Isles of Hogmen

The island next to the Squid Peninsula is inhabited by short but muscled ape-like creatures with sturdy bones, heavy jaws, big foreheads, long arms, flat noses that suggest snouts and coarse black hair that nets them the nickname of "**Hog Men**".

Although scholars describe those creatures as dumb and closer to apes than men, some of those that were taken as slaves in the Blind Bastard's Domain have been taught the mongrel Azanese tongue of the merchants, but are mostly used as slave fighters.

They worship a dragon god they call "Wahakatadalar", carving huge statues of his likeness.

On the eastern fringes of the island lies the ruins of Gargasso, a colony once built by the Gnolls. The Gnolls were hoping to harvest the beautiful redwood trees to use in their own cities, but quickly abandoned hope when the colony was attacked and decimated by a group of Hog Men.

The surviving Gnolls ran with their tails behind their legs, obsessively muttering that savage "cannibal apes" attacked them deep in the rainforest.

## The Islands of the Hogmen

Southwest of the Squid Peninsula there is a series of islands covered in dense jungle. Frequent rainstorms hit the area, sometimes even carrying some of the volcanic ashes from the eastern winds. The jungle has grown into a dense mass of trees, branches and vines, making traversing them quite a hurdle. All around the island, there are proof of remnants from an ancient civilization: strange dragon statues, beautiful totems of idyllic humans and rock relieves of unknown rituals can be found if you pay enough attention, since the jungle has swallowed many of those. Only the biggest statues and structures are yet identifiable as such, apparently damaged after many millennia of disrepair and erosion by nature. Who were those people, how did they lived or what made them disappear, it is not known.

Instead, the islands are inhabited by the so called **Hog Men**. They are a small yet bulky humanoid species. They walk hunched and mostly live in the trees, having strong arms and legs to climb and to move across the jungle using the vines and treetops. Their physiology is similar to great apes, with small noses, overly big jaws, small beady eyes and big foreheads that somewhat feel they are pushing against their cranium. Their bodies are covered in fur, the young ones have light grey fur that can become green due to contact with pigmentation from the trees. With time, however, their fur becomes darker, until they reach adulthood, when it becomes black.

The Hog Men’s culture is extremely primitive, and that is probably caused by their low intelligence. They do not wear clothes, trusting in their dense fur to protect them from the elements. Their technology is limited to stone spears, stone knives, hand axes and so on. They do not know how to use fire, and such, they do not cook their prey. The Hog Men are exclusively carnivorous, hunting whatever game they can find in the forest, from boars to birds to fish. They do not seem to eat the plentiful fruit in the forest, instead using it as bait for their prey. Their social interactions are marked by violence: fighting is very common between all members of the tribe. It’s frequent to find lacerations and broken bones, but deaths are actually quite rare (with cannibalism happening after those rare instances). The Hog Men are extremely resilient, able to tank a lot of damage and still move on, something that’s believed to come from their need to survive falls from the trees. This also grants them a strong constitution, with hardy bones and bulky muscles, allowing them to perform feats of strength surprising for their small size.

Their culture is that of brutality and violence. However, they do practice religion. Explorers have seen them build and worship idols of dragons of many different names. The head of their pantheon is the Dragon God called "Wahakatadalar", who eats the other dragons in a never ending cycle. However, it is believed that the finely carved dragon statues abandoned in the wild and the rudimentary carvings the Hog Men build do not represent the same entity. Some have theorized that the civilization that came before the Hog Men were who originally worship dragons, but after whatever calamity wiped them out, the Hog Men saw their adored dragons as weak, and thus their own must eat the weaker ones as a sign of power.

## History

The Hog Men Islands have been targeted by enslavers and raiders from time to time, though trying to capture them deep in the jungle is a daunting task. As such, the numbers of slaved Hog Men is considerably rare, usually only present in arenas of the Blind Bastard’s Domain. The islands were also targeted by the Gnoll, though with very little success. In 3.099 ABE, the Gnoll Empire began a colonization project in the biggest of the islands. Seeing the commercial success of the Kingdom of Drunigzar, the Nameless ordered a similar expedition to the lands south of the empire. The Squid Peninsula proved to be impossible to colonize, the numbers of gnoll being pointless against the swarms of ants and termites. But the gnoll did manage to create a singular colony city in the biggest island: Gargasso. The Drunig explorers who had visited the island beforehand had talked the gnoll about the beautiful red trees that made up a good chunk of the jungles, as well as the remains of an ancient civilization that they had managed to find. They also talked about the Hog Men, and how they were dangerous savages. Undaunted, the Nameless wanted to expand through the sea, to begin building up the gnoll’s sea trade economy. The gnoll brought many of their beasts to the isle, and for a year, they seemingly prospered.

However, at the end of 3.100 ABE, the colony became the target of attack by the many tribes of Hog Men. The numbers of gnolls, usually great enough to swathe the bestial and unorganized Hog Men, were not enough this time: the gnolls are not particularly good sailors, not do they have enough ships to bring their numbers to bear in battles at the other side of the ocean. The gnolls couldn’t muster the numbers to fight the Hog Men, and their defenses were not particularly developed, thinking the natives wouldn’t be a problem for gnoll warriors. Short but brutal hit and run attacks let the gnoll garrisons that ventured into the jungle unable to chase the Hog Men, leaving the colony vulnerable. As such, the colony of Gargasso was burned to cinders, the surviving gnolls having to jump to their ships back to the empire to receive shame and punishment at the hands of the emperor. The many beasts the gnoll brought actually survived in the island, adapting and becoming part of the ecosystem. The island also has savage gnolls, since many of the maggot and hyena gnolls survived the fall of the colony, and became feral without contact with the empire.