Cacklers

Cacklers were boomerang-wielding hyenafolk from the Mantle. Part of the broader Chimeran group of races, they were wild, competitive, and believed strongly in survival of the fittest. They communicated in the Rivenoq language, as well as whoops, giggles, howls, barks, and clicks. 
== Appearance and Equipment ==
Adult female Cacklers stood about 7ft tall and weighed about 120kg, whilst males grew a bit shorter and leaner. All cacklers had quite a hunched posture and sometimes used their hands to help them climb or sneak. They had fur in shades of grey, red, brown, and black, with darker spots or stripes. They had powerful jaws, sharp teeth, clawed hands and feet, short tails, and muscular legs. They adorned themselves with furs and leather, carried flint tools, and decorated themselves with teeth, bones, skulls, and gemstones. Upon hunts, most Cacklers carried flint spears with wooden shafts (nice, easy, light, expendable), as well as bone/ivory boomerangs, which they were very adept with, and famed for. 
== Biology ==
Cacklers were obligate carnivores, and lacked the internal mechanisms to effectively digest plant matter. They did, however, have very robust gut biomes, meaning they could subsist on rotting meat. Nonetheless, they preferred live or fresh prey, because it tasted better and was safer. They had rough tongues for scraping meat off bones, sharp teeth, and could lock their powerful jaws on their prey. 
Cacklers had powerful senses of smell for tracking prey, but also to identify one another and members of their own clan via scent gland secretions. They also marked their territory with excretions or with stripped carcasses. Unless they were actively at war with another clan, most Cacklers would stop dead in their tracks if their prey passed into another clan's territory - losing the prey was better than sparking a conflict. 
They hunted in small raiding packs of 5-10 (no more than half the social clan would go at once), and were ambush and persistence hunters. They were keen trackers and quite quiet, and no strangers to chasing prey down for days. 
Female Cacklers grew larger than males, and had up to 3x their testosterone. Their gestation period was about 60 days, fairly short, which lended to their fast population growth and demographic elasticity. Mating in Cacklers was quite promiscuous, but female members of a clan with no children (pre-adult, or old) would help brood and raise the young of the female hunting-age ones. 
Cacklers mostly bore twins, which were born with their eyes open and able to run and fight within hours. In some cases, one twin would kill or injure the other soon after birth to innately compete for limited resources. Mothers were very protective of their cubs and would kill or injure others they did not trust to approach them. They were very intelligent and had good problem solving and even deceptive capabilities, using false alarm calls or mimicking monster sounds to scare off other cacklers. 
They grew rapidly but had short lifespans, reaching their adult size within 10 years but generally dying before they were 50. 
== Culture ==
Cacklers were one of the various races of Chimerans, which were monstrous humans that inhabited the Mantle. The overwhelming majority of Cacklers belonged to small gregarious social subunits, or clans (Rivenoq: Tu!a) of 10-30 individuals. Social subunits had despotic dominance hierarchies, which were frequently reshuffled through physical aggression. Dominant individuals had access to multiple mates (polyandry or polygyny), and the dominant individual had the first access to food, and the deepest sleeping burrow in the cave (lower ranking individuals had to sleep near the entrance, and be constantly vigilant).
Cackler culture was generally matriarchal, because of the adaptations above. It was uncommon, but not impossible, for male animals to become the dominant animal of a pack, especially if they were the largest (say if most the adult females were injured or killed). In Cackler culture, animals showing submission to a higher ranking adult would bow their heads or physically lower themselves to not be a threat. Cacklers also displayed aggression by whooping, cackling (hence their exonym) and howling - loud noises generally showed better fitness and bigger size. Cackler mating rituals were also interesting - aspiring mates would often present crippled kills to their hopeful partner, and if they approved, the partner would kill the prey, then they would both feed and finally proceed with the deed.
Cacklers were not above a spot of cannibalism of non-clan members of their own species in times of hardship.
In some social clans, there would be an elder who was exempt from the dominance hierarchy and from aggression, who was revered and treated as equal to the most dominant member. These elders wore skulls on their heads and performed songs, howls, and dances to ask for omens, grant good luck on a hunt, pray for healing or to please the Cackler god, Ts'ets'eq'. The god Ts'ets'eq, or the long necked one' was thought of as a great old Cackler with a very lofty neck and long legs which hunted high above the Mantle, upon the surface world.
Cacklers did not employ familial surnames, because parentage was hard to determine in clans, and instead identified themselves by their clan or group. They placed their clan name between their forename and surname, both of which were part of the same epithet. Cacklers often spoke or described things onomatopoeically. 
== Notable Individuals ==
=== Iksio Moor Rider ===
Active in the 1510s, a young male Cackler joined a gang of Malphurian raiders in the central Mantle. He gave himself the Euluskan name Iksio. After his gang was killed by rival hunters, he operated as a lone robber on the mushroom-forested moor road between Guzuth Toth and the entrance that led to the surface cave city of Kol Darim. He wielded a Felonilian steel sword, a glowing-eyed helm, and a King Mazander flintlock, and ate his victims after he robbed them. In 1516, he tried to rob the two investigators Smurf-neblin and Cursed-shelby. During their duel, the latter drow deflected Iksio's own bullet and killed him. They necromantically reanimated his body and used it as a grunt during their quests. 
=== Kyzie Up-go-er ===
Kyzie (Euluska spelling: Kaízi) was a female Cackler active in the mid-200s Collapse Era. She was a black-furred individual with a white belly. She emerged from the Mantle alone up to the city of Bracken, City of Thieves and one of the few surface cities that probably wouldn't have much problem with her kind. She self-styled as a dandy, gallivanter, and gambler, acquiring for herself a brass 9-shot Lyskaön single-action revolver engraved with claw marks, which she called Click-Clack-Bang, after its noise. She became a notorious cards player and a fearsome duelist, melding well into Brackian society (which, to be fair, was one of the least civilised surface societies, so it made sense - Bracken had a common doctrine of 'to each their own'). She was locally infamous among her frequent haunts; most people had never seen a beastperson, let alone one in a three-piece suit who played cards.
=== White Tiger ===
White Tiger was a young, reckless, prideful cackler matriarch who led her tribe, the Wylie tribe, in a small scale war against the loggers ofTreeknife, after her daughter Black Clover was killed by them, and after they started chopping down the sacred trees.
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