Quartz 5

Gnolls

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tagsrace, twisted

3 min read

Gnolls

“For some, the idea of cursed hyena people escaping their curse and rising against the fiend lord is a great story. I focus on the murderous, child-eating hordes that do not escape. It’s harder to feel pity than to admire, but it’s what we should do.”

  • Dimbaal Noretso Grim, Old Storyteller

Description

Gnoll skin is greenish-gray, and their furry hide a light or dark brown, sometimes marked with spots, stripes, or a crested mane that stands on end when they are angry, upset, or uncomfortable. They stand between 6½ and 7½ feet tall and weigh 200–280 pounds. Females are larger and stronger than males.

Personality

The curse of Yeenoghu drives gnolls toward feral hunger and destruction, but it does not wholly cloud their minds - some gnoll tribes are known for being shrewd and exceptionally dangerous. A rare few manage to slip the “Grasp of Yeenoghu” altogether; these gnolls seek to liberate their people and integrate into society, and are most often met with open hostility and fear.

Society

Gnoll society is matriarchal, ruled by a queen and her court of female blood priestesses. Females compete openly for dominance to establish who is the rightful leader, while males fill roles of servitude or become outcasts.

Law and Justice

The highest-ranking males are the only males permitted within a clan’s territory, where the young are raised; they typically form small hunting parties of two or three who patrol the borders and drive off the low-ranking males who are not allowed to breed. The lowest-ranking gnolls have their ears and tails cut off and are given to Yeenoghu in the blood rituals the priestesses perform.

Culture

Language

Gnolls speak, read, and write Common and Mictlānian, the tongue of hell, spoken by fiends and the creatures of the abyss.

History

Origins

It is said that gnolls were created by the Fiend Lord Yeenoghu, who sought to sow destruction and chaos across the prime material plane. He cursed them to be a feral, mad race of carnivores forever seeking to consume and destroy more.

Like the rest of the Twisted Races, gnolls live at the edges of society and are widely met with suspicion and racism - an attitude that varies between nations but never entirely disappears.

Appendix

See Also

Notes

  • Yeenoghu is a candidate for his own Deity/Fiend page.
  • Game mechanics (Bite, Rampage, Thrill of the Hunt, etc.) were intentionally omitted from this worldbuilding page.

Sources & Attribution

  • Primary lore: editions/5e-2014/species/gnolls.md (Traveler’s Guide, heading chain The Twisted → Gnolls), author TrueMichato.
  • Origin category: editions/5e-2014/world/bloodlines-of-thelemar.md (The Twisted Races).
  • Superseded original: content/General/Gnolls.md (backed up at content/private/_originals/General/Gnolls.md).
  • Credits (not embedded): original gnoll concept by Monco; art Deserted by Tom P. Mackintosh and Arena Bred (2010) © Wizards of the Coast (by Michael Phillippi).

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