle among your underlings. Glowshine seems to be consolidating power and influence for herself, and seems to have gained Echo, Dingo, and Bone-Saw-Saw (who is finally beginning to recover from his concussion) as loyal underlings. Gorgtooth and his six troops in turn have taken to associating publicly with Cra-Crawler, whom Gorgtooth has claimed as a personal adviser and either strongarmed or seduced into declaring that she will focus on bearing your gift-brother a litter once one of the other females is once again open to all in the pack. Zit has quickly learned how to use the massive Writhewomb to throw is weight around, and uses his title as Alpha Male liberally to command the obedience of others in the pack.
On one hand, such politicking reflects well on both you and the pack; It shows that influence within the pack is of value and worth competing for. Furthermore, as a pack requires an Alpha Female to function, you know none of the factions are a direct threat to you. That said, many a pack has met its end because infighting turned violent at the wrong time, and there are a few things here that worry you. Both Gorgtooth and Dingo seem to genuinely dislike Zit. Your gift-brother thinks him an unworthy loser who seduced you with his ugliness, while Dingo openly covets the role of Alpha Male for himself. Furthermore, although you trust Gorgtooth and his devotion to you completely, it seems that some of the more clever members of Mandible Squad have his ear, and as they are not proper members of the pack, you doubt your best interests are high on their agenda.
---
The pack approaches the stone walls of Dinofang halfway through a travel day. Since you doubt the guard would respond well to a pack of gnolls approaching the gate, you send Mandible Squad ahead to announce your arrival and secure your entrance. Four hours later Gorgtooth and his men return, flanked by twelve other rebel soldiers. You are presented with loose fitting black silk toga to distinguish yourself from the Gnollish slaves kept in town, and your pack is lead towards the city.
At the gates, the soldiers split the pack up. Gorgtooth and Mandible Squad leads you, Zit, and the beta-females through the gate, while the remaining soldiers lead the rest of the pack and prisoners to their accommodations just outside of town. You ride through the gate mounted on Slowdeath, but the other beasts (save Cra-Crawler's wasp) go with the rest of the pack. Thumbscrews follows the pack to see where they end up, but tells you he will likely get a room at the Dancing Raptor, a local inn.
Few free gnolls ever get to enter a civilized city, and you are suitably impressed. The few blocks you travel alone contain at least three times as many homes and businesses than you might find in a Kobold settlement. Most of the citizens you pass carry metal weapons, full coin purses, and other valuables that only the richest Kobolds and Gnolls might have, and the streets are straight and paved in polished stone.
Eventually you are lead into one of several massive towers in town that pierce the cavern ceiling, and take a geomancy elevator up for several minutes until you reach a large meeting chamber that overlooks a surface desert from several dozen stories up. In the chamber you are introduced to Iago, a well dressed goblin who claims to be the assistant of Silentkiss, the Drow who holds final authority in all rebel matters unrelated to the church or military and is mother to Gorgtooth's friend Princess All-Killer.
Iago explains that Silentkiss knew you were coming, but was called out of town on urgent business two days ago. The drow would like to meet you and your gift-brother in person, and has opened the city to you and The Wicked Song. Your pack will be staying at his personal plantation just outside the city walls until he can secure some kind of uniform to identify them as friends of the rebellion rather than slaves. Iago, however, is unwilling to keep a dangerous captive Druid on his property, and offers to buy it off you on Silentkiss' behalf. Silentkiss, as it turns out, personally preforms seeding experiments for the rebellion, and also directly oversees all civilian seeders in Dinofang.
Iago will pay an advance of four thousand gold coins for the druid, which he suspects will be about half the final purchase price. The bride will then be moved to Silentkiss' personal dungeons for safekeeping, and when his mistress returns, she will appraise the merchandise and pay you whatever else is owed. He also notes that he would be willing to purchase and take away any of the other elves as well, but wouldn't be able to pay you an advance for them.
Glowshine notes that the advance on the bride seems fair, but is a bit hesitant to deal in gold. Gold coins are typically used to purchase magical goods and services, or to conduct other large and important transactions as the spells to detect counterfeit gold are far easier than the spells to detect counterfeit silver. Although gold is more valuable than silver, mundane merchants will often rip off those desperate enough to conduct mundane business in gold by treating it as equal to silver in value. Unless you plan on making any large or magical purchases in the near future, Glowshine warns that it would be best to seek out a money changer. The exact exchange rate varies wildly from place to place, and Iago notes that gold coins are presently being exchanged for about 1.7 silver in Dinofang, which he admits is pretty low. Silver is presently worth more than usual in rebel territory, as it is being used to make some weapons and shields in the face of tin and iron shortages.
"Although I'm not opposed to ridding ourselves of the elves before they cause trouble, it might be worth taking at least the non-druids to the local slave market to see if we can get paid in silver." Glowshine concludes.
The discussion then turns to your personal accommodations. Iago thinks it is wise for you to dwell in a manor while you are in town unless you desire to go into heat, as gnolls in the city are kept as slaves by the poor and middle class, so you might be close to girlchildren if you stay in a common inn or house. As luck would have it, all the high houses of Dinofang are interested in the honor and novelty of hosting a Gnoll Chieftess, so you have options.
House Redfeather is Iago's family, and the goblin lordship tasked with running the civilian affairs of the Rebels. Although Redfeather is renting out its right to rule to Silentkiss in exchange for first dibs on the results of her experimental seeding, they still hold most of the important civilian positions underneath the drow. Gorgtooth intends to stay with the Redfeather Goblins as Princess All-Killer has written letters of introduction on his behalf to several of her sisters living at the mansion.
House Rex is the spiritual heart of the rebellion. It owns or oversees most of the temples, shrines, and academies devoted to the Saurian Dragons that the rebellion is fighting for the right to worship, and many of those who dwell in the mansion are both clerics and personal friends of the fabled reptile gods.
House Sootcough is the most wealthy of the Dinofang bluebloods. They more or less control the supply of Bronze in rebel territory, and used this powerful leverage to gain control of the military when the hated royal family cut the rebels off from Iron and Steel.
House Brontosaur used to control the military, but have been left largely powerless by the recent maneuvering of House Sootcough. They have, however, been promised most of the land in the Mandible Tunnels as consolation, which you are to help the rebellion claim. It stands to reason that helping your pack is in their best interests.
House Needles is one of the oldest and most prestigious goblin names, with lordships across goblin territory. The name Needles is synonymous with wizardry and scholarship, and although the local branch only nominally supports the rebellion, their manor houses some of the wisest and mightiest casters in the darklands.
House Plauge rivals House Needles in age, reach, and prestige, and are known as the keepers and master clerics of the traditional Goblin Pantheon. The own or maintain all the temples, shrines, and academies dedicated to the terrifying gods traditionally worshiped by goblinkind. The local branch of House Plague only nominally supports the rebellion, but has expressed great interest in housing 'The prophet Cra-Crawler and her cheiftess'. Cra-Crawler for her part would strongly prefer to stay at Plague Manor, but feels that showing pack unity and staying with either you or the males is more important.
You pull your lieutenants aside to debate on the housing issue, and aside from the aformentioned Cra-Crawler and Gorgtooth, nobody has a strong preference. Just as you are about to adjourn the group and attempt to come to a decision on your own, however, that Cra-Crawler drops a prophetic bombshell. "Last quiet time Glowshine conceived the pack's first litter and next quiet time Echo will conceive the second and before we leave this city I will conceive the third. I forsee a rough pregnancy for Glowshine and a rough birthing for Echo and a rough pregnancy for me. The pack should settle soon, at least temporarily, at least to get through this, so we should hurry to the mines when our business is done here or we should extend our stay in the city."
A gnollish pregnancy lasts three and a half months or so, and although rarely lethal to the mother can leave her very weak and vulnerable. A young pack that depends heavily on the skills and leadership of its beta-females can easily fall apart if too many become pregnant at the same time. From the looks of it, you can tell Echo and Glowshine are thrilled by the news none-the-less; Echo, being far more kindhearted than the average gnoll, is enthralled at the thought of raising young, while you know Glowshine desires nothing more than honor and respect, which bearing the pack's first litter will bring her. Cra-Crawler is tougher read, and deflects attention away from herself by fawning over the other two before Gorgtooth drags her away and attempts to interrogate the prophet in the corner, likely in attempt to figure out if her litter will be his as well.
You don't think Iago speaks gnollish, so you doubt he is aware of any of this. If you do intend to try and make his city your home for a spell, you at least have the element of surprise on your side.
Chieftess Venomclaw of the Wicked Song:
Healthy Adult Alpha Female Gnoll
Gnolls are savage scavengers and predators well adapted to the low light conditions of the darklands. Gnolls have higher than average endurance and agility for humanoids their size, and are impervious to most diseases and infections. Even supernatural curses and conditions are less likely to take when they target a gnoll.
As a young alpha female, you stand about 5'10, and likely have another 5-6 inches to grow. Your retractable claws can rend even the toughest skins and leathers, and your powerful jaw muscles can crunch through thin layers of metal (although doing so would likely break your teeth). Male gnolls you invite to join your pack will quickly come to see you as sister, friend, living goddess, and perfectly hideous sex symbol. You are presently uninterested in reproduction, and as an alpha female, can only be driven into heat by the extended presence of a gnollish girlchild.
Your fur is naturally soft and bright grey, but like most gnolls it is presently a matted reddish-brown due to your habit of rolling around in mud and gore and your aversion to bathing. Like most of your kind you suffer from a lack of modesty and an excess of fur that allows you to generally conduct your business naked, but as the leader of a pack, you might wear jewelry, piercings, or a small amount of clothing to flaunt your status.
Skills:
-Master arachnid trainer
-Great speaker of Gnollish (The native language of the gnolls. A Beast language with some Goblin influence)
-Accomplished rider
-Accomplished horn player
-Talented speaker of Savage Undercommon (The native language of the Kobolds, heavily influenced by Draconian and the Beast Languages)
-Talented polearm user
-Talented fish/amphibian trainer
-Skilled tracker
-Skilled reptile trainer
-Competent mammal trainer
-Novice speaker of Civilized Undercommon (A derivation of the goblin language used as a common tongue by the mighty underground kingdoms)
-Not speaker of Elfish (Surface Language spoken by elves and fey beings. Drow of the noble and merchant classes tend to learn this as a second language, and most reputable wizards of any race can read and write in it)
-Not speaker of Druidic (Universal Language tied to and required by the magic of druidism. Also spoken by learned practitioners of other magics, and taught as a second language in some tribes of fey or savage people)
Inventory:
Silver tipped wood pike
Copper warhorn
Spider Silk Toga [Dyed Black]
Elf leather loincloth
Silk Anklet [Studded with Troll Knucklebones and Copper]
Map and Deed to Blackpool Shaft
Coinpurse
-4.75 Opal Chips (A flat cross-section of opal roughly 1 inch by 3 inches. Used as currency by gnolls and kobolds)
-100 Assorted Silver (Most civilized peoples trade in fairly standardized silver coins. Your current supply is a mix, mostly of goblin and dwarven currency.
Most merechants treat all silver equally, but government agencies, and busniess that contract with them, may require a specific local silver coin.)
-Small Chitin Key to Blackpool Shaft
-Invoice declaring the Camp Decay Stables as indebted 60 silver to the holder
Pets and Allies:
-Slowdeath the Titanic Mule Scorpion (A lethal arachnid the size of a large horse. Amphibious. Highly intelligent. Trained as a mount and personal pet. Facial Scars, Missing a Mouth Part.)
-Sir and Lady Carrion, the Frogsharks (Cow sized hybrid monsters with the body of a bullfrog and the jaws and face of a shark. Amphibious. Trained to fight on their own, or as a mount for a small male gnoll)
-x3 Kitten Sized Spiderlings (What could they grow into?)
-Writhewomb the Adolescent Sphinx (Horse sized lion with female humanoid head, torso, and arms. Naturally skilled in unarmed combat, and understands the basics of druidism.)
-Sir Dugweed, Sir Crawlskull, and Lady Mawslab Adolescent Shaggy Trolls (Average sized humanoids with great strength, lethal claws, and an impressive healing factor. Dumb as rocks, but can be trained to use weapons and simple speech. One is female, two are male.)
-x4 Sir Shank, Lady Shank, Sir Flank, and Lady Flank the Saurian Kangaroos (Bipedal reptiles with reasonably scary teeth and claws, and a deadly kick. Strong and well balanced enough to serve as mounts for all but the largest in your pack. Two are male, two are female.)
-Sir Knuckle, Lady Knuckle, Sir Liver, and Lady Liver the Dartsharks (Half-sized frogsharks with bright colored and poisonous skin.)
-Zit the Gnollish Druid (Your Alpha Male. A perfectly hideous physical specimen who claims to practice Kobold magic)
-Gorgtooth the Gnollish Goon (Your Gift Brother. The largest and heaviest gnoll in the pack. Fights along his three pet ants in full steel gear)
-Echo the Halfbreed Hunter (A sweet young lady with silent flight and amazing powers of perception)
-Cra-Crawler the Mystic (A strange beta-female even younger than you. Owns a frightening pet that she claims tells her the future)
-Glowshine the Pusher (A beta female with the skill set to make, market, and sell drugs. Scrawny, but owns a mean steel axe)
-'Cucumber' the Assling Good for Nothing (Body of a donkey, head and torso of a halfling, self proclaimed manhood of a Clydesdale. Can speak most subterranian languages, as well as surface common.)
-15 Assorted Gnollish Males (They vary in size and build between 'Smallish Halfling' and 'Well Built Dwarf'. Armed with Rock, Wood, and Bone weapons. Most possess basic combat and survival skills)
-Bone-Saw-Saw (Concussed)
-Bloodcoat (Gimpy leg)
-6 Members of 'Mandible Squadron' (Goblins and Gnollblins under Gorgtooth's command. The wield bronze swords, leather slings, leather armor, bronze helmets, and bronze chain shirts.)
You and Glowshine spend the better part of thirty minutes trying to convince Iago to allow the pack to keep the druid for awhile longer, but the goblin refuses to budge. The law requires that captive casters be held at the proper facilities while inside the city walls, and he is personally not comfortable with keeping it on his property outside of town. He does offer to hold the elf at Silentkiss' lab without purchasing it, in anticipation of his mistress helping you preform an interrogation when she returns. Obviously the cash advance will be withheld until you commit to selling, however.
Once you have dealt with the druid situation, you tell Iago that you would like to stay at the manor of House Brontosaur. The Goblin gives an understanding nod, and leaves you and present members of your pack alone in the meeting room while he goes to make the arrangements. While you wait, you ask Glowshine about the price of gold in Dwarven Territory, and the beta female tells you that a gold coin can usually purchase two and a half to three silver. You then turn your focus towards the issue of settling down, and inform the others that you would prefer to set up shot in Blackpool Shaft. Glowshine suggests either hiring or purchasing at least a mason to help install a brick oven, and a midwife/healer to help deal with the rough pregnancies before leaving.
Next you turn your attention to the route that the pack would travel to reach its new home, and to your dismay, if you wish to complete the journey before your females reach the final crippling month of pregnancy there is no avoiding a trip into the likely chaotic Mandible Tunnels, which runs roughly parallel to the dwarven frontier and contains entrances to several small connecting tunnels, most of which are guarded by one or more Gnoll Packs that you would have to negotiate with. The quickest possible route would see you cut through the brutally dry Redstalks to return to the Crosses, hike through Kobold country until you reach The Mandible Tunnels, and cross into the dwarven frontier at Mastiff Nest, (assuming whomever controls your old den allows your pack passage). The safest route would be to head down Saurian Pass until it intersects the Mandible Tunnels at a point you suspect will be below the main areas of conflict, and from there hike up and cross into Dwarf Country at Rusty Screw Village, picking up your other gift brother along the way. The fast route would take the pack about three weeks to complete assuming no complications, while the safe route would take five weeks if the Gremlins at Rusty Screw Village can provide a tram-ride, and seven weeks otherwise.
As you worry about this, Echo pipes in with a suggestion of her own. Assuming you agree to sell the Druid, you could likely hire somebody to either smuggle or escort the pack through the heart of dwarf territory using the stout people's roads or rails. This service would obviously not come cheap, and you would be putting the life of your pack in the hands of whoever you hire, but you might be able to make the journey in as little as a week.
...
Eventually Iago returns with an escort of armed goblins lead by a banner depicting what Gnolls and Kobolds call a Saurian Titan, which you are pretty sure is called a Brontosaur in most civilized languages. You are lead once more through the city, and after ten minutes arrive at the 'manor' which appears to be a bunch of separate buildings stacked neatly on top of one another in a vaugely pyramidesque fashion. Glowshine explains that the bottom layer houses common soldiers and slaves, the second floor is home to low ranking goblins who have earned the right to bear the family name, and everything above that contains the various courts and quarters of important family members and their. Goblins are an all male race and few even possess the drive to reproduce, so Glowshine explains that the important Goblin families repopulate through adoption and promotion - almost everybody who lives in an upper layer will have been directly recruited from the floor below.
The escort leads you to the second-highest layer of the manor, and into a delightfully foul smelling hall made from brimstone blocks. Sitting on a gem-studded and silver coated throne is a nasty looking bugbear, a particularly aggressive and large goblin created specificly to hold leadership roles. This particular specimen is covered heart-meltingly ugly warts and welts, and possess a seductively unsightly engorged tooth on his lower jaw that juts out over his upper lip. He introduces himself as Lord Hyena Brontosaur in perfect gnollish, and explains that the seeders made him using the best bits of many mighty gnolls, which is why House Brontosaur has chosen him to to rule the Mandible Tunnels from Mastiff Nest.
He serves you and your underlings a raw raptor carcass, several days old. Rotten carrion is a rare treat for pack-dwelling gnolls, as somebody will inevitably eat anything killed before it has time to properly ripen. Your host has a few small bites to show that he is willing to eat what most goblins consider disgusting, before backing off; A goblin's metabolism is partially supernatural, and as such they rarely eat or drink. While you and the rest of the gnolls gorge yourselves on and roll around in the corpse, Lord Hyena makes conversation by asking about your former and his future home. He seems quite knowledgeable about the affairs of Mandible Tunnels, as well as the nuances of gnollish culture. By the end of dinner, your host has charmed you to the point where you allow yourself to sit on his lap to receive grooming, and don't protest when he instructs his servants to show the others to their rooms. Once you are alone he gets down to business.
"I think it is quite clear that our fortunes rise and fall together, no? We need to trust each other. I'd like to propose a little arrangement to ensure our working relationship is more than just mercenary."
He pulls your toga up and runs a gold plated comb down your back, evenly spreading dino-gore about your fur. "I would like your blessing to have your current Alpha Male seized and brought to a seeder for processing. He is a druid, correct? The goblins we make from him could one day serve as the on-site seeders at Mastiff Nest, and would be allowed to hold the Brontosaur name. This would assure that your pack is forever connected to both your ancestral home and my ancient family."
He grins, snaps his fingers, and three impressive looking gnolls enter the room. "Of course, I would not ask such a hefty sacrifice without offering something in return. I've been collecting and training the most valuable gnolls on the local slave market for years now, to use as bargaining chips or weapons against the packs I would need to subdue in order to rule the Mandible Tunnels. Give me your druid, and I will give you one of my three most impressive males to replace him as your alpha."
Hyena then runs down the lineup for you.
The oddly named Jackson wears grey wizard's robes on his medium-sized gnollish body. Your host explains that Jackson was born a human with natural talent for the blackest wizardry, and when the end of his lifespan neared, he swapped bodies with a male gnoll so as to obtain superior gnollish magic resistance by preforming a ritual that drained his vast human fortune. What Jackson wasn't prepared to gain from the switch, however, was gnollish instincts and reproductive. Unwilling to live without a sex-drive or brave the darklands in search of a proper pack, Jackson wound up offering himself to Hyena as a slave on the condition he be given access to the enslaved alpha females the bugbear keeps on his mining claim a day outside of town.
Next is Diamondloins, a lanky gnoll about your age and height who happens to be one of the most desirable possible members of a Gnollish Pack: A hermaphrodite. Gnolls with both sets of equipment are valued as peacekeepers for their ability to serve as a satisfactory mate to any or every member of their pack. Hyena explains that Diamondloins is especially blessed, as they were nursed at an alpha's teat until adulthood, and as such produces powerful Alpha Gnoll milk and the hormones required to draw in males to a pack. To make things better still, Diamondloins requires no girlchild to go into heat, as its male physiology reacts to its own alpha female pheromones, keeping it fertile at all times. This same interplay makes it submissive to other alpha females, but other males submissive to it. Diamondloins is trained to use a crossbow, survive in the wilderness, and lead gnolls, a skillet that would allow you to take much of the danger out of splitting up the pack.
Last is a monstrous thirteen foot tall male, the sort that likely nursed in captivity off several alphas for several decades, clad in full steel plate and wielding a massive lance. You can't help but zone out, dreaming of the glorious pain and mutilation you could endure by mating with a gnoll that large, and wind up missing most of Hyena's speech about him. What you do catch is that his name is simply 'Titan' and that he is some sort of dinosaur riding paladin.
Although you are sure the pack would quickly get over losing Zit, you can think of at least a couple good reasons to keep him. You would have to find a new purpose for Writhewomb, or a new teacher, if you were to accept Hyena's bargin. Druidic Magic is easier to cast and less risky than Jackson's wizardry, which while likely more flexible, may require expensive spell components. Lastly, none of the Gnolls presented to you can quite match your current Alpha in terms of raw endearing ugliness.
"You can take your time and consider the offer my dear. If you'd like to give your current mate a proper sendoff, I can send for a girlchild from the mines. I'm also game to hear any counter proposals you might have. Sleep on it. Either way, tomorrow I'd like to give you a ride in my carriage up to the market and buy you some common males to expand your pack, and then the arms market. I doubt I can afford to put your entire pack in bronze the way prices stand now, but I should at least be able to supply leather armor and some sort of metal weaponry for everyone."
(Sorry for another shorty. Next update should carry us through the elf interrogation... assuming the hivemind dosn't throw anything too distracting at me.)
Chieftess Venomclaw of the Wicked Song:
Healthy Adult Alpha Female Gnoll
Gnolls are savage scavengers and predators well adapted to the low light conditions of the darklands. Gnolls have higher than average endurance and agility for humanoids their size, and are impervious to most diseases and infections. Even supernatural curses and conditions are less likely to take when they target a gnoll.
As a young alpha female, you stand about 5'10, and likely have another 5-6 inches to grow. Your retractable claws can rend even the toughest skins and leathers, and your powerful jaw muscles can crunch through thin layers of metal (although doing so would likely break your teeth). Male gnolls you invite to join your pack will quickly come to see you as sister, friend, living goddess, and perfectly hideous sex symbol. You are presently uninterested in reproduction, and as an alpha female, can only be driven into heat by the extended presence of a gnollish girlchild.
Your fur is naturally soft and bright grey, but like most gnolls it is presently a matted reddish-brown due to your habit of rolling around in mud and gore and your aversion to bathing. Like most of your kind you suffer from a lack of modesty and an excess of fur that allows you to generally conduct your business naked, but as the leader of a pack, you might wear jewelry, piercings, or a small amount of clothing to flaunt your status.
Skills:
-Master arachnid trainer
-Great speaker of Gnollish (The native language of the gnolls. A Beast language with some Goblin influence)
-Accomplished rider
-Accomplished horn player
-Talented speaker of Savage Undercommon (The native language of the Kobolds, heavily influenced by Draconian and the Beast Languages)
-Talented polearm user
-Talented fish/amphibian trainer
-Skilled tracker
-Skilled reptile trainer
-Competent mammal trainer
-Novice speaker of Civilized Undercommon (A derivation of the goblin language used as a common tongue by the mighty underground kingdoms)
-Not speaker of Elfish (Surface Language spoken by elves and fey beings. Drow of the noble and merchant classes tend to learn this as a second language, and most reputable wizards of any race can read and write in it)
-Not speaker of Druidic (Universal Language tied to and required by the magic of druidism. Also spoken by learned practitioners of other magics, and taught as a second language in some tribes of fey or savage people)
Inventory:
Silver tipped wood pike
Copper warhorn
Spider Silk Toga [Dyed Black]
Elf leather loincloth
Silk Anklet [Studded with Troll Knucklebones and Copper]
Map and Deed to Blackpool Shaft
Large Sack of 1600 Silver
Coinpurse
-4.75 Opal Chips (A flat cross-section of opal roughly 1 inch by 3 inches. Used as currency by gnolls and kobolds)
-100 Assorted Silver (Most civilized peoples trade in fairly standardized silver coins. Your current supply is a mix, mostly of goblin and dwarven currency.
Most merechants treat all silver equally, but government agencies, and busniess that contract with them, may require a specific local silver coin.)
-Small Chitin Key to Blackpool Shaft
-Invoice declaring the Camp Decay Stables as indebted 60 silver to the holder
Pets and Allies:
-Slowdeath the Titanic Mule Scorpion (A lethal arachnid the size of a large horse. Amphibious. Highly intelligent. Trained as a mount and personal pet. Facial Scars, Missing a Mouth Part.)
-Sir and Lady Carrion, the Frogsharks (Cow sized hybrid monsters with the body of a bullfrog and the jaws and face of a shark. Amphibious. Trained to fight on their own, or as a mount for a small male gnoll)
-x3 Kitten Sized Spiderlings (What could they grow into?)
-Writhewomb the Adolescent Sphinx (Horse sized lion with female humanoid head, torso, and arms. Naturally skilled in unarmed combat, and understands the basics of druidism.)
-Sir Dugweed, Sir Crawlskull, and Lady Mawslab Adolescent Shaggy Trolls (Average sized humanoids with great strength, lethal claws, and an impressive healing factor. Dumb as rocks, but can be trained to use weapons and simple speech. One is female, two are male.)
-x4 Sir Shank, Lady Shank, Sir Flank, and Lady Flank the Saurian Kangaroos (Bipedal reptiles with reasonably scary teeth and claws, and a deadly kick. Strong and well balanced enough to serve as mounts for all but the largest in your pack. Two are male, two are female.)
-Sir Knuckle, Lady Knuckle, Sir Liver, and Lady Liver the Dartsharks (Half-sized frogsharks with bright colored and poisonous skin.)
-Zit the Gnollish Druid (Your Alpha Male. A perfectly hideous physical specimen who claims to practice Kobold magic)
-Gorgtooth the Gnollish Goon (Your Gift Brother. The largest and heaviest gnoll in the pack. Fights along his three pet ants in full steel gear)
-Echo the Halfbreed Hunter (A sweet young lady with silent flight and amazing powers of perception)
-Cra-Crawler the Mystic (A strange beta-female even younger than you. Owns a frightening pet that she claims tells her the future)
-Glowshine the Pusher (A beta female with the skill set to make, market, and sell drugs. Scrawny, but owns a mean steel axe)
-'Cucumber' the Assling Good for Nothing (Body of a donkey, head and torso of a halfling, self proclaimed manhood of a Clydesdale. Can speak most subterranian languages, as well as surface common.)
-32 Assorted Gnollish Males (They vary in size and build between 'Smallish Halfling' and 'Well Built Dwarf'.Equipped with copper caps and laminated chitin armor. Will have metal weapons within a week.)
-Bone-Saw-Saw (Concussed)
-Bloodcoat (Gimpy leg)
-6 Members of 'Mandible Squadron' (Goblins and Gnollblins under Gorgtooth's command. The wield bronze swords, leather slings, leather armor, bronze helmets, and bronze chain shirts.)
Now leaning towards sticking around the town and selling some girlchildren to Hyena, but by no means sure of either your travel arrangements or dealings with House Brontosaur, you end negoiations for the night and retire to your chamber, a well furnished room that you share with the beta females. Echo slips out shortly after you arrive to find Bone-Saw-Saw, as she is supposed to fall pregnant tonight.
---
The following morning, you don your goblin toga once more, and travel with your host to the slave market. You spend a good chunk of the day exploring the various holding cells and auction blocks as Hyena goes about purchasing every affordable male gnoll he can find for your pack. By the time he concludes, your pack has taken on seventeen new, mostly smaller males.
Several hours into your day, your existing pack joins you. They are now easily identified by a uniform consisting of copper caps and laminated chitin plate armor. Hyena explains that he has set them up at The Raging Yeti, an inn his family owns in town. The gnolls bring with them the five remaining elves that are neither druid nor potential pet, and you put Glowshine in charge of selling them. The beta-female eventually returns with 1600 Silver, which she hands to you. You owe Thumbscrews a 10% cut, but he isn't around, and dosn't know how much he is entitled to. The heavy sack of coins is too large to carry around yourself, so you have it hitched to Slowdeath's saddlebag in the meantime.
Following the trip to the slave market, Hyena leads the entire pack into the shop of a weaponsmith, and instructs each member who does not already own a metal weapon to tell the smith what they would prefer to wield in battle. It takes the better part of an hour for the goblin smith to take notes on each weapon requested by the pack, and another thirty minutes for him to negotiate payment with Hyena.
The Bugbear informs you that it will take about a week for the smith to produce copper and silver weapons for your whole pack. Cra-Crawler quietly adds that Silentkiss should be back in town by then as well, so it looks like you are stuck in town for at least seven more days. You could spend most of this time hanging with your pack and practicing elfish, but you have a whole city to explore and money burning a hole in your pocket... Perhaps there are better uses for your newly discovered free time?
Chieftess Venomclaw of the Wicked Song:
Healthy Adult Alpha Female Gnoll
Gnolls are savage scavengers and predators well adapted to the low light conditions of the darklands. Gnolls have higher than average endurance and agility for humanoids their size, and are impervious to most diseases and infections. Even supernatural curses and conditions are less likely to take when they target a gnoll.
As a young alpha female, you stand about 5'10, and likely have another 5-6 inches to grow. Your retractable claws can rend even the toughest skins and leathers, and your powerful jaw muscles can crunch through thin layers of metal (although doing so would likely break your teeth). Male gnolls you invite to join your pack will quickly come to see you as sister, friend, living goddess, and perfectly hideous sex symbol. You are presently uninterested in reproduction, and as an alpha female, can only be driven into heat by the extended presence of a gnollish girlchild.
Your fur is naturally soft and bright grey, but like most gnolls it is presently a matted reddish-brown due to your habit of rolling around in mud and gore and your aversion to bathing. Like most of your kind you suffer from a lack of modesty and an excess of fur that allows you to generally conduct your business naked, but as the leader of a pack, you might wear jewelry, piercings, or a small amount of clothing to flaunt your status.
Skills:
-Master arachnid trainer
-Great speaker of Gnollish (The native language of the gnolls. A Beast language with some Goblin influence)
-Accomplished rider
-Accomplished horn player
-Talented speaker of Savage Undercommon (The native language of the Kobolds, heavily influenced by Draconian and the Beast Languages)
-Talented polearm user
-Talented fish/amphibian trainer
-Skilled tracker
-Skilled reptile trainer
-Competent mammal trainer
-Novice speaker of Civilized Undercommon (A derivation of the goblin language used as a common tongue by the mighty underground kingdoms)
-Dabbling speaker of Elfish (Surface Language spoken by elves and fey beings. Drow of the noble and merchant classes tend to learn this as a second language, and most reputable wizards of any race can read and write in it)
Inventory:
Silver tipped wood pike
Copper warhorn
Spider Silk Toga [Dyed Black]
Elf leather loincloth
Silk Anklet [Studded with Troll Knucklebones and Copper]
Map and Deed to Blackpool Shaft
Large Sack of 1440 Silver
Coinpurse
-4.75 Opal Chips (A flat cross-section of opal roughly 1 inch by 3 inches. Used as currency by gnolls and kobolds)
-100 Assorted Silver (Most civilized peoples trade in fairly standardized silver coins. Your current supply is a mix, mostly of goblin and dwarven currency.
Most merechants treat all silver equally, but government agencies, and busniess that contract with them, may require a specific local silver coin.)
-Small Chitin Key to Blackpool Shaft
-Invoice declaring the Camp Decay Stables as indebted 60 silver to the holder
Pets and Allies:
-Slowdeath the Titanic Mule Scorpion (A lethal arachnid the size of a large horse. Amphibious. Highly intelligent. Trained as a mount and personal pet. Facial Scars, Missing a Mouth Part.)
-Sir and Lady Carrion, the Frogsharks (Cow sized hybrid monsters with the body of a bullfrog and the jaws and face of a shark. Amphibious. Trained to fight on their own, or as a mount for a small male gnoll)
-x3 Kitten Sized Spiderlings (What could they grow into?)
-Writhewomb the Adolescent Sphinx (Horse sized lion with female humanoid head, torso, and arms. Naturally skilled in unarmed combat, and understands the basics of druidism.)
-Sir Dugweed, Sir Crawlskull, and Lady Mawslab Adolescent Shaggy Trolls (Average sized humanoids with great strength, lethal claws, and an impressive healing factor. Dumb as rocks, but can be trained to use weapons and simple speech. One is female, two are male.)
-x4 Sir Shank, Lady Shank, Sir Flank, and Lady Flank the Saurian Kangaroos (Bipedal reptiles with reasonably scary teeth and claws, and a deadly kick. Strong and well balanced enough to serve as mounts for all but the largest in your pack. Two are male, two are female.)
-Sir Knuckle, Lady Knuckle, Sir Liver, and Lady Liver the Dartsharks (Half-sized frogsharks with bright colored and poisonous skin.)
-Zit the Gnollish Druid (Your Alpha Male. A perfectly hideous physical specimen who claims to practice Kobold magic)
-Gorgtooth the Gnollish Goon (Your Gift Brother. The largest and heaviest gnoll in the pack. Fights along his three pet ants in full steel gear)
-Echo the Halfbreed Hunter (A sweet young lady with silent flight and amazing powers of perception)
-Cra-Crawler the Mystic (A strange beta-female even younger than you. Owns a frightening pet that she claims tells her the future)
-Glowshine the Pusher (A beta female with the skill set to make, market, and sell drugs. Scrawny, but owns a mean steel axe)
-'Cucumber' the Assling Good for Nothing (Body of a donkey, head and torso of a halfling, self proclaimed manhood of a Clydesdale. Can speak most subterranian languages, as well as surface common.)
-31 Assorted Gnollish Males (They vary in size and build between 'Smallish Halfling' and 'Well Built Dwarf'.Equipped with copper caps and laminated chitin armor. Will have metal weapons within a week.)
-Bone-Saw-Saw (Concussed)
-Bloodcoat (Gimpy leg)
-6 Members of 'Mandible Squadron' (Goblins and Gnollblins under Gorgtooth's command. The wield bronze swords, leather slings, leather armor, bronze helmets, and bronze chain shirts.)
You spend much of the next week splitting time between studying the elfish language with a private tutor provided by Hyena at his mansion and socializing with your pack at their lodgings at The Raging Yeti. The former endeavor goes well enough, as although you won't be having any proper conversations with elves anytime soon, you can at least ask a few basic questions and understand the likely answers. Things with your pack, on the other hand, are a bit rough. A good number of the gnolls Hyena purchased for you were raised in captivity and cannot speak a word of gnollish. This lack of communication leads to high tension, and things only get worse when the Sphinx Writhewomb pounces one of the newcombers in 'friendly sport' while you are not around, injuring him so bad that a handful of your original males lead by Dingo decide to put the poor gnoll out of its misery. Things are a bit better while you, Gorgtooth, or Glowshine, the speakers of the goblin language, are around, but you have the feeling that regular exposure to the hormones and authority of an Alpha Female are the only things keeping your original males and the newcomers from turning on each other.
Trips to other locations are kept fairly brief; The scent of girlchildren wafts over the poorer districts of the city. You do manage, however, to get quite a bit of pet shopping in. The main attraction here is a larger and more sturdy breed of Saurian Kangaroo, which any member of your pack could ride. Beakdogs, a smaller yet far more fierce breed reptilian mount with a mean set of teeth, are also sold with some frequency. Most impressive, of course, are the large dinosaurs, but you doubt your supply of silver is enough to earn a breeding pair of either, which is a shame; Brontosaurs, or Saurian Titans, are the largest species of domestic animal to live on or below land, while Tyrannosaurs, or False Saurian Dragons, are terrifying carnivores that stand several times the size of Slowdeath. As there are multiple shops selling all these creatures, you would likely be best served sending Glowshine to shop for the best price if any of them strike your fancy.
Most pet shops and stables also sell dire ants or dire wasps. Gorgtooth would be the one training and leading such creatures into combat if you purchased any, so if you desire to add more hive insects to your pack, it might be wise to give your Gift Brother a budget and let him shop.
On your third day of exploration, you stumble upon a specialty shop that deals in magical creatures. Although the store only deals in gold, meaning you would have to either sell the druid or find a money changer to buy anything, some of the beasts in stock strike your fancy.
Goblin sized statue spiders sell for 400 gold a male or 600 a female. These fairly docile arachnids eat mainly sand, and weave strands of green glass to line their borrows, but their true value lies in their venom; Used mainly in self defense, and rarely to suppliment their diet, the bite of a statue spider can turn organic tissue into marble, a substance of value to both smiths and mages. Their exoskeletons are also made from glossy marble, rendering the spiders a bit too fancy looking for gnollish tastes, but the utility they bring may make them worth purchasing in spite of their appearance.
Also for sale in the arachnid department are three sorcerer scorpions, each priced based on their abilities and history. Dublin has a translucent green-blue carapace, and is advertised as a master air and water elementalist. Dublin sells for three thousand gold as she is already quite tame; She was apparently the pampered pet of an Orcish pirate lord. Verona is an older ruby red specimen missing one of her right middle legs, and is actually a multitallented wizard with over a century's experience in the magical arts. Although she is capable of reading and writing in many languages, Verona does not suffer servitude well and has killed at least four previous owners, and for that reason is only selling for eight hundred gold. Belfast, a brilliant emerald colored specimen is an enchanter who has to be kept in a metal box as he knows a growth spell that allows him to shatter through glass. A young male plucked straight from the wilds, Belfast may be a handful to try and tame, but as the only male for sale, you need him if you want to someday produce mule scorpions. Belfast sells for 1500 gold.
The specialty shop of course stocks several interesting creatures that are not creepy crawlies. Male and female surface hyenas, marketed to goblin slave owners brave enough to try and breed gnollish worgs, sell for 150 gold a piece. For 1900 gold you could purchase a greater saurian phoenix, a rideable fire breathing dinosaur slightly larger than Slowdeath with powerful regenerative bodily fluids and the ability to resurrect from its own ashes. Male and female vampire cobras sell for 1100 gold a piece. These eight foot long ambush predators feed on memories; Prey is disabled with a fast acting and frequently lethal paralytic venom, and if the snake is not removed quickly the victim will suffer severe amnesia it it survives the encounter. Although not sentient, vampire cobras are intelegent and trainable if one can get past the fact that humanoids are their preferred prey. Their are several other interesting looking species for sale as well, but they are all surface dwellers you know little about, and you are not comfortable taking the fast talking shopkeeper on his word for what they might be.
---
You and Gorgtooth find an arena together, and your gift-brother promptly 'convinces' the gatekeeper to allow you free entry to watch some fights. It quickly becomes apparent that all the combatants are unpaid slaves, so entering yourself would be neither worth your time nor godly status, but the action is still fun to watch. The third fight on the card catches your eye in particular, as it features a gnollish Alpha Female named Spine-Rend-Rend in the early stages of pregnancy doing battle with an ogre four times her size. The match is a short and one sided affair, but not in the way you expected; Spine-Rend-Rend brandishes some kind of holy symbol, mutters and incantation, and her opponent drops to his knees in pain and imobolized. The enslaved alpha then proceeds to castrate her opponent and stab it in the stomach until the fight is called in her favor.
After all the matches are over, a meet and greet with the victorious gladiators and their owners is held just outside the arena. Unlike some enslaved gnolls you have met, Spine-Rend-Rend speaks perfect gnollish. She explains that she lives on a plantation two weeks down Saurian Path, and that she prefers the life of a slave to that of a pack chieftess, as her current status allows her the freedom to mate and nurse whenever she sees fit, and as her master's arena meal ticket and occasional mistress her life is one of comfort.
Spine-Rend-Rend's master is a well dressed goblin named Spike, who quickly takes an interest in you, as he is both a die-hard supporter of the rebellion and infatuated by female Alpha-Gnolls. It doesn't take long for him to give your an open invitation to stay at his invitation whenever you are ready to go into heat; He notes that he is been breeding and looking after gnolls for a century, and it would be his honor to aid the rebellion by doing whatever he can for your pack. He also tells you that even if you don't stay with him, he would be willing to raise some of your pack's offspring on the milk of one of his several alpha females and teach the lucky children the divine magic of the rebel dragon gods if they have the skill to learn.
---
You and Cra-Crawler spend an afternoon at the manor of House Plague. Whereas house Brontosaur dumped you on the court of Hyena, the lord who stands to gain the most from your actions, at Plauge Manor you are ushered to the highest floor and given an audience with the local patriarch himself: Lord Malaria Plague. The goblin lord, dressed in the black silks of a wicked cleric, kneels before the two of you, and humbly receives a blessing from Cra-Crawler.
In the profound conversation that follows, you find yourself largely in the role of listener. Cra-Crawler shares some prophecy with the cleric in the divine language of Serephic, and then the pair discuss the revelation in goblin, allowing you to pick up much of it. Cra-Crawler plans to give a sermon in town just before the pack leaves, publicly throwing her support behind the rebel cause, and this defection of a significant prophet will be the spark that lights a full blown civil war among the goblin pantheon that will eventually drag in the dieties of other subterranian races as well. Your beta-female foresees the dawn of an underground age of myth, an era when gods often touch the mortal realm directly with their frightening power.
On a more personal note, Cra-Crawler brags to the goblin about conceiving an impressive litter of six children the next time she mates. Cra-Crawler claims that she is more a being of death than she is a being of life, however, and as such she will only ever birth doomed girlchildren unworthy of your teat. The beta-female seem, if anything, existed by this, explaining that she relishes the opportunity to teach her daughters to meet their deaths at your jaws with joy and anticipation. Your host seems taken aback by this, and prods a bit, prompting Cra-Crawler to admit that she wouldn't mind eventually finding some way to ensure the survival of one of her daughters so as to continue her mother's bloodline, and that someday she hopes to make one of her offspring 'like me' as well. She is adamant, however, that her first litter be used as a proper offering to her new goddess.
Cra-Crawler then moves on to business. She explains the pack's present travel/pregnancy situation to Lord Plague, and tells him that if he truly wants to honor her, he will send some of his house guard to retrieve your other gift brother and scout out Blackpool Shaft should you choose to stay in town for a few months. Lord Plague agrees to do this, and also offers Cra-Crawler three hundred silver a week to deliver daily sermons at one of the local temples.
---
Six days after your trip to market, word reaches the pack that Silentkiss is back in town. The drow wishes to save her first meeting with you for a banquet at Redfeather Manor tonight, but has already appraised the druid for you. The bride will be worth twelve thousand gold if you choose to sell her to Silentkiss for experimental seeding purposes. Per your request she is also making an assistant avaible this afternoon to help you interrogate the poor elf at her lab.
---
You find your prisoner chained to a lead table in sterile room made of iron. Silentkiss' assistant Cactus, an apprentice seeder and veteran torment master, stands by with a box full of painful looking implements, and Glowshine is present to translate. The first thing you ask is why she went off to mate with Dingo, and sadly the bride lets you down by talking right away, denying you a show. In her particular tribe, it is considered proper bridal retreat protocol to partake in acts bestiality should the opportunity present itself, and the bride makes no distinction between gnolls and any other wild beast of the caverns.
You wrack your brain, trying to figure out if that answer gives you enough to consider sparing the bride (to call a gnoll a savage animal is a great compliment), and what other questions you might have her answer while she is at your mercy.
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