An excerpt from The Depths of Norhaven: A Complete Guide, Volume Seven – Of Czerds, Kobolds and Gaunts by Alerdy Parlyle-.. unfortunate amount of bloodshed, but ultimately necessary for the survival of the Gauth. In such events, it is often the names of the Dwarves, the Humans, and the Elves who are celebrated in history, the great protectors of civilization and the defenders of the noble order. Very often do such limited outlooks neglect those other races who have contributed no less than the sweat of their brow and the blood of their veins to the rise of the civilized order of the depths.
As integral to ordered society as any others, these people are, for varying reasons, shunned and distrusted openly within their respective colonies. They often live on the outskirts of society, never welcomed with open arms but never fully pushed away. Theirs is a life of hardship, and to their credit, they endure it with a considerable amount of pride. It is upon the backs of these people that our greatest civilizations have prospered.
CzerdA most curious group of people, the Czerd have made the tunnels linking the colonies together as much of a home as the colonies themselves. While the other races have found themselves content on the land, building stone houses and paved streets, the Czerd have taken to the vast riverways which criss-cross the depths. Scarcely a single boat goes by that does not have a Czerd as its oarsman. They, along with the Aredar, are the main driving force between river-bound trade between the colonies.
I must make an acknowledgment to Master Jhir’odan, who was kind enough to explain many of the finer (and some basic) points of Czerdic culture to an outsider.
Perhaps the most mysterious aspect of these people is their very presence in the colonies. Their homeland, from what I have been told, was a cold and desolate place, even before Grehta’s shawl descended onto the surface. Why, then, did they choose to move beneath the earth to live amongst the colonies? All those Czerd I have asked have given little reason, or simply do not know. Some say it was because of a lack of food on the surface to sustain them, while others believe that their ancestors brought them here for a “purpose” now lost to time. Perhaps it is a secret only their fathers, long-since buried, could tell. Yet, whatever their motivations, they are here, and are as much a part of colony life as any Dwarf or Human. They have established themselves as merchants, explorers, oarsman, and sages. Little remains in the colonies now that is not, directly or indirectly, touched by Czerd hands.
The Czerd are humanoids, thinner and taller than humans, with sharp features and long faces. Their eyes are usually grey, black, or yellow, with skin tones of similar hues. They have a thin, angular frame, and limbs that look like they are made of nothing but strings of muscle knotted around bone. The race as a whole seems to favor thin, yet baggy clothing and robes. As a scholar, I must assume this has something to do with the species’ natural resilience to the cold, as most sane (or long lived) men know to wear thick clothing and furs.
Most Czerd travel in small groups called Khol'acha, around ten to twenty individuals who have banded together in the common goal of survival. This bond can be as deep rooted as family, or as loose as simple traveling companions with common interests. While these people do travel together, I have found the Czerd culture places a heavy emphasis on the individual, both in practical terms such as learning survival skills and the metaphorical sense of "knowing oneself".
In more traditional, family oriented Khol'acha such as Master Jhir’odan’s, Czerd are taught since birth how to survive the harsh reality that is the new world and how to fend for themselves should the time comes that they are forced to. As they become older and more experienced, it is expected for the young adults to leave the Khol'acha to undergo a sort of rite of passage into full adulthood. They are expected to wander the world (Or worlds below) away from their kin for some time, and learn. These terms have been traditionally left vague, as it is up to the individual to decide if they are ready, if ever, to return to the Khol'acha. Some return weeks or months later, some never return. Should they return to their kin, it is usually with warm welcome and many questions. The people thirst for knowledge and new wisdom, and it is expected of the returning individual to share their experiences, as a sign of their emergence into adulthood. I was fortunate enough to travel with Jhir’odan when his daughter returned from her six year pilgrimage to much celebration. She returned with a wealth of knowledge regarding the healing arts, and fortunately she was most willing to share to all interested.
KoboldsI am convinced that, amongst the races, none have suffered more than the Kobolds. They are a short, reptilian race, characterized by incredible ingenuity and a remarkable ability to remain optimistic, even in the face of systematic oppression. All of us owe much to their small, scaled hands, for the fortified backbone of Gauth was built by their finest minds; yet their repayment was nothing less than bloodshed and murder.
Even before their descent into the depths, the kobolds were not a welcome race. Fragmentary writings kept within Chanderwick seem to indicate that the people of the surface thought of them as nothing more than a parasitic nuisance, and that their burrows were often ransacked with the same callousness of a small child smashing an ant nest. kobold oral legend confirms this, as talk of a “dark time of slaughter” that came before the depths forms a significant portion of their racial myth-cycle.
Their legends go on to recount the long trek north, following the “tall ones” to what was once to be Norhaven. Simple survival was their goal, yet hated as they were, they could find no shelter amongst the civilized peoples. Many kobolds perished, and the scattered survivors soon faced a grim choice.
Grehta - seeing opportunity where no one else dared to look - offered the kobolds the strength they had always desired: to subjugate and destroy the “tall ones,” the murderers of their families and the destroyers of their culture. Many accepted, and for that they grew in power to the point where an armed warband of the finest of Norhaven’s warriors were no match for them. They became known as the Swayed, for greed and vengeance had turned them from their homes, and they now became what all kobolds feared most.
The few who resisted Grehta’s proposal were lead by a kobold known as Tzinkhe, who, by all accounts in the legends of the kobolds, was “as wise and as strong as any ten kobolds stacked together.” He gathered the disparate and destitute tribes together, and the group soon marched to Norhaven. Their timing was well-calculated by Tzinkhe, for the last, desperate shelter for the refugees of the south had fallen under attack by the servants of Grehta. Those who the people of Norhaven expected least to find courage in ended up being their salvation, for it was with their aid that Norhaven was spared. Seizing the opportunity, Tzinkhe demanded equality from the other civilized peoples; in a speech the kobolds say “moved all to tears,” he claimed that his people were not monsters, and that they had as much right as anyone to be a part of Norhaven.
So it was that the kobolds eventually joined with those who had once hunted them; and when the “tall ones” fled from the surface, so, too, did the kobolds.
To the colonies, the kobolds gifted their inquisitive and expansive minds. Their ingenuity and resourcefulness brought Gauth its extensive mining systems and bountiful wealth. Canals and roadways connecting the colonies almost always had a kobold included in its planning process on at least one step of the way. For a time, the kobolds seemed to have finally found the acceptance that they sought for so very long. Yet it was not to last, for the gratitude of Man and Dwarf is short, and their hatred of their neighbor long-lived. So it was that the conditions which spawned the Cleansing fermented quietly for many long years.
Paranoia, spawned by rumored whispers of servants of the Dragon Queen walking disguised amongst the colonies, soon turned into a frenzied orgy of murder. A movement started from good intentions degenerated into an excuse to purge the hated of society, and the memory of the Swayed had not yet entirely faded from the cultural mind. kobolds were burned upon pyres alongside the wise and the learned of society, accused of being in league with Grehta, for there were none more hated than those whose practices the uneducated commoners could scarcely comprehend. The few kobolds that survived either fled the colonies or went into hiding, waiting and hoping for the madness to die. These scattered survivors soon joined together within many of the colonies for protection, attempting to keep themselves safe by forming “kobold-towns” on the very edges of their adopted homes. These in time, became the last refuge of a persecuted race in the face of an engulfing nightmare. Many more kobolds decided to fight back, vanishing into the tunnels under the guidance of the warlord Tukoth Threehorns, becoming marauding bandits that continue to plague the colonies today.
In time, the embers of hate cooled once more, yet it was an emptier world which the kobolds now faced. Many of their greatest minds were burnt to ash or buried beneath countless stones tossed by angry mobs, and the generation that remained found itself confused and alone, living side-by-side with their ancestor’s murderers. An uneasy peace has developed between them, yet it is undeniable that the kobolds now live more as refugees than as welcomed parts of their respective colonies. A small hope has come to them in recent years: in Gauth, a kobold who has taken on the mantle of Tzinkhe, in honor of the first kobold to bear that name, has risen to prominence, and now tries to bring together his scattered people once more as his namesake did so very long ago.
((PC kobolds are considered Drakhalin kobolds, those accepted in civilized cultures))
GauntAmongst the colonies, rumors of hunched monsters that stalk the roadways and rivers of the underground, snatching away unsuspecting colonists into the darkness, are as common as stones. There is, as usual, a kernel of truth to this legend, though the truth itself is far more benign.
The denizens of the caverns - known derogatorily in the colonies as “Gaunts” - have been a feature common to the tunnels since some of the earliest colonization after the fall of Norhaven. Though no conclusive evidence has arisen, I speculate that they are the descendants of those Humans who sought refuge in the winding depths, away from the colonies and the Telling Tree. Their time spent underground has changed them dramatically, and it could be said that there is no one creature more singularly adapted to a life beneath the stone ceiling than they.
Shorter than a typical Human, they have flat, broad noses and eyes of a singular color, usually black, hardened lesions. They are extremely quick on their feet, and can grip even the smoothest stones with an almost supernatural ease. To watch a Gaunt hunt is to watch an artisan at work; they can hear a pebble rattling in the dark and spot a giant black pillbug wrapped in the deepest of shadows. Were the Telling Tree to fade tomorrow, I have little doubt that it would be the Gaunts, not we, who would survive to tell its tale.
Yet it is these same wondrous attributes that ultimately damns them in the eyes of the colonies. They are an introverted and reclusive people, separated into small, tightly-knit family units. Contact with outsiders is extremely limited, and mutual distrust has grown amongst both peoples. To the colonists, the Gaunts are inhuman creatures of insidious motivation; to the Gaunts, the colonists are invaders, spoiling the good hunting land and disrupting their homes. For the most part, they content themselves with simply staying far away from the other, which breeds only further prejudice. Whenever there is a disappearance on the Prophet’s Path or Hammerfist Road, it is usually the Gaunts who are first blamed.
Despite this, a few Gaunts have crafted a working relationship with several of the colonies. It is said that there is no one who knows the underground better than a Gaunt, and this axiom may very well speak the truth. Gaunts often act as guides through lesser-traveled caverns, and have often lent their knowledge to the paddlers of the Lonely River. Their command of Common is often surprisingly good, and they often serve as negotiators and translators when traveling through Gaunt lands. Those who work with them have found them amiable and willing aids, if slightly difficult to get along with, given the enormous cultural gap between the two peoples. A rare few, such as the legendary Wyrmbane, have even integrated into the colonies fully, though such cases are extremely uncommon. In spite of the efforts of these noble souls, however, they are still a feared race, tolerated for their usefulness and yet never truly accepted.
Whether Gaunts and colonists can ever learn to respect each other as more than feared apparitions is a question I am not prepared to answer. Let us pray it is so; for there is much that these people can teach us, and much that we, I believe, can teach them.
