Gnoll

"Trying to talk to a gnoll is the quickest path to its stomach."

— Volo

Gnolls remind the world of the horrors posed by the hordes of the Abyss, and the damage that even the briefest demonic incursion can inflict on the world.
When the demon horde first walked on Toriel and went on a rampage, they left a great trail of corpses in their wake. As they despoiled the land, packs of hyenas trail them and feasted on the victims until the dead flesh of the demon's prey left them bloated and unable to move. Then, in a shower of blood and gristle, the hyenas transformed into gnolls, corrupted by demonic power, they take on the awful mission to kill and destroy anything in their path.

Culture

Demonic Monster

Gnolls are the traces of the War of the Ancients still on Toriel, the traces of every demonic incursion. They embody the dark urges of demons for slaughter and senseless destruction. As creatures that sprang up in the wake of demons, gnolls are creatures of savage blood lust, incapable of understanding or acting on any other impulse. They pause only to devour what they have killed, and to fashion crude weapons and armor from their victims’ corpses.

From a journal recovered from a slain cultist of Demons:

Day 2: The subject continues to growl and struggle, despite the removal of its arms and legs. I will let it starve for a few days to weaken its mental fortitude. If the gnoll does have some sort of tie to the Abyss, I must keep my focus on exploiting that link, even though the creature’s mind might remain aware.
Day 6: No appreciable loss of vigor.
Day 11: Still no appreciable loss of vigor.
Day 13: Ritual must commence tomorrow despite subject’s high level of mental activity.
Day 14: The ritual brought our minds together. I was assailed simultaneously by hunger and rage, as if some great force from beyond had reached out and commanded me only to kill and eat. Though it lasted only a short time, it was a terrifying feeling to my human mind, but in a way it was also comforting to feel myself a part of a much greater design. What I felt was not the hunger of one beast, but the hunger of all of them.
Day 15: Used the ritual to join our minds again. I killed and devoured a goat while linked to the gnoll’s mind. I had set aside a knife for the deed but killed it with my bare hands instead. The flesh was warm.

Endless Hunger

Born from the consumption of the demon's victim, the gnolls are creature of insatiable hunger, bot for violence and for the flesh of intelligent creatures. A gnoll feels a constant, gnawing demand for blood and destruction that abates only when it kills and eats intelligent creatures.
Gnolls wander the land continually in search of new victims, rarely sleeping and never settling down. Only a large-scale assault, such as the massacre of an entire village, can satisfy their desire even temporarily. A sated gnoll rests. Its relief is short, no more than a few days, before the gnoll once again becomes a slave to its desires.
Strength, hunger, and fear are the three concepts that every gnoll extols. Strength allows a gnoll to overwhelm, kill, and devour a foe. Hunger motivates a gnoll to go forth and slay its victims. Fear is a weapon used against enemies to make them easy prey.

Gnoll Tactics

Gnolls might seem to throw themselves into battle mindlessly, driven only by fury and hunger, but they do possess a rudimentary form of cunning that is borne out by several tactics they use consistently.

Butcher the Weak

Gnolls seek only to kill, and as such prefer to deal with weak, easy targets. An enemy that can fight back is an enemy to save for later. Gnolls have no sense of honor, glory, or individual achievement. They care only for the raw number of creatures they can slay. In the face of a gnoll incursion, it is best for refugees to seek shelter in castles and other fortified positions. Gnolls avoid protracted battles if they can, much preferring to slaughter those that can’t defend themselves.

Overwhelm the Strong

Gnolls do not attack intelligent prey that is capable of resisting them except if they are forced to. They cooperate to gang up on each of the individuals in a group of explorers or adventurers, or if the prey is more numerous they rush forward in waves. The creatures will crawl over their own dead to climb a castle’s walls and kill all within it. A commonly held belief is that a fortress besieged by gnolls needs ten arrows for each one to keep the creatures from scaling the walls.

Spread Far and Wide

Gnolls never set up permanent camps, though they might linger for a few days at the site of a particularly great slaughter as they devour the corpses of both their victims and the gnolls killed in battle. During this time, the hyenas that follow a pack of gnolls feast until they become bloated, then burst open to spawn more gnolls. In this manner, gnolls replenish their ranks before wandering off in ragged bands to continue their rampage.

Kill from a Distance

Almost every gnoll carries a bow scavenged from a past victim. Gnolls use ranged attacks mainly to prevent their prey from fleeing, rather than softening up their targets with an initial barrage of arrows before an assault. A target wounded by a bow shot becomes easy prey for any gnolls near it. Some particularly clever gnolls have been known to use burning arrows to spark fires, cutting off their prey’s escape routes and driving victims into their jaws.

Leave No Survivors

A band of gnolls lives in a state of eternal war with everything it encounters. To keep from being detected between major raids, the gnolls move through the wilderness with as much stealth as they can marshal. They never leave survivors in any group they set upon, and will pursue a fleeing enemy for days to prevent it from getting to a town or a city and raising an alarm.
If the area they hunt in becomes too well-defended, the gnolls relocate in search of easier prey. Large tracts along the fringe of civilization might be devastated before the wider world becomes aware of a gnoll threat.

On Defeating Gnolls

An excerpt from One Hundred Years of War, a famous manual of dwarven battle tactics:

Gnolls remain a threat across all seasons. Happily, our redoubts are too fortified for their tastes, but caravans, foraging expeditions, and patrols must deal with them.
Gnolls take care to move quietly when they are on the hunt for prey. The events that presage their presence are easy to misinterpret as the results of other threats. A scout might go missing, a caravan fail to arrive on time, or a village be left deserted. Several kinds of creatures, such as orcs and goblins, can cause such events, but the evidence that gnolls leave of their involvement is unmistakable. Their enemies aren’t merely killed, they are dismembered and devoured. The loot that other marauders would scoop up is left where it falls, of no use to a creature that requires only flesh to feed its urges.
If you suspect that gnolls are encroaching on dwarven territory, send reliable spies to settlements in the region, while pulling back as many of our folk as you can manage. Instruct the spies to pass along updates each day, preferably by messenger bird. Do not tell the spies of your suspicions. Invent a story, such as the search for an outlaw or some other deception.
If a spy fails to report, you must strike quickly. Send your fastest warriors and strongest spellcasters to the spy’s location. If the gnolls have struck a settlement, they will rest for up to a week, bloated on their kills. In this state, they are their most vulnerable. Surround the place in silence, and advance as one to catch them in a vise. Let none survive. A single gnoll can, over time, create a new war band.
Some may argue for an approach that doesn’t rely on the loss of human life to see it succeed. I would gladly suggest one if such existed. Your best strategy is to defend our halls and let the humans serve as bait. Ornn knows they multiply quickly enough that their losses will soon be recouped.

Treasure

A cautious and skilled gang can follow in the tracks of a gnoll war band, keeping hidden and waiting for the creatures to move on after ravaging a village or a town. The gnolls leave the town’s gold and gems and other durable goods battered and gnawed, but still intact, though they invariably ruin delicate or flammable objects in their fits of destruction.
Gnolls do possess a basic understanding of the value of weapons and armor, so one might decide to hold onto an object seen as useful. In this way, a gnoll might come to possess a magic item, though it might not know exactly how to use it. Gnolls regard objects of “treasure” only in terms of their ability to cause harm or preserve a gnoll’s life. Everything else is fit only for destruction.

Language

The language of gnolls, such as it is, consists of whines, cackles, and howls mixed with gestures and expressions. Gnolls use it to communicate only basic concepts, such as an alert about approaching prey or a call to their allies to join the fray. When gnolls fight among themselves, they rarely bother with threats or words before leaping at each other’s throats.
The gnoll language lacks a script or written form, though elite gnolls can use their limited knowledge of Abyssal to leave messages. In most cases, though, a gnoll war band has little use for written notes or signs. Gnolls simply wander, attack, kill, and feed. Anything more sophisticated is beyond the band’s concern.

Anatomy of a War Band

A gnoll war band is likely to contain a variety of gnolls and other creatures, and no two of these groups have the same composition.
The gnolls that make up the rank and file have different attributes and thus different roles in the war band’s assaults. Augmenting the warriors that comprise the bulk of the force are the hunters, specialists in sneaking and attacking at range, and the flesh gnawers, which rely on natural savagery rather than weapons to tear apart their foes. A pack of hyenas is always part of the band, and sometimes these beasts are as numerous as the gnolls themselves. A war band that has been through hard times might contain a number of gnoll witherlings.

Gnoll Pack Lord

Most war bands are led by pack lords. They mark their hides with bloody runes, which sometimes grant supernatural power. Pack lords favor big, heavy weapons, such as glaives and axes.

Gnoll Fangs

Fangs are gifted with the power to spawn more gnolls. They anoint the remains of their foes using bizarre rituals. A hyena that feeds on such a corpse spawns a gnoll. Fangs use their claws in battle, the better to imbue their victims with the Magic needed to spawn more gnolls.

Gnoll Warriors

Common gnolls comprise the bulk of a war band. They fight mainly with spears fashioned from wood and bone. Their ferocity makes them formidable enemies.

Gnoll Hunters

When a war band is on the move, the hunters travel in a wide arc around the perimeter of the force. Hunters are more adept than other gnolls at sneaking and moving through an area undetected, which makes them useful for reconnaissance. Sometimes a team of hunters is used to silently pick off sentries on patrol before they can raise an alarm, which makes the upcoming onslaught by the rest of the war band even more lethal. Another function that hunters perform is to trail along behind a war band, making quick work of wounded gnolls and those who can’t keep up the pace.

Gnoll Flesh Gnawers

All gnolls are ruthless and brutal, but the flesh gnawers in a war band use their quickness and agility to augment their savagery. At the start of a raid, flesh gnawers lurk around the edges of the gnoll forces, hoping to jump on enemies that become isolated. When a flesh gnawer springs into action, its blades and teeth turn it into a whirling dealer of death, able to dash from one target to the next as though it had been shot from a bow.

Gnoll Witherlings

A war band might go for weeks without coming across the sort of prey it craves. Gnolls can eat wild animals for sustenance, but only the flesh of intelligent humanoids can calm the endless hunger.
When a war band grows desperate for food, its members turn on each other. Those who succumb to the violence are devoured, but their service to the war band doesn’t end at that point. The survivors preserve the bones of their fallen comrades, so that a pack lord or a flind can perform a ritual to turn them into loyal, undead followers known as witherlings.
Even after death, gnoll witherlings serve the war band much as their comrades do. Although not as formidable in battle as warriors or hunters, they are just as relentless.

Flinds

A flind is an exceptionally large and strong gnoll. No war band contains more than one flind, and such a creature is always the leader of its band. A flind wields a weapon that carries Demonic power: a magical flail that saps the body and the mind of any foe that feels its touch.
During a battle, a gnoll that delivers the death blow to a flind claims its flail and, in a burst of abyssal energy, is touched by the demonic power and turns into a flind itself. The death or disappearance of a flind for any other reason causes a war band to descend into brutal infighting. Sometimes a new leader emerges from the pack after putting down its rivals; more often, the band fragments and the survivors go their separate ways.

Gnoll Allies

Gnolls wage war against any creatures they meet, except for those serving the same goal, or blessed with demonic power. Thus, a war band might include or be accompanied by other beings of evil.

Demons

As gnoll are spawned on the trail of demon, sometimes, some of the weaker demon, to slow and weak to follow their kind, end up in the war mind. Demons such as barlguras, dretches, hezrous, or manes.
Demonic hyenas known as shoosuvas also often follow the war band. Among the gnolls, the appearance of a shoosuva is a reward for recent triumphs and a harbinger of great victories and much feasting to come. A shoosuva protects the war band’s most powerful members and serves as a companion to the strongest fang in the group.

Ghouls

Ghoul packs emerge from graveyards and dungeons to trail in the wake of a war band, feasting on the remains of its victims and sometimes eventually merging with the group.

Hyenas

Large packs of hyenas follow gnoll warbands. For their part, the gnolls largely ignore these animals. They tend to gather around fangs in battle.

Trolls

Of all the creatures encountered by gnolls, trolls are the most likely to join them simply because the gnolls’ way of life appeals to them. As ravenous creatures with incredible toughness, trolls fit well into the loose scheme of a gnoll war band.

Names

As befits creatures with a language that is little more than whines, growls, and shrieks, most gnolls lack a name and would have little use for one. Powerful gnolls, usually fangs, pack lords, and flinds, receive names.
Gnoll Names: Aargab, Alark, Andak, Ethak, Eyeth, Ignar, Immor, Oduk, Orrom, Otal, Ultak, Ustar.

General Information

Scientific name
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Geographic Distribution
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Languages
Gnoll

Physiologie

Average Lifespan
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Size
Medium
Average: 170 cm male, 160 cm female

Others