Woodmen

The Wodwos (also woodmen, wose, man'o'wood, or wildmen) are a race of wildmen found throughout the mainland. They are the offspring of a group of Elderwos who tried to rebel against the gods and were punished by losing their ability to speak and being covered in thick brown or red fur fur. They are larger than average men, typically standing between 7 and 10 feet high, and usually mind their own business, though they can be violent when threatened or when defending their territory. They rarely build buildings, do not wear clothes, have no written or spoken language, live in packs of 3-10 individuals, and only use simple tools for hunting. They are valued for their meat by gnomes and some groups of men, and are also considered sacred by gnomes.

## Physiology

Woodmen are humanoid, standing seven to ten feet high and weighing between 200 and 400 pounds. Their body is notably covered in course hair, which ranges in color from black to brown to red and even white or blonde in some individuals, though a strawberry blonde color is most common. Woodmen have large, hairless feet, and hairless hands with four fingers and an opposable thumb, which they can use to manipulate simple tools. Though often portrayed with human faces, their faces are typically covered in light fur with thick beards. Female wodwos are typically smaller than the males, standing from five to eight feet high, and are also covered in dense fur, with the exception of their faces, which are partially hairless. Females do not have beards.

## Life Cycle

Female woses typically bear one child at a time, though twins or even triplets are not uncommon. The gestation period is similar to a human, being ten months to a year, and wose give birth in similar fashion. Because they lack any kind of medical technology, the rate of death in childbirth is notably high, and for this reason they are considered extinct in the wild by the Third Age, though they still notably feature in legendarium and claims of their sightings in the wild persist.

Children mature slightly faster than humans, often reaching sexual maturity at twelve to fifteen years, and mate for life (see "Social Structure"). The period of fertility lasts from reaching sexual maturity until around the age of thirty, after which a wose is considered an "elder wose" (not to be confused with the ancient race of men, the Elderwos). Before reaching the age of thirty, a female wose may have up to a dozen children, though only around a quarter of them survive to adulthood due to lack of medical knowledge, failure to catch food, or being hunted to death by gnomes.

## Social Structure

Woodmen typically live in family groups, called "troops". Troops are led by one elder male, who will more often than not be the biological father of the rest of the troop. This often leads to slight inbreeding over time. In rare cases, such as when the forest is dense enough for multiple troops to congregate in one area, a large, multi-male troop will conglomerate together, in which case the males will fight each other for seniority. Any male who is beaten in a fight is often killed, leading to a stronger bloodline, though they also often flee to begin their own troops.

## Intelligence and Tool Use

The general consensus among scholars is that woodmen have sapience, though whether they are sentient creatures remains up for debate. One school of thought claims that, because they descended from the same ancestors as men, they must have the same intelligence as men, while another school of thought is that they sleep where they defecate, just like animals.

Reports of tool use among woodmen is very common, however. They have been confirmed to throw rocks in self defense, use rocks to crack nuts, build crude shelters out of tree branches, and even use dragonglass to sharpen sticks into spears for hunting and combat. They have also been observed using hyssop as a sponge to collect drinking water, and are often seen chewing on the plant.

## Woodmen in myth

Legend holds that if you can capture a live woodman, you can exchange him his freedom for revealing the secrets of the forest.