Yak-Man

Typical Attributes

Bod 8, Chi 8, Mnd 7, Ref 5

Schticks

• Chew
• Dao Slave (#)
• Dao Ward
• Magic Jar

Description

Yak-men are ogre sized humanoids with broad shoulders. Their heads are like those of disgruntled yaks, complete with curved horns and uniformly dour, sullen expressions. Male or female, their hulking bodies are coated with thick fur and hair. Female yak-men are a bit more slender, but otherwise they are very similar to males in appearance, and many outsiders cannot tell them apart. Both sexes wear long, flowing jellabas and occasionally turbans. All carry staves, some of which are magical.

Yak-men have an inherent drive for knowledge, particularly dark knowledge that may serve to corrupt or dominate others. Knowledge that the yak-men cannot gain or use immediately is to be destroyed. Unsentimental by nature, yak-men parents pack children off to communal crèches once they are weaned, never to recognize them again. Yak-men feel no loyalty to their families-only to their god and to their inherently superior race as a whole. All other races are slaves at best to the yak-men-even dao.

Yak-men are natives of the World Pillar Mountains, comfortable among the foreboding heights and deep, hidden valleys of this range. Here the yak-men maintain their petty but powerful empire, ruling all other life forms within their borders. Outsiders know little of the yak-men. For as long as even the desert bard can remember, they have remained within the confines of their land, content to enslave or kill whomever enters it. To the rest of Zakhara, they are mysterious figures, treated as "boogie men" – a scary race of evil, ruthless, unenlightened, powerful savages who threaten the security of the Land of Fate.

Yak-men function as a unified, malignant theocracy. All are fanatical followers of the Forgotten God. The worship of this savage deity directs their lives. The Forgotten God takes the general form of a yak-man, but the deity's face is worn smooth into a featureless mask. Great statues of the faceless god dominate yak-men temples, which occupy the highest crags of the World Pillar Mountains. The yak-men's dark deity is appeased by sacrifice. These hideous acts also strengthen the yak-men's domination of their land, since a slave who disobeys today almost certainly will meet his or her death on the morrow. It was the Forgotten God who enabled the yak-men to enslave the dao. In a legend told by desert bards, it is said that Forgotten God once journeyed to the Elemental Plane of Earth. There, through guile and deception, it defeated the Grand Khan of the dao. The price of that defeat was harsh: the dao were forced to serve the Forgotten God and its minions-and forbidden to attack them-for "a thousand years and a year."

A human could perhaps learn the special yak-man powers, but only by becoming an agent of the Forgotten God — a fate worse than death to most humans.