Race:
Kharlkallenal
Constructs
"The Kharlkallenal haunt the desert north of the Kathraki rainforest. Sutut... yes, that is the name of the sandy hell there. They dominate the land from the feet of Atil to the dunes, the no-man's land of the Kharlkallenal.
Who's to say what they look like? The only one I ever had the misfortune of seeing was about eighteen hands high, and by Atil was he... it? ugly. It was a big lumbering thing, pale like a cadaver, but so much meaner than any cadaver I ever knew... Its arm was as big-around as a small tree, but its legs were wiry, bony things. Its feet were large, flapping things with seven or eight gnarled toes, and its face..."
The Kharlkallenal are all that remain of some bygone sorcerer's attempt to create life in his own 'perfect image. They are, generally, large fleshy golems made of the bones and musculature of the unfortunate beasts/humanoids that stumble into their realm. In those old days, before the great End, they were mindless servants of the wizard-on-the-mountain, hunting and killing for him, battling back the vicious beasts of Kathraki with ungodly, untiring strength. When he perished, the golems practically ceased to be. The wards he had placed on them to stop decay and to protect from the elements protected them from wind and rain, from rot and time. Decades passed, and the golems stood motionless, waiting for the demands of the Master, a call that would never again come to them. When the End came, the wards provided no shelter. The twisting, chaotic energies of the End cracked the wards, pushing the limits of the old magic of a great sorcerer. The wards were shattered, and the golems were shattered as well. Their human/elvish frames were warped by the energy, twisting and nearly destroying all of them. The power of the old wards focused the nether-magic and endowed a fragment of the creator's mind into the fertile soil of the golems' brains. The mental energy spread, and within minutes, sentient (though slightly charred) beings were crawling around the mountain, knowing only what they saw, like newborn children... twisted hideous golem children.
The first clumps of society to form among the few original Kharlkallenal were in small cliquish groups that 'invented' language. These groups quickly learned how to dominate their non-verbal cousins and established a ruling class of 'perfects.' This took years, of course, for such thoughts to grow in the minds of the constructs, but the Perfects had, through the wards of their master, gained some of his malice and cunning. What of his other traits? His propensity for brooding thought and careful manipulation? Those traits were endowed upon the Imperfects. They accepted the dominion of their more vocal, domineering cousins. They learned to communicate silently with one another and they quietly chose among themselves the first Imperfect leader, known by the title of 'The Kharl.' In the dark of night, when the golems could not do work because of the darkness, The Kharl and his followers beheaded the Perfects and sealed their still-moving heads in stone pots. The headless bodies eventually recovered, becoming imperfects like the rest of the Kharl's followers.
The new society, Kharl's people, or Kharlkallenal, rejoiced silently. They left the stone pots in a guarded cave on the northern slope of the Atil mountains, under supervision by the Kharl and another Kharlkallen at all times. The rest of the Kharlkallenal moved north toward the desert, following some unknowable urge to be dry and warm. From this relatively small strip of land, the Kharlkallenal raid small villages and caravans that pass through. They do not do so out of malice, as they are only children in this world. They consume the meat and bone of all beings great and small that make the fatal error of entering their land. Truly it is a wonderful thing. Ignorance is the greatest bliss here, no guilt, no murder, only care-free living on the edge of the desert... and eighteen stone pots waiting to be opened.
As a last note, the Kharlkallenal do not manufacture weapons or build structures. They do not sleep, and they do not have emotions that we could understand. They have no relationships outside of the understood common bond they all share. If their numbers dwindle, they recede into the foothills or into the dunes and reproduce... probably in some obscene, disgusting orgy of putrid unwashed cadaver genitalia.
OOC: I hope this is close to acceptable.
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At the risk of looking like an unoriginal copycat mashing together Das's and Bestshot's ideas, I shall join as the Spider Jungle Orcs. It was documented on #nes though that I was thinking of something like this, so don't think of me too negatively.
