Hecklin
The fires of industry, the fangs of the beast
The Hecklin, us? Warriors, raiders, we march and kill and hunt. They call us crude, barbaric, say we aren't a TRUE people. No people is true when bloody face is pressed in the sand. We will fight, we will make, and our fires will eat our foes, like coal in a furnace. We do not flee, we are unyielding, like the armor of our Alphas. If you are smart, you will run, and we will allow it. If you are dumb, we will crush you into meal, and feast on your broken bodies, using your bones and skulls as gnawed trophies.The industrious raiders, known foremost for their towering blast furnace idols, and incredible works of the blacksmith, and also for their discovery and production of dangerous, and explosive, black powder. The Hecklin are a race of towering Hyena Men, inventive and imposing that spend their lives traversing the desert in nomadic raider tribes. With their imposing works, and mighty limbs, the Hecklin are known also for their sexual dimorphism, with their females standing tall as muscular titans clad in plate, wielding magnificent weapons of masterful make. The males live their lives as beta workers and tinkers within an Alpha females reverse harem, their lives spent to elevate their female Alpha to greater heights, this practice benefited by their diminutive and small frames, completely opposed to their mighty female protectors amazonian builds. These are the Hecklin, and they will march with the same fervor, ferocity, and crushing strength as the gears and cogs of their industry.
Basic Information
Anatomy
Crocuta Sapiens, are a sapient and intelligent mortal race primarily identified by their physiological traits and unique quasi mystical traits. Physically speaking, Crocuta Sapiens heavily resemble towering, bipedal hyena men with striped fur across their entire bodies. Compared to the Rakshi and Naga, which have notably human features, the Hecklin are near completely bestial. With angular hind legs, lanky and long arms,and vicious but short claws for their extremities. The chests of Hecklin are always barrel broad, tending to narrow closer to the hips, and they possess maws of carnivorous, shredding teeth, with a few supporting molars in the back for the consumption of necessary fibers. sexual dimorphism is especially prevalent in this species, as the females are universally larger, more muscular, aggressive, and dominant within Hecklin tribes, both naturally and culturally.
Regarding their skeletal structure and muscular systems, the Hecklin tend to produce abnormally high levels of testosterone among females, resulting in incredible muscle growth. Compared to the other species of Dasht that display animal traits, the Hecklin most closely resemble the Hyenas that roam the Savannah's, perhaps showing potential ancestry between them. Hecklin skulls are incredibly tough, and their jaws strong enough to crush bone, a carnivorous race at heart, generations of survival have also given them supporting molars for times when prey is scarce. Among all the races of Dasht, the Hecklin are the most notoriously difficult to kill, with their fur and leathery hides acting like a form of natural light armor, and their bones incredibly durable to support their often hulking frames. Their natural toughness belies their acrobatic capability, and it is well known that Hecklin are flexible, and possess great stamina, likely owed to their wild and quote 'barbaric' existence.
Genetics and Reproduction
Hecklin females reproduce entire litters of up to six pups, 75% of each litter reliably male, and use a set of four breasts to nurse the pups. The primary pair is only vaguely visible, and maintains a constant C size cup outside of gestation and pregnancy, with the supplemental secondary pair only becoming apparent during gestation and the nursing stage of infancy. Gestation usually takes between four and six months on average, with males reaching adult and sexual maturity at age 16, while females only reach true adulthood at age 20, and sexual maturity at age 24, on average. This dimorphism is offset by the fact that female Hecklin are still on par with most most adult male humans by age 12, and can completely outclass an average human in physical might by adulthood. The nursing stage of male infants generally ends after a single year, while females can nurse for up to three years, to support their constant, rapid muscle growth.
Dietary Needs and Habits
Hecklin are a roving species of Carnivorous predators, focusing primarily on hunting for food, though they can in times of scarcity digest plant material through supplementary molars. When hunting, Hecklin utilize a primitive hunting method reliant on pack tactics, though it digresses heavily from Wolf pack tactics. Unlike wolves, Hecklin hunt through actively aggravating and taunting their prey into lashing out, using tools and natural weapons to make strafing, bloody blows. Over time, Hecklin will force and aggravate their prey into wearing itself out from its enraged aggression, causing their blood to pump even harder, and bleed ever more viciously. Once the prey is incapable of retaliation, or collapses from exhaustion, Hecklin hunter packs descend on it, attempting to painlessly end its suffering through a snap of the neck or finishing blow through the brain.
Additional Information
Perception and Sensory Capabilities
Unlike their supposed ancestral creature, the Spotted Hyena, the Hecklin's have developed incredible eyesight at close range, akin to magnifying glasses. This supreme sight, however, loses much of its potency rapidly as the distance between their focus increases, rendering their ability to see at range without support laughable. Their sense of taste is also notoriously bad, as they possess very few taste buds, their culinary fare bland, or incredibly spiced, and usually paired with strong alcohols. Hecklin sense of smell is as predatory as it comes, but specialized in the detection or old meals and carcasses, or extremely fresh viscera and fluids. Finally, the Hecklin have a sense of hearing with the capacity to partially echo locate, through the Hecklin's telltale whoops and laughs, although this sense is often dulled over time due to the Hecklin's industrial lifestyle.
Civilization and Culture
Naming Traditions
Hecklin have no use for flowing, or 'beautiful' names, and often prioritize their names on guttural noises, supplemented by a title feat, such as 'Heart Ripper' or 'Steel Sings for Me'. The noises they often utilize as their primary name can be any sound that a Hecklin could realistically produce, from Howl, Growl, or Snarl, to Shuffle, Crunch, Cackle.
Beauty Ideals
Strength is beauty among Hecklin Tribes, with the culturally agreed upon 'beautiful Hecklin' being the most heavily muscled and brute strong. Although, this definition of beauty only extends to the Females of tribes, who exist in an Alpha status no matter the age within tribes, with the diminutive males more prized for intelligence than sheer strength. The smartest males are the most ideal, and the strongest females the most ideal.
Gender Ideals
Female Hecklin are expected to display their superiority and muscular dominance through feats of strength, wrestling, and brutal hunts for the largest of creatures. While males are expected to resign themselves to workshops, grunt work, and industrial progress, serving their role as workers. Curiously, among the Hecklin, males are not allowed to retaliate, lash out, or even reprimand females, no matter how severely treated they may or may not be. There is a common reality, where if for example a male Hecklin were to throw female pups off of him for causing pain through playful bites and claws, or push them away for causing irritation, that the alpha females often brutally beat the male in retaliation.
Courtship Ideals
The ideal courtship between Hecklin is an attempt by the male to integrate themselves either with an established, or newly forming reverse harem. The courtship is performed via the male using whatever set of skills he has to create something appealing or useful enough to the female that they allow him to join their reverse harem. Beyond this, the Male can make further attempts to either supplant an established primary partner, or entrench themselves as a females preferred paramour. But on the chance that the male in question fails their test miserably, castration is not unheard of, and is culturally accepted as the consequence for failure, because if the male in question fails, they obviously aren't capable breeding stock.
Relationship Ideals
The ideal relationship is that by which a females reverse harem accepts their place as mates and workers peacefully, doing all they can to elevate their Alpha female within the tribe. Beyond that, intimacy and romance are only vaguely represented, with only minor displays of affection for the female to avoid looking weak, or paint a metaphorical target on a preferred mates back.
Average Technological Level
Despite clear barbarism, and obvious brutality, the Hecklin are perhaps the most shockingly advanced and foremost technological race within Dasht. This race has completely shaken the norm of technology, and developed devices and technology that are completely unheard of and near impossible for the other races to reproduce. Foremost among the Hecklin's advances is the development of primitive steam engines, and the production and creation of black powder, used in conjunction with engines to power towering, mobile blast furnaces. Central to a tribes entire identity and culture, these furnaces reach an almost divine state, hailed as blessed constructs and divine channels to their god, The Laughing God, a trickster god known for his awesome and legendary technologies. Through the use of these blast furnaces, and a mastery of metals that puts the other races to shame, they've managed to develop primitive explosive mortars, and master the arts of industry, and the arts of sabotage, their terrifying 'Siege Clans' capable of leveling entire towns.
Additionally, though Hecklin architecture and structural engineering is often considered 'crude' and unappealing, that is owed entirely to the Hecklin's function over form culture. Despite their crude and considerably non aesthetic designs, their creations are regarded as some of the most durable, unyielding, stubborn, and secretly advanced in all of Dasht. Should any group try to siege an entrenched Hecklin tribe, they'll find themselves breaking of their fortifications and defensive structures long before their blades taste even a single hair. Additionally, owing to their masterful knowledge of metallurgy, Hecklin weapons and armor are so impeccably tuned and forged, that they offer flexibility, durability, and reliability far above anything most other smiths could forge. While a set of average Aashan plate would stop a Sandsharks teeth rending you limb from limb, the average Hecklin plate will swat away a charging Stonetusk.
Major Language Groups and Dialects
For all their industry, the Hecklin have spent precious little energy perfecting the spoken word, and speak most often in guttural, and halting common. Instead, the Hecklin speak using their naturally produced sounds, which can carry and be heard over far greater distances, with an instinctual understanding within tribes what each sound means. Adversely, this means no two tribes share the same exact understanding of another tribe, making communication between tribes often difficult, and frequently dangerous. Despite this, they have a gifted understanding of arithmetic, volumes, measures, and all manner of engineering values, and their recorded schematics and plans are some of the most detailed and intuitive among the races. Finally, the unique manner by which they communicate with each other, and their intrinsic understanding within tribes, has also led to unique accents within the noises produced, varying from one tribes guttural and almost demonically throaty noise, to another tribes lilting and airy tune tune and pitch
Common Dress Code
There is a heavy emphasis on wearing the heaviest armor or clothing that a Hecklin can find, to emphasize strength and superiority. Commonly, Hecklin females will wear leather knee length trousers, for their legs, and forged plate gauntlets coupled with a simple chest plate, both of which are frequently embedded with dense stones. Among the males, they often wear simple leather harnesses, forge aprons, and gloves, opting for more utilitarian functionality, although both genders sapient as they are, will happily decorate their attire in the interest of uniqueness. Males often stitch and embroider beautiful patterns, and pound riveted, polished metal into their aprons. While females decorate their weapons, armor, and tools with the signs of battle, or trinkets given to them by their favorite mate. But above all this simplicity, the Hecklin have a special fondness for color, and it is quite often that you will find Hecklin works gaudily painted, and masterfully dyed, giving their creations a uniquely colorful look.
This love of color extends even to their forged pieces, for some Hecklin have discovered ways to color and tint their alloys, leaving a tangible signature in the form of colored metals.
Common Customs, Traditions and Rituals
Like all the races of Dasht, the Hecklin have their own unique manner of burial and disposal of bodies, though theirs is certainly among the more alien of traditions. Unlike the Aashan who burn their dead and throw the ashes to the wind, or the Naga who dissolve the bodies of their dead in acidic underground pools. The Hecklin, upon one of their number dying, will butcher and cook the fallen in a cannibalistic feast of remembrance, where every bone, ounce of blood, and stretch of skin is prepared and cooked. All parts, save for the skull, among the Hecklin, they believe the skull is the true vessel of a Hecklin's spirit, the skull always saved and prepared for a special ritual elsewhere. Once the dead is prepared, they are consumed to the very last, the sound of dirge music, coupled with celebratory metal instruments like trumpets, and flutes.
Once the feast is finished, and their mourning complete, the immediate family and most dearly beloved of the Hecklin make their way to the tribes Blast Furnace. Each beloved member produces some manner of trinket, precious stone, or object of value to the dead Hecklin in question. Within the furnace, a sacred and supposedly divine alloy is mixed, known for its magnificent luster, and musical laugh like noises it produces when struck. The Furnace pours forth this sacred alloy, and it stirs and boils within a sacred cauldron used by the entire tribe for their funerary rituals and rites. Finally, the departed is celebrated through an honorary kneel, and then each Hecklin beloved by the fallen, takes a pair of tongs and dips their personal object within the cauldron, finishing with the fallen Hecklin's skull.
Through this process, the unique alloy clings and coats the object beautifully, and unlike other uglier alloys, it perfectly wraps around every ridge and hole, from jewelry chains to eye sockets. The objects are left to sit in the alloy as it coats them, and a special reagent is added to color the metal, further identifying whomever the fallen Hecklin was. After a period of a single night, the objects are withdrawn, and now coated in this beautiful, lustrous metal, brought to their home tent, where an altar is prepared. The skull is placed central atop the altar, and the coated objects beside it, the family finishing the last of their mourning with a special cake, topped with the ashes of the log used to cook the fallen. With that final act of remembrance, the name of the fallen is engraved in the skull by their sire, or Alpha, and if both cannot be present, the name is engraved by the tribes matriarch female.
Common Taboos
No matter the race, the greatest of taboos among the Hecklin is the murder of a child and/or their mother and father outside the field of battle. The Hecklin will not, under any circumstance, kill the immediate parents of a child, lest the parents in question meet them honorably on the field of battle. Before every battle, this mandate is given to their target, and they are given three days to decide who will and won't be fighting them, and any that flee the coming battle are given free reign to escape. After this mandate, the Hecklin tribe goes to war, and will slaughter and destroy whatever opposition they find, from the walls of a city, to the garrison within. This has led to them holding a strangely honorable status among other races, brutal and absolute raiders that they are.
Hecklin are forbidden from sharing their discoveries with other tribes and races, outside of their matriarchs explicit permission. Possessed of a powerful paranoia, the Hecklin believe that sharing their inventions and ideas dilutes their spirit, and angers The Laughing God. All ideas of a Hecklin, are by right, theirs and the tribe matriarchs alone, academic espionage and theft of plans and ideas punishable by crucifixion on spiked, rusting crosses. This belief is reflected in interspecies relations, and it is not unheard of for The Hecklin to burn every single building within a town down to ashes, but leave their schools or libraries completely intact.
Interspecies Relations and Assumptions
Altogether, though they make their lives as industrialist hunters and warrior raiders, the Hecklin are known too for their honor and respect of the other races, so long as it is returned in kind. Resultant of this respect, and their universal belief in the sacred right of children and non combative parents to live, the body counts of Hecklin raids are startlingly low among civilian populations. While still brutal and viciously effective in combat and raiding, their careful campaigns have set them as a considerably lesser evil to the other races. And, in fact, it is not unheard of for some Hecklin female warriors known as Safe-Keepers to protect fleeing caravans while they escape the city besieged by the Safe-Keeper's tribe. Despite these oddly specific behaviors, the Hecklin are still roving tribes of raiding marauders and occasional bandits, so they are still seen with distaste by the many races of Dasht.
Although the Hecklin as a race are diverse almost to a fault due to their fragmented and tribal nature, they do have a few perceptions shared between them.
How others might see you-
- Others likely see you as an innovative and original thinker, constantly thinking outside of the box.
- Others probably see you as vicious, tough, and a savage foe or ally in battle.
- You're likely considered a lesser creature by more prideful races such as the Naga and Glass Elves.
- Characters will probably assume you know something about the forge and smithy work.
- To you, the other races are probably seen as potential threats, not to be trusted without plenty of cause.
- For you, the Hecklin are known for their might and industry, and seeing characters that are lazy, beggarly, or cowardly probably incites anger.
- The Aashan and the Rakshi are likely who you'd be least xenophobic towards, due to common ground interest in industry.
- There is no shame in consuming the dead, as doing so makes their power your own.
- Perhaps you were excommunicated from your tribe for sharing a discovery with outsider tribes, or merchant caravans.
- Maybe you've decided to go on a quest to rediscover or take back a lost innovation that was abandoned by, or stolen from your family.
- Maybe the perpetual war of your race has disillusioned you to open warfare, and rank and file command, so you seek to make your own name.
Scientific Name
Crocuta Sapiens
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