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.
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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.
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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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Topic: (SG) Gnoll Chieftess (Read 12096 times)