Gnolls (I)

In the Two Kingdoms, they tell the following story to explain the origin of the gnolls:

"In the beginning, when Khro perfected the way of destruction, the lands were littered with the dead. Crows, maggots, beetles, worms, and the other crawling things of the earth complained to Khro.

'You destroy and maim too quickly!' they cried. 'We cannot devour all the meat you give us! Please, destroy the people of the earth more slowly.'

'What?' shouted Khro, in a voice that toppled pillars. 'My glorious destruction shall never cease nor slow!'

Yet in the dark, delighting in the destruction god’s slaughter, watched one of Khro's daughters -- those who are death -- and she heard the base things cry. In those black days when all the land was covered with death and all the air stank, she watched as a few tribes of men, her followers and devout worshipers, ate the flesh of corpses as the crows did, plucking out eyes, savoring the bloodiest cuts. To these cannibals she led packs of hyenas, and their ways became as one.

Of those louse-ridden beastmen rose the first gnolls, half-hyenas who love the stench of carrion and praise each corpse as an offering to their dark mother. And the demon queen delighted in her own perversion and reveled in these monsters’ terrible howling songs.

Born of devastation, and insanity, and the corrupt of soul, the man-beasts spread upon the world, and where they prowled they indulged in their hunger for murdered flesh. Surely, they are to be despised by any sane god, and so we make ceaseless war on those who seek to feed on the bodies of heroes and innocents.

And somewhere in the madness between the stars, that daughter of Khro and his sister/wife/self Vala still laughs her wicked laugh, as her ravening spawn, the bone gnawers and carrion eaters, grow fat off our flesh.

Gnolls are among the first abominations, and their death is a blessing. Remember this when their laughter haunts your steps."

Ratfolk

The ratfolk originate in the Two Kingdoms, where they make their warrens in the tangled tomb tunnels of the Tomb-Riddled Cliffs, the great and ornate catacombs.  It is whispered that they are the manifestation of the curses set by the pharaohs upon their tombs to discourage thieves and that this origin is the cause of their interest in and affinity with plague.  It is also whispered that this magic which created them has become somehow twisted, as the ratfolk have found one other environment much to their liking: the bazaars and marketplaces.  Some say that the mysterious and valuable treasures they hock are stolen from the tombs they were intended to guard.  Others reply that the rats prefer barter to selling and their hoards are simply the result of innumerable trades swelling their sacks.

It is the ratfolk who bury the pharaoh, appearing but moments after eir death and performing the sacred rites which help ensure eir transformation into a ghost.

The Two Kingdoms (I)

The Two Kingdoms are ruled by an ancient and evergrowing dynasty of half-angel ghosts with Divine Rank 0.  How can you have a dynasty of ghosts, you ask?  At some point during a pharoah's reign, Tum incarnates upon a woman somewhere in the Two Kingdoms as a flash of light that impregnates her with the upcoming pharoah.  When this happens, the reigning pharoah knows that e is in the last years of eir reign but not how many years e has left, for e has no way of knowing when that child will be violently killed, as they always are.  The people of the Two Kingdoms see this as a way of gaming the cosmological system; if the fallen world is a prison and the pharoah one of the jailers, the only candidates Neziru will accept are those the people dislike.  The best way to convince Neziru that you dislike someone is to kill them, as violently as possible.  Once the new pharoah is killed, e becomes a ghost and takes eir place among the others, who are now treated as generals and special ops agents in the hierarchy of the Two Kingdoms.