Quinkin

During the day the shadowy **Quinkins** like to keep to themselves inside of the caves they call home; but once the sun goes down the quinkins come out to play pranks on the large folks and steal small household objects such as wooden spoons and hide bags.

## Description

Quinkin are mischievous creatures who stand around 10 centimetres tall and weight around 165 grams. Their bodies resemble thin human children, but with the tail of a kangaroo. They use this tail to leap great distances of almost 5 metres. They have thin necks on top of which their small flat spoon-shaped heads rest. On this head it has two glowing eyes which allow them to see in the dark, a slit-like mouth. Their skin is as black as the night itself and most quinkins tattoo themselves with white ink to break up their silhouette.

Despite their love for household objects the quinkin greatly dislike shiny objects. Great concentrations of light hurt their eyes and cause them to become disorientated. Because of this the best way to ward of the quinkin without resulting to violence is to lay down a few multi-faceted quartz crystals around a campfire. These concentrate the light of the fire to hurt the eyes of the quinkins.

## Culture

Quinkins are friends and masters of the wildlife that lives around their cave. They use local birds, such as the kookaburra, to fly around and survey the area outside their domain. Their biggest and most important animal companions are the quinkanas, large terrestrial crocodiles that walk with their legs under them and reach the size of an adult human, which they breed inside of their caves. The hatchlings are used as mounts for the quinkin outriders to ride on and once they grow too big the quinkana are used as village guardians.

Small quinkin tribes make their villages inside of cracked rocks while the larger tribes live inside of caves. They build their houses with the wood of the ghost gum tree.

## The clans

There are two major clans of quinkin, to which all tribes align themselves: the chaotic good Timara and the chaotic evil Imjin. These two quinkin clans are at constant state of war with each other and battle each other for both territory and the ownership over unknowing nearby humanoid villages.

### **Timara**

The Timara are longer and more slender than the Imjin. They are whimsical quinkins who feed off the land and like to pull innocent pranks on bigger folk. The warriors of a Timara tribe stand vigilant over any humanoid village inside of their territory, protecting them from Imjin and looking for any sight of an attempt at kidnapping. This often results in a battle to the death between the two clans. The rest of the tribe spends their nights gathering berries and receiving small ceremonial gifts from the villages as thanks for their protection and as a bribe to stop the stealing.

### **Imjin**

The Imjin are shorter and more stocky than the Timara. They are malevolent quinkins who feed on the flesh of the large folks and wear humanoid bones as jewellery. They constantly raid humanoid villages in the death of night to kidnap its weakest members, be they a child, sick, or elderly. Their victims our bound up and thrown into a giant pit in the middle of the Imjin lair. Over several days the Imjin cut off pieces of meat from their living victims to feast upon.