#gnoll rambles

[aestherians]

@onyxblanc Good question!

Gnolls are humanoid hyenas in D&D, Pathfinder, World of Warcraft, and other rpgs. They're usually depicted as huge hulking evil brutes. My gnolls are... not like that.

We aren't huge and brutish, at least. The 'evil' part is debatable, since my gnolls do kill people, but we don't torture them or anything like that.

My gnolls have different anatomy, different customs, and different religious beliefs than typical rpg gnolls - at this point I basically use 'gnoll' as shorthand for 'humanoid hyena'.

Though even the 'humanoid' part is only really mental, since, physically, we're more like baboons than humans. We can and do walk on two legs, but we prefer to move on all fours, whereas rpg gnolls usually only walk on two legs.

I've written a bit about our culture here, if you wanna dive deeper -> https://poppyhapalopus.neocities.org/alterhuman/noematapedia

[cedarw00d-the-fourth]

Gortash took care of Lythe's gnolls at moonrise after she disappeared, if you even care btw

[vampcubus]

are there monsterfuckers among us i’m curious

[killerpancakeburger]

Zarys: You would make an enemy of the Zhentarims, the most powerful and dangerous mercenaries network of all Faerun, to save one man?

Me: You don't have all the facts

Zarys: Which are?

Me: I love him 😔

[mushramoo]

Comm for @putridghost !!!! I had a lot of fun with this one, especially the colors

[bhaalsdeepbat]

Tfw a scene hits you with such force and clarity, it's absolutely like a religious vision

When Astarion gets up in the middle of the night to handle the twins so they will be quiet and let Mercy sleep, Mercy sneaks off to the undercity ruins. Theyre gone for hours hunting any Bhaalists who are trying to maintain the ruins, slaughtering the Bhaalists, and then going to the altar to yell directly at Bhaal, only to be met with silence. Mercy screaming that he couldn't take anything else from them. They'd make damn sure of it. Just never saying "You took everything you wanted from me, but you cannot have the twins." And it's a threat. One that isn't answered.

Then returning to a fretting Astarion (bc they're both still unlearning their codependency)

[herbertwest]

I had to do a fight what felt like at least ten times (might have been more) in BG3 because my party is so squishy. At one point I brought in some less-squishy characters, and I WON, but then AFTER THE FIGHT Karlach accidentally set my entire party on fire and outright killed some of them. So I had to do it again. And then I lost a bunch more times. (Partially because I was too lazy to go back to my camp and switch out the characters again).

I was SO PLEASED with one time when I managed to thunderwave an enemy off the roof and instakill them, but I also managed to catch Astarion in the blast and instakilled him too, so I had to restart THAT over again because NO ONE kills Astarion, NOT EVEN ME.

I attempted to repeat the experiment, but they managed to save against my thunderwave every other time after that.

At this point in the game my preferred party is Me (Bard), Astarion, Gale, and Wyll. I had swapped Wyll for Karlach for quest reasons and missed him dearly.

[layalu]

yeah no ulhar is definitely loosing sleep about the tadpole mind reading/control thing lmao

[shadowphoenixrider]

It’s not news to be discomforted by the notion of ‘these D&D races are just evil, they cannot be good’, which I hate as a concept because...you know, not even touching the tendrils of racist undertones in that, it’s actually really boring.

But I can’t be the only one who just kinda recoils a bit when D&D goes: ‘oh yeah the Yuan-ti and Lizardfolk don’t have emotions. because they are reptilian. Oh and by the way that’s part of the reason why Yuan-ti are evil’.

Like...ok we gonna talk about equating this lack of emotion to being evil? ‘Cos that sounds a bit uncomfy for me. Sure lacking emotions and empathy makes it easier to do the evil things, but that doesn’t automatically make a person evil, no?

There are people who lack empathy going around doing their daily life. And sure, some will screw people over, I’m pretty sure some will not, or try not to.

Anyway I wanna make a Yuan-ti who is trying to do their best not to be a prick despite their lack of empathy because maybe they want to. Are they maybe doing it for selfish reasons? Maybe! Does it matter? No.

[bowlerhatwearer]

"Everyone of this fantasy group is evil / violent / isn't capable to feel anything else but anger."

No, I absolutely refuse to accept and believe this.

You want to tell me, that for example. that not one single Gnoll is capable to feel anything else, that they don't want to do something else except causing fear and or bloodshed?

I completely disagree with this concept and take.

Why can't we have a someone from the "always violent/aggressive group" who wants to have nothing to do with all of this, and just wants to mind their own business baking bread?

Bonus: When for one there is someone who acts differently, they either way are a backstabber, or they get killed, which also a boring as well as exhausting concept.

[saint-bestial]

drives me crazy when a bunch of playable rpg character races are just humans but recolored. maybe with horns. lazy. need more beast races

[aestherians]

Notes on gnollish funerary practices and beliefs around death:

Gnolls believe that everyone has two deaths: The death of the body and the death of the spirit. When the body dies, all of it is eaten by the clan, including bones, fur, and claws. Only the head is left uneaten - instead, the head is mummified and carefully wrapped in cloth. It is then cared for and protected by the deceased's nearest bonded person (be that a mate, child, friend, guardian, or any other type of bond) until the second death occurs. The death of the spirit happens when no one alive remembers what the deceased was like - when no one is able to contact their spirit/have a conversation with their remains anymore. At this point, the head is burned until only ashes remain, and the ashes are eaten by the clan.

Gnolls do not believe in an afterlife or reincarnation. Once a person has died twice, they're gone forever - they will never live again and they can never be contacted again. Gnolls also do not believe in souls, the same way humans tend to do. All gnolls have a life force or essence, but it is not a strictly individual essence. That is, your essence is not inherently your essence - it is simply 'yours' to use while you are alive. The deceased's remains, and thus their essence, is consumed by the clan at the end of the funeral, and it can then strengthen the living and give life to new gnolls. I think Avatar (2009) put it best: "All energy is only borrowed, and one day you have to give it back."

And this is not just true of gnolls. Everything has an essence, sentient and non-sentient, living or dead. An essence can be transferred through consumption - every time you eat something, its essence is transferred to you. Some of it is expelled again, through the body's natural functions (and the expelled essence can then be fed to the land, which itself is alive, burned, or consumed again - gnolls are unfortunately no strangers to coprophagia), but a bit of it remains with you until you, yourself, are finally eaten.

[arcandoria]

Running a Lawful Evil Dispater-worshipping Dwarf Champion for our upcoming Kingmaker campaign and am very excited >:)

[collectivenothingness]

Took one session of meeting a shy gnoll girl for my players to start a discourse about whether or not she has a pseudo-penis like a hyena.

[suolainensilakkart]

Hmm. Got another d&d character idea beamed directly to my brain and I really wanna make a gnoll now

[outeremissary]

You either die a hero or live long enough to start shilling Pathfinder