Khureshi Fang Thrall (Sword and Board, Polearm)
The hardy local humans of Khuresh live a life of ceaseless adversity, existing under the fickle mercies of the Blood Naga. The Hinterlands’ elements, diseases, wild monsters, incarnating daemons and random Chaos phenomena ensure that most warm blooded beings typically live short lives.
The first encounters between Serpents and Men during the latter’s early migrations were highly unpleasant, as the Naga and Snake Men resented every younger race that followed their own creation by the Old Ones. They considered primitive Men particularly as teeming usurpers, as these bipedal creatures were one of the last intelligent beings to become civilized.
The only initial value that the Naga saw in mankind was that they comprised the most numerous of potential prey. As millennia passed the Serpents had come to understand the true worth of humanity as these bipeds were confronted with trial after trial across the world, rising to become the dominant sapient race in the present day, after the empires of the Elves and Dwarfs had entered their respective decline.
Mankind was resourceful and adaptable to hardship. Everywhere they were found, humans desired to understand and influence the environment around them, explaining phenomena through folklore and religion. Innate curiosity led to their development of advanced tools and skills independent of the elder races, which were then culturally passed down through successive generations. Even in Khuresh humanity had managed to eke out an existence in defiance of their plight by hunting the monsters that endangered them, herding what beasts they could tame, crafting their own armour and weapons and building terraced paddy farms on what habitable land they could lay claim to.
Humans were highly susceptible to the influences of Chaos, yet many were also compelled by some inner strength to struggle against the dominion of the Ruinous Powers. These qualities marked the race as simultaneously the most numerous opponents and servants of Chaos.
The serpent-Naga noted all of this and came to the conclusion that mankind were to be the perfect livestock and test subjects for their own purposes. Their capacity for self-expression, exchange of ideas, and organization on a mass scale also made them ideal fighting and labour thralls when properly indoctrinated.
During the Great Chaos Incursions the Naga and Snake Men sheltered the better part of their people, fabricating a mythology of mercurial but ultimately benevolent ophidian god-protectors who protected them in the darkest days. Nomadic hunter-gatherers, fishers or settled subsistence farmers, it mattered not to the Naga who came to weave legends that influenced the lives of the ancient Khureshi humans.
Unbeknownst to most of the Khureshi, the Naga kept and still keep the habitable areas of the Hinterlands fertile and unpolluted through primal Ghyran magic, not out of any sense of benevolence, but to ensure the stable supply of easily accessible prey and test subjects. More villages and human settlements than one would expect thus exist throughout the vast nightmarish expanse of Khuresh, and all are subjected to periodic hunts and raids on a measured scale. For the most part however, the serpent-Naga afford the local humans the illusion of autonomy.
The Blood Naga’s fearsome reputations also tend to keep most humans of other nations away from the jungle peninsula, so the Men of Khuresh have very scant contact with the outside world. These factors result in most Khureshi never seriously considering leaving their benighted homes. During times when the Storms of Magic blow strong, large numbers of refugees will sometimes depart from the Hinterlands under the auspices of one of the ruling Blood Naga Queens, and then only for their own nefarious intent and long prepared schemes.
The majority of human elders and shamans present within the human communities are direct or indirect collaborators of the Blood Naga, kept alive to instill lessons into their clans and villages that benefit the Snake Men and ensure obedience through fearful reverence. Open hunts by the Snake Men are rationalized away as deific retribution upon the transgressions of some convoluted taboo, or a seasonal force of nature that cannot be prevented. In the very rare event that an entire community rises in rebellion, the Blood Naga simply withdraw their protection of the humans from the wilder denizens of the jungles and allow the local Beastmen or monsters to run rampant within the settlements for a week or two.
Cults have sprung up among the human communities that foster a culture of worship and appeasement of the ‘Coiling Ones’, in an attempt to dissuade the serpents from devouring them. Hallowed pits filled with snakes or other slithering creatures are dug in many settlements and votive offerings are placed on stone altars in reverence. Mythologies have been invented, claiming that humans are allowed to join the Serpents in a warrior afterlife, provided they reliably contribute a tithe of flesh to the Snake Men’s cause in the material world. The humans in such settlements train ceaselessly in combat to prepare for such an event and imbibe snake poison from a myriad of local species to bolster their constitutions.
The Blood Naga are only happy to exploit this misguided belief and draw mobs of able warriors from these settlements, who the Snake Men refer to as Fang Thralls, when it is time for the marga to engage in open warfare. These remarkably resilient and motivated fighting men contribute to the Snake Men armies with their numbers and tenacity, tasked with tying down the infantry of opposing forces.
The Fang Thralls wield weapons modified from agricultural or hunting implements: sickles, choppers, polearms and wooden shields. Their hard lives inure them to pain and grant them a desperate wiry strength. Exposed as they are to the Hinterlands’ Warpstone-suffused atmosphere, deformities and disfigurements are common among the Khureshi humans where they are viewed as blessings as much as curses. Most display protruding spikes, scales and bony growths that prove useful in battle. Some among them are given the honour of equipping poisoned weapons by Pannaga leaders.
When the battle is done the Naga harvest the remains of the fallen Fang Thralls for the flesh larders and temple-laboratories, their souls consigned to the present Naga or Pannaga leaders. Most survivors are brought before the Blood Naga and inculcated with enchantments to become the next generation of elders, though a wily few see the Snake Men and Naga for what they truly are and escape in the mayhem to instigate rebellions in secret.
Khureshi Fang Thrall (Blowgun)
The human inhabitants of Khuresh use the spear-blowgun to hunt game and to protect themselves against predators at range. Tipped with a poison derived from the pulp of a carnivorous orchid found in the Hinterlands’ blood forests, such blowgun darts can effectively subdue some of the larger monsters of the peninsula, though only when deployed in large numbers. The speartips affixed to the front of the blowguns allow these tough men to fend off enemies that manage to close the distance or to finish off downed foes.
When deployed in profusion the poison of these blowgun darts can even debilitate a Sarpa Warrior should they manage to pierce through its hardened scales. This is why the Blood Naga keep Khureshi human tribes skilled in their use under more scrutiny than most, keeping their populations in check and actively encouraging cult worship to maintain compliance, though a small number of rebellious tribes still exist in secret.
In battle human blowgun users are deployed among the Fang Thralls, utilizing their training and skills in jungle combat to act as readily available, numerous and expendable skirmishers, under the watchful eyes of venom-spitting Naja leaders.
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