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.
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Topic: (SG) Gnoll Chieftess (Read 12341 times)