Regarding the Half-Krolvin
Drawn from the collected libraries of Illistim
by:
Meachreasim Illistim, First Master of
Lore
First Published: 15 Jastatos of the
year 5103 Modern Era
The Isle of
Glaeveln, located somewhere in the arctic waters far west of the trading post
of Pinefar, is inhabited by a large faction of Krolvin. The Krolvin are a barbaric, militaristic
people. Frequent raids to other parts of
Elanthia bring in slaves, foodstuffs and other bounty, upon which the Krolvin
people survive. Krolvin have no actual
government and are not generally ruled by any specific individuals.
The more
prosperous Krolvin are the ones who own the most slaves, return from raids with
the most bounty or kill the most people.
One such Krolvin, known as Krintaur, owned his own ship and many slaves. He also had quite a large following of other
Krolvin, since he’d proven himself to be extremely dangerous to rival ship
owners as well as being savagely fierce in battle raids. Krintaur was also known for being fiercely
ambitious and slightly more adept at thinking than the average Krolvin.
Geographica of the Isle of Glaeveln
(the Birthplace)
Landscape
Surrounding the
military stronghold of Glaeveln are pristine beaches and rocky cliffs, starkly
black and white. The landscape is tinged
with a hint of steely blue-gray reflecting from the icy waters surrounding the
island. Only the occasional rotting
corpse and other debris of war mar the short expanse of rocky beach. Fairly well-maintained watchtowers preside
over slaver-ships and warships of the mercenary navy. Krolvin soldiers occupy the watchtowers,
their beady eyes scanning the horizon for invaders from the sea. Deadly catapults guard the ships and ports,
manned by Krolvin soldiers, their ammunition stocked by slaves.
Ice formations cling
to the cliffs and rocky beaches of this foreboding isle, the temperature
obviously unfit for tropical beings. The
Krolvin occupants, their grayish-blue skin blending into the surrounding frozen
terrain, appear oblivious to the cold.
Not so for the many slaves inhabiting the island, their freezing forms
wrapped with mismatched layers of cloth and poorly tanned fur.
Rocky beaches,
covered in ice and snow, give way to a ring of thick forestation. Icicles hang from the branches of the trees
like stalactites in a frozen cave, ever ready to impale an unfortunate
adventurer. The forest is deathly
silent, though definitely not uninhabited.
It forms a sound-muffling barrier to the inner island and a perfect trap
for invaders, as evidenced by the weather-beaten arrows of past incursions
protruding from the snow and trunks of trees.
As the forest
thins out, wild fields of hay and crude wooden pens holding ragged, but hearty
livestock comprise the landscape. A
multitude of slaves completely covered from head to toe against the cold,
attend to the animals for their Krolvin masters. Krolvin guards, their thick, blue-white hair
blowing in the freezing wind, patrol the roads leading into the fortified city.
The walls of
the city are constructed of layers of rough stone from the rocky island
itself. Slaves can be seen hauling rock
to the outer walls for repair, their Krolvin masters cracking their whips and
grunting their guttural language loudly at them. Krolvin soldiers patrol the battlements and
gates into the city proper.
The City of
The Isle of
Glaeveln is not large enough to support a truly sprawling population. As a result there was never a need for the
population to spread beyond one main city that is used as a location for trade
and commerce. This central city goes by
the name of Glaeve.
What could be
called a city square serves the market area for the majority of Krolvin trade,
including the slave market that provides the laborers upon which the Krolvin
existence relies. A large, primitive
platform in the middle of the square is used to display slaves for sale as well
as serving as the site of countless executions.
Surrounding the square are ragged tents and stalls offering goods for
sale or trade.
Beyond the
market area are crude stone dwellings.
Most of these larger homes are occupied by those who most likely owned
enough slaves get them built as well as the current leaders of the groups
bringing in the most booty from raids or other mercenary activities. Circling away from the square down
dirt-filled alleyways are smaller cave-like homes, taverns, inns, and other
buildings, their shapes all blending together into the characteristically
short, blunt shapes of Krolvin architecture.
Each of the buildings boasts little to distinguish it from its neighbor
beyond the occasional hanging sign. The
buildings have no trim or facing, no paint or carving. No bright flowers or hearty plants enliven
the small plots of snow-swept ground that each building squats upon.
The city square
bustles with Krolvin traders, soldiers, mercenaries and slaves. The slave trade and near prosperity of the
island increases as Krolvin ships bring in more and more slaves captured in
their many successful raids upon the peoples of Elanthia.
The Typical
Krolvin Dwelling
Crude and
strong sums up Krolvin architecture as displayed on the Isle of Glaeveln. As a warring, barbaric people, solid
construction proves necessary for survival and the natural rock of the
The larger rock
dwellings were built haphazardly around the market area with the outermost
buildings inhabited by average soldiers, sailors and workers of the slave and
ship owners. Crude rock storage
buildings were also interspersed within the other buildings for holding
weapons, food and other spoils of war.
It is said that tunnels were also built beneath the more prosperous
Krolvin dwellings which held stockpiles of supplies against siege as well as
their more precious items stolen in raids, such as gems or silvers. Krintaur was one such Krolvin who had built a
series of cellar-like rooms beneath his dwelling. Explorations into the cellars beneath
Krintaur’s home revealed that his cellars extended nearly to the outer walls of
the city. Holding pens and cells
provided evidence that these cellars were used for other purposes than just
storage.
The Breeding of the Half-Krolvin
The beginnings
of Half-Krolvin, as a race, dates back to around 4050 M.E., just after the
Krolvin flotilla began military aggression against River’s Rest. As slaves, captured in raids and brought back
to the Krolvin home
Certain Krolvin
began to use captured females of predominantly Human descent as concubines and
inevitably, the first of many half-breed children were born. Human slave women produced half-breed
children to their Krolvin masters with little more difficulty than a regular
pregnancy and delivery posed. Giantkin
women were captured rarely, but of those few captives, it seemed they too could
occasionally bear children to the Krolvin with little more danger to their
health than bearing a child to a Giantkin man posed in the ordinary course of
things.
Although Elven
women were captured as well, they did not last long once they were forced into
the bed of a Krolvin. Apparently, though
the Elven women became pregnant shockingly quickly (the mix of Krolvin and Elf
was extremely likely to result in conception) the pregnancies led to certain
death or permanent barrenness for the Elven women. Around the fourth or fifth month of
pregnancy, the Elven maids would miscarry a hugely developed and terribly
disfigured child. In most cases, the
miscarriage would mean the end of the Elven maid’s life, and if they survived
the miscarriage, without fail they were barren from then on.
Halfling slaves
subjected to these violations did not survive even as long as the Elven
women. Their bodies rejected the
Krolvin spawn violently, ending the unfortunate Halfling’s life shortly after
any conception occurred.
Contrarily,
those of Dwarven stock did not seem to suffer any of the dangers the Elven and
Halfling women faced. Throughout all the
verbal lore of those taken captive by the Krolvin, there is not a single
mention of any Dwarven maid being impregnated by a Krolvin. It would seem that Dwarf and Krolvin are
completely unable to reproduce together.
The Krolvin
slaver, Krintaur was apparently more capable than the average Krolvin occupying
Glaeveln. He kept notes, and in one
passage of those notes was the story of one of the lower ranking Krolvin
guards, a promising young Krol by the name of Tryagke, who became secretly
involved with a Dwarven woman who went by the name Marleynta. Marleynta was captured along with many others
from her village, as well as her two children she had borne to a Dwarven
husband. The relationship was apparently
a love match on both sides, one of those hopeless romances doomed to a sad
end. Krintaur notes that he watched the
couple’s entanglement from afar, allowing it to continue to see if the
relationship would bear fruit. There is
no record of a child being born of this union, though Krintaur’s notes indicate
that Tryagke had sired several bastard children on Human slaves. From this evidence, as well as the failure of
his experiments to ever produce a child of Dwarf/Krolvin stock, Krintaur
concluded (correctly it seems) that it was impossible for the two races to mix.
Any
Half-Krolvin child born on the Isle of Glaeveln was automatically considered a
slave by other Krolvin. Only the
non-Krolvin parentage was taken into consideration, and any non-Krolvin on that
island was considered property.
Details of Krintaur’s Story
Krintaur was
fairly prosperous by Krolvin standards.
He owned his own ship, many slaves and had a rather large Krolvin
following. Krintaur’s fierceness in
battle raids and his penchant for thought allowed him to amass a small
fortune. With his many slaves, he caused
a fairly large dwelling to be built, as well as tunnels and cellars beneath
it. Krintaur took special note of the
rising numbers of Half-Krolvin children in service to various households and
began studying these half-breeds.
During his
studies, he noticed the innate quickness, their ability to be trained and the
ease with which they picked up cantrips as well as games of physical
agility. He realized that though they
would never rival those of pure Krolvin blood for sheer power, they could be
shaped into a flexible, multi-talented force worth reckoning with.
Information
gleaned from Krintaur’s notes reveal that he began to buy up newly arrived
Human and Giantman slaves. He also began
buying the half-breeds as they became available for auction (many Krolvin
slave-owners did not wish to keep their half-breed children, as a faint stigma
was attached to those Krolvin households that sheltered the half-breeds). Thus, Krintaur’s breeding program began.
The majority of
the experimental births were engineered through a loyal Krolvin male of low
rank being granted a female slave for his own use. The results of these unions became the
property of the Krintaur. There are only
a handful of recorded instances of a Krolvin woman giving birth to a half-breed
child.
The Story of
Krintull
One such
Krolvin woman, as noted in Krintaur’s journals, did appear to have several
half-breed children. Krintull,
apparently a sibling of Krintaur, became enamored of a Human male slave of her
own. Krintaur speaks of this
relationship in disgust and repulsion, but it did not stop him from taking the
children of Krintull and using them in his growing army of half-breeds.
From the
stories handed down and from some cryptic records, it seems that Krintaur intended
to breed an army of Half-Krolvin answerable only to him, and with it, make the
Isle of Glaeveln his own, as the first ruler of the Krolvin people. Unfortunately for him, before he had the time
to breed enough soldiers, certain jealous ship owners became suspicious of his
slave buying and breeding habits and planned a raid upon Krintaur’s home to
confiscate his slaves and goods for their own.
Krintaur got
wind of the planned raid through certain contacts that remained loyal to him
and he and his “experiments” boarded ship that same night and fled before dawn.
As the sun
rose, spyglasses trained back on the Isle of Glaeveln showed that they had left
none too soon. Krintaur’s home was
marked by a brilliant red-orange glow on the barren cliff line of Glaeveln -
his dwelling and possessions were being burned to the ground in the icy dawn.
The New Home: The Isle of Krint
Krintaur sailed
from Glaeveln and eventually landed on another cold, rocky, desolate island in
the same arctic seas. Reminding him of
his home isle of Glaeveln, now forever denied to him, he decided to stay there
and continue his breeding program, using his existing slaves and their
half-breed children to construct a new home and provide him with the labor
necessary to build his domain.
Many years after establishing the island as the new home, Krintaur’s breeding program resulted in a veritable population explosion. As Krintaur’s breeding program continued and the older slaves eventually became feeble or died out, the majority of the population on the island shifted until it was comprised of Half-Krolvin who were born and matured on Krintaur’s island. As time passed, these half-breeds naturally began to gravitate to each other and form small bands or clans.
One clan, known
to the other Half-Krolvin as the Gob’tak, were more aggressive than the other
clans and began to devise a plan to rid themselves of their oppressor, Krintaur
and gain their freedom. When the other
clans, the Bar’toth (a clan of mostly builders and artisans), the Hos’tau (made
up primarily of those more adept at magic), and the Swu’lin (the caretakers and
growers) heard about what the Gob’tak had planned, they too joined in the
conspiracy. Once these clans banded together,
they did, indeed, become a formidable force and easily vanquished their
oppressors, including their former master, Krintaur.
Upon the death
of their oppressors, the colony of half-breeds flourished on the small
island. They continued to practice the
skills Krintaur had forced them to learn: magic, swordsmanship, archery,
building and the basics of engineering among others and were a formidable force
in their own right. Eventually, their
numbers began to expand beyond what the resources of the small island could
support.
Many of the older
adults remembered tales they’d heard passed down from their natural mothers,
the original slaves captured by the Krolvin forces. They recalled hearing of a vast and rich
land, where they surmised that even half-breeds could find their fortune. Using the skills they learned as slaves, they
built and outfitted enough ships to carry them to what they hoped would be a
land of plenty.
Eventually, a
cold, icy storm blew them to ground somewhere in the northern wastes. Fortunately, their hearty upbringings on the
frozen
In the northern
glaciers they formed a small outpost to serve as a base while they ventured out
into the world. Eventually, curiosity
led them to venture south along the coastline until they began to encounter
settlements, where they were unfailingly met with hostility. In those travels, they inevitably stumbled
across other Half-Krolvin, always the result of rapes, usually during a raid or
battle and its aftermath. Through those
encounters they discovered that theirs was the only Half-Krolvin outpost known
to exist.
About Half-Krolvin
Attributes
Half-Krolvin
most often wear their heritage in their bodies, an undeniable badge of
identification. Most Half-Krolvin have
pale skin, but their skin tones are within the range considered “normal” on a
Human, except that they often support a blue or blue-gray tinge, as you see on
a Human who has been overexposed to the cold.
They also tend to be hairier than the average Human, and much hairier
than the average Elf. Many Half-Krolvin
tend to have out-of-proportionally long arms ending in long hands with
elongated fingers and swollen-looking knuckles.
Often the
elegance and delicacy of their fingers is remarked upon, along with some
comment as to how the swollen knuckles mar the beauty of the hand. Also, in profile it becomes apparent that the
forehead of Half-Krolvin tends to slope backward slightly into the hairline and
they often have a concave chin shape.
The most obvious attribute that is used to prove Half-Krolvin heritage
is slight hair growth from the top four vertebrae of the spine. This is obviously easy to cover with clothing
in most circumstances, but can be construed as damning evidence if a being’s
heritage is called into question of having Krolvin blood.
Professional
Inclinations
Half-Krolvin
excel at physical tasks, but are also passable at magical endeavors, though
they are not as gifted in that area as the Elves. They will never be among the most powerful
mages or sorcerers, but if the occasion calls for it, they are capable of learning
the arcane arts.
Half-Krolvin tend
to be least suited to the more spiritual arts of the cleric or empath, though
there are, of course, exceptions to every rule.
Krolvin are superior warriors and physical rogues, though they have a
harder time with lockpicking and magic skills that some rogues use than other
races might. Their descendant’s hearty
stock afforded them a natural talent for physical, outdoor skills as well as a
slight resistance to cold.
Religion
The
Half-Krolvin as a race do not have separate religious convictions from the rest
of Elanthia, nor do they have a patron god or goddess. It is most common for Half-Krolvin to have no
particular deity that they follow. When
they do follow a deity, however, it is most common for it to be one of the
Arkati that is devoted to violent or war-like pursuits. Their Krolvin bloodlines (and the penchant
for war and conquering attendant thereto) and typically violent and terrible
childhoods lend themselves to these beliefs.
Government
There has not
been an organized enclave of Half-Krolvin with any purpose beyond that of
continued existence, since Krintaur was killed, other than a normal clan-type
unity. As a result, there is no formal
government of any sort among them. Their
government is that of whatever city or town they happen to live in, insofar as
each individual Half-Krolvin chooses to follow the government’s edicts.
Even though the people of the original clans have been spread out among the general population of Elanthia, there are many Half-Krolvin that still cling to their clans and clan names as the only heritage they’ve ever known.