Yainah

The Laughing Mother was a minor Young God. She was affiliated with the Six Mothers of the Pashak and tried to join in their act of creation, but her own creations were weak and sickly. The other gods mocked her and even her own sisters scorned her beloved creations, and in desperation she accepted the aid of one who offered to make her creations stronger, not realising that this one was no helpful celestial, but Rahgn the Demon Jackal, Demon Prince and self-styled Beast of Butchery. She allowed him to pass his power into her children, and thus were born the yainah, strong and hardy, but sick with the lust for blood and destruction. Rahgn took these children, casting the Laughing Mother aside, and made them his army. With them, he carved out the realms known as the Kingdoms of Jackals.
His scorn for the Laughing Mother was misplaced, however, and she came to some of her children and imbued them with the greater part of her own power. These priests, the Weepers, led a revolt against Rahgn’s Flinds. The Kingdoms of Jackals were broken and overrun by others. The genies took back the Dustlands, while the Centaurs took the ranges in Caino and the Kingdom in Suto was lost to the Smoothfolk.
The yainah themselves went many different ways after this. The Suto packs broke from Rahgn and founded an anarchic, but functional society composed of family bands, each of which consists of mercenary warriors who earn the band’s keep, with the others providing the other labour necessary to support the family.
In Caino, the packs split between those that revered the Laughing Mother as a saviour, and those that came to blame her for the fall of the Kingdom and returned to the service of Raghn. Neither group ever again established a kingdom of their own, instead remaining as packs, some of which are loosely gathered into larger alliances known as clans. Most of these have settled into a similar structure of mercenary families to the Sutan packs, while those who embraced Raghn remain a scattered threat in the wilderness, despite numerous attempts to wipe them out.
The yainah of the Dustlands scattered across Yethera, finding places as hunters and killers. A large population remained in the Dustlands in reduced circumstances, until Don the Shadow-Weaver found them and brought them into Talahaea as the elite shock troops of the Sovereigns. They were a key pillar of the arcanocracy’s strength, but the outside of the Majistry, the management and handling of the packs was put into the hands of the Sovereigns’ priesthood. As a result, the bulk of the packs sided with the Union during the War of Hubris. Yainah still form a key part of the Church deltor organisation, and their civilian kin often enjoy a comfortable status. The surviving Donaran packs, remaining loyal to the Majistry and the line of Don, fled through the Gap of Don in search of the ‘Old Master’ after the fall of the last Majister.
Even in areas where they have integrated into society, yainah tend to live apart from the general population, who find their habits – in particular their appetite for raw, well-aged meat, their spasmodic laughing cry, and the logistical incompatibility of their broad paws and non-retractable claws with generally accepted table manners – off-putting. Many packs - called cackles among those who revere the Laughing Mother, and clans among those dedicated to the Demon Jackal - live in isolated, sometimes religious, communities, or their own, typically ramshackle villages, or else maintain a nomadic lifestyle. While many yainah have adopted local religions and modes of civic authority, traditional cackles have a tripartite government, with civil, military and spiritual rule divided between the Laughing Lords, the Huntmasters and the Weepers, who then form a joint ruling council.
Periodically, cackles in Yethera or Suto will revert to worship of the Beast, but such aberrations rarely last long, since the cults of Rahgn - while extremely destructive - are rarely subtle.

Gnolls and Identity

Yainah build their identity around pack and purpose, and to a lesser extent through gender.
The pack is an extended family, but also a self-sufficient working unit. The pack has a purpose, the work that it does, be it farming or hunting or service to the church. Those yainah whose personal purpose matches that of the pack are given higher status, while others within the pack have supporting roles, keeping the unit functional and ensuring that the pack's cubs are cared for. Those who do not fit in at all will usually leave to join a different pack, while retaining ties to their original group.
Yainah have five genders, which match their physical sex characteristics, but do not always map one-to-one; a gnoll may identify as a gender divergent from their assigned sex. Most yainah are to some degree intersex, and the differences between male and female sex organs is subtle. Yainah may be considered male, marl, yarai, ferd or female. Marl are primarily male intersex individuals, ferd primarily female, while yarai are considered ‘true’ hermaphrodites. Fully male or female individuals are rare, and are often considered incomplete, while the even rarer yarai are considered exalted among the masses, and typically hold positions of authority among the pack.
Marl yainah are favoured by the Demon Jackal, who only transforms marls into his flinds. Conversely, the Laughing Mother, creator goddess of the yainah, communes with her children through her exclusively ferd Weepers. As a result of this, there is a certain association of marls with military roles, and ferd with spiritual, but with the exception of the flinds and the weepers, neither sex nor gender are prescriptive of social role.