Drink Talk Roll Extended #6: The Gnolls Have Eyes

It’s funny because “gnoll” sounds like “knoll” which is a type of hill.

Session Recap

After beating the Masked Man in the last session, the party tries to figure out what to do and where to go next. They stop by the Spell Counter magic shop to ask the proprietor for any possible info. Other than telling them what they already know about the Masked Man’s sword, he just tells them the best place to check for info on ancient objects is the archives in Shunil basically on the other side of the continent. 

Lucky for them, they are able to find two merchant caravanners, a Dwarf named Hrathen and a Fire Goliath named Szeth (Why yes, I do read a lot of Sanderson. Why do you ask?) in need of guards for their caravan heading for Shunil. With a few good words and Khorr’s iron stomach, the party is able to negotiate favorable terms and set out the next day after Amra decides to save all of a silver by returning to the Jaffe household and just meditating there for four hours.

After a few days of travel across the semi-desert region, the party arrives on the Axida (Awe-She-Daw) Plans and by after another day or so, they are ambushed by a pack of Gnolls while the caravan was resting. The pack especially its leader with his mysterious headband kept the party on their toes and nearly killed Khorr. If not for the timely arrival of Nalla and her Skybreaker Goliath tribe, the party might not have survived. With the threat taken care of and this new group introduced, the session ended.

The Axidan Goliath Tribes

This session introduced the Goliath Tribes of the Axida Plains so I’d like to talk about them and their culture in this column.

The Goliath Tribes of the Axida Plains are nomadic peoples. Around the middle of the year, they hold a giant (pun intended) meeting of all the tribes called the Tribesmoot around the Skyspear, a place sacred to all tribes and where conflict between them is strictly forbidden. During the Tribesmoot, there are friendly competitions among Goliaths and non-Goliath attendees like an archery competition and a log throwing contest, intertribal disputes are mediated by tribal elders and the largest party on the plains occurs.

The Skyspear is sacred to the Goliath tribes because it’s said to have been the battleground of their fiercest battle and the rock itself is said to be the standing spot of their greatest hero: 

Urgary "Hornblower" Sanavarga is a mythological figure revered among the Goliath tribes for leading all the tribes against a great enemy known as the Sickened. 
 
The Sickened were a tribe of warriors who were determined to spread their corruption throughout the world. Their true name has been lost to time but “Sickened” is used because their strangely colored flesh like a corpse and the strange growths said to come from their face make the connection with illness seem apt. They are also said to have no mouths and never speaking aloud but somehow always in perfect communication with each other. 
 
It is said that Hornblower united all the Goliath tribes under his banner and when the climactic battle came, he is said to have blown his horn so loud that it summoned not only all the tribes them but also the dead rose from their graves to fight against the Sickened. Many Goliaths were lost that day but, in the end, it is said they prevailed with the help of a great lion and a grand dragon who, like the Goliath tribes, set aside their differences to fight the Sickened together. It is said that at the end of the battle, Urgary died standing with many wounds on his front but absolutely none on his back.
 
Even in death his body refused to yield. To honor him, the tribes left his body where it stood. Over time, the monument grew bigger as dust and debris gathered on his body and other Goliaths near death chose to place their bodies alongside the legendary hero’s. Eventually, it became a spear pointing itself at the sky.

Inspirations

The process of coming up with a lot of the Axidan Goliath society was one of my favorite parts of running this campaign before. One of the players decided to play as one and we would frequently work together to expand upon their culture and mythology. That’s where the idea of Goliath bodies being left on the battlefield rather than buried or cremated like other cultures came from. Other times, we would just make a joke and run with it. That’s why no Axidan Goliath would be caught dead drinking oosquai will doing the hokey pokey backwards on Arretin’s equivalent of a Sunday (Soldas).  

Hornblower’s death draws from Benkei, a Japanese warrior-monk said to have died standing up after taking out 300 warriors. The horn said to summon the spirits of dead goliaths back from the final battle is inspired the Horn of Valere from The Wheel of Time which itself draws from Norse mythology with the Gjallarhorn and Christian teachings of a horn that would be blown (sometimes attributed to the Archangel Gabriel) to resurrect the dead at the ends of times.  

Finally, the brief mention of a lion and a dragon having set aside their differences is inspired by Chinese mythology where the Four Symbols include a tiger and a dragon representing different/conflicting aspects. The Four Symbols were the inspirations for the four big monasteries Monks in Arretin may be trained at. The actual idea for the monasteries actually came from seeing a Master Roshi cosplayer at Anime Expo 2019 and thinking, “My game world should have something like that” and working from there. I decided to swap out the tiger with the lion because I liked the idea of a Monk going against the usual depiction of being either bald or having a Queue hairstyle and instead having a large mane of hair which also contrasts with the bald style of the Dragon temple. In addition, the Vermillion Bird which is described as looking like a pheasant is replaced by a crane in Arretin inspired by another bit of Japanese folklore that I’ll probably discuss later. 

Well, that’s it for this week’s Drink Talk Roll Extended. It’s a bit longer than usual but I love getting to show off some of the work that goes into creating this kind of stuff.  I hope it inspires you to work on your own ttrpg settings.  See you next time.

-J.D.