A gathering of hunchbacked bipedal animal people snarled and yipped at each other inside of their ramshackle community. The things were, to put it frankly, sapient, but they were so primitive compared to humanity that they were basically just animals in the eyes of the galaxy’s populace.

This was, of course, incredibly ironic and hypocritical, as hundreds of thousands of years ago (in the game setting) Humanity was a bunch of tribals living in leather, wood, and bone huts as well. However, unlike humans of that long since past age, these creatures were not anywhere near related genetically to great apes.

Perhaps the gave designers had been feeling rather bold the day they dreamed these things up, or perhaps they wondered how much they could rip straight from other, more enduring fictional settings that were owned by different companies without getting their asses sued. Either way, these hyena people were obviously Gnolls, but with less magical, occult, or otherwise general supernatural fuckery going into their origin.

However, despite being obvious rip-offs of another property’s hard work, these animals were not using metal at all, and they were not extremely xenophobic. Their civilization, if you could call a bunch of scattered camps that were loosely tied together while still occasionally fighting with each other a civilization, was far less brutal and cruel than their counterparts from a different setting.

Or at least they used to be. Ever since the Battle Royales started occurring more than a handful of centuries ago, these fully sapient beings began to take an ever more aggressive and violent stance towards any outsiders, which included those of their own species from other camps.

Where once was a species with a general disposition towards trade, understanding, and mutual benefit, now there was a species that knew and craved nothing but violence and pain. Where once had existed a species that would have shown up on the sensors and detection methods of Players as being decidedly non-hostile and amicable, now existed only more enemy mobs to kill, maim, and, if a Player was in the mood for it, burn.

So now, with that bit of exposition out of the way, we get back to this tribe of Gnolls.

Something had spooked them over the past few days, and they had moved their camp on more than one occasion and had even gone to the lengths of taking their encampment deep into a nearby canyon and positioning themselves at the ground-level edge of a near-vertical cliff face. If they had to run once again from whatever it was that was wiping out tribe after tribe, they would be forced to run back out of the singular chokepoint that they had created for themselves.

The previous night had been stressful for them, to say the least. A few members of other tribes tried to run in and beg for help, but they were captured and interrogated as to what the actually gods-damned fuck was hunting their kind to this level.

Now a few of the captured Gnolls remained, and they were slated to be sacrificed to the collective gods of their species. Among them was a Gnoll that was rather lanky for his kind, not to mention small and generally weak looking. That one would not make a good sacrifice, as the gods now demanded the souls of strong and worthy beings so that the rest could avoid the eyes of the invaders.

With his neck bound by a rope made from thorny vines, this runt sat helplessly as the others in this tribe bickered over what they needed to do. By the end of the night, he would be the last captive left, and despite telling these people that the metal men were not responsible for the slaughter of these tribes, his words ended up falling on deaf ears.

Well, if that was to be the response to his warning, then he wasn’t going to give a damn anymore. The gods had abandoned them long before they started trying to appease them with blood and gore, if they ever existed to begin with, that is.

Now there was a new group around, and it was making sure to wipe every other tribe from the planet. The strong would find themselves broken and made to serve, the females would be used as nothing more than breeding slaves, and the weaklings like himself, who only had his sharper than usual mind as an asset, would find their flesh in the gullets of these even more violent and brutal members of their own species.

He would be dead soon, regardless of whether the tribe that held him captive decided to sacrifice him before the Bloodmaw Tribe came here or whether that very same tribe found this little refuge first. There was a kind of tranquility that came from knowing that your violent, brutal, painful death was coming regardless of what happened, but maybe that was just his inner optimist trying to work damage control.

And so, he sat in his cage, the thorns in the braided vine rope making it painful to breathe, let alone move, waiting for something to happen. He didn’t need to wait much longer, as the pounding of war drums and the echo of horns alerted him to the incoming hell.

As he had suspected, the Bloodmaw tribe was about to come knocking. He had tried to tell these idiots in this tribe that staying in this place was a death sentence, but what would a runt know anyway?

He almost shook his head in disappointment as the sounds of battle, or rather, massacre, began to drift in with the cold night air. The smell of blood and fear was growing stronger by the moment, and he had to strain against his baser nature to avoid accidentally throttling or lacerating himself with the noose of thorns around his throat.

Suddenly, the sounds of violence took an unexpected turn, as the thunderous roar of one of the invaders’ death sticks echoed out across the night. He sat and wondered if doom had come for both sides, but as the survivors began to trickle and then flood into his cavern prison, he noticed that there were few, if any, members of the Bloodmaw tribe among them.

No, the growing numbers of Gnolls here were all either refugees that had been accepted due to their own skills being useful or members of the tribe that had both taken them in and was about to sacrifice him. Among these were warriors of all stripes, obviously scared shitless at what they had seen.

He reached out and pickpocketed a knife off of one of the warriors who stayed a bit too long around him before running deeper into the cave and began to saw at his unwanted neckwear. He had to see what was going on, even if it meant his death.

Finally, the noose was broken, and he bolted the opposite way everyone else was running. If he was to die today, then he would be the one to witness the fall of the Bloodmaw tribe with his own eyes, not hide in some corner like he was expected to.