World Building Vignette #4 - Peninsula of Plenty - New Races

Two weeks ago, I featured a magic weapon called the Rattlebone, a gnollish mace. In the Peninsula of Plenty campaign, there are actually 5 kinds of Hyaenidae. From largest to smallest, they are:
Spotted
Striped
Brown
Aardwolf
and Flind.

There are also Wild Gnolls, who have a copper age culture but otherwise are identical to one of the other four basic kinds. They are viewed with disdain by the civilized gnolls, except Flinds who find them useful. In this campaign, the Flind appears to be an admixture of Aardwolves and one other kind of Hyaenidae.

The Aardwolf is the most civilized of the bunch. They are fixated on food and language of all kinds and tend to be good cooks. In the wilds, they can eat anything but prefer insects. They can be value guides to players.

The Flinds tend to be leader types found in tribes of Spotted, Striped and Brown Hyaenidae or informally, gnolls. Striped gnolls have an affinity for grey wolves which will act as pack mates. Brown gnolls have a special talent for confusing or driving off Spotted gnolls, which they intensely dislike. Brown gnolls are wary of dogs and Striped gnolls have a shared animosity with foxes of all kinds. Aardwolves live in tiny, family sized pack-clans unlike the others. They rarely mix with Flinds but sometimes will care for an elderly one.

All gnolls believe their own creation myth, which revolves around the sacrifices of two heroic humans and two hyenas which fused them into a single creature in order to survive the ordeals. They believe that it is their destiny to reforge the pack-clan and return to a state of bliss as human and hyenas, again.

Many human and demi-humans doubt this creation myth and instead choose to believe that gnolls were created by a mad worshipper of Yeenoghu. Gnomes and trolls are the exception, they believe in the gnoll creation myth whole-heartedly. Kobolds find this story horrifying and tend to believe the pack-clan myth.

Female gnolls are dominant in the pack-clans. Some of them are given special titles at birth: "Clan Heart" or the more unusually "Heart of Hearts". This second term would be better translated as "King of Kings" or as the gnolls see it, "Queen of Queens". Male pack-clan members may be granted the title "Revered" for special service to the pack. Gnolls do not understand the human title "King of Kings" and would not give an impossible title to a mere male. Male gnolls do not have any concept of siring pups and are called "mate" by the non-dominate female pack-clan members, as in "clanmate" or "packmate". Fighting males receive the first title, while wily and intelligent males receive the second.