Today's writing takes me back to somewhere I've grown fairly familiar with, to tell about a very ah... strong friend.

I've written before about Rysa, of course, as well as her middle-child Coska and the youngest grown adult Drokar. Today I'm writing about her eldest child, someone who has stories in her own right – the Grinning Bludgeon, Agren (Ah-Gren. Gnollish names blessedly have an easy naming scheme of two syllables with soft start, harsh middle, soft end).

I think a lot of people would actually be stunned and intimidated to know that she's TALLER than her nine-foot-six-inch mother, albeit, just by two inches (but when you're in the upper range of nine feet, that two inches can be pretty significant...) And a decent bit more muscular, but she clearly favors Rysa a lot appearance-wise. While her mother and younger brother took to magics in more exterior ways, Agren's manifestation of her magic is handled similarly to Iruka's where she feedback loops it into her body, giving her already frightful physical prowess a magical backing.

This paired with the kanabo she loves swinging around earned her a well-deserved reputation as the Thorncaller clan's main line of defense against hostility. Some of her younger siblings' near worshipful praise of her told me of how she once whiffed a swing while trying to fight off a werebeast menacing a group of cubs. Even though she missed, the force of the swing backed by this surge of magic and protective instinct still carried a shockwave so powerful it tore the creature in half at the waist, despite having made no physical contact.

Of course... I would be remiss to mention as well that she came to blows with the now-king of Telorna at one point a few decades ago. It was a grand misunderstanding – Arceda Telorna was anticipating hostility from the recently-cleansed Gnolls and came with his full guard, and at the time Rysa was still training with Salith to become a proper Archdruid, so she wasn't around to diffuse hostilities.

Details of what happened were hard to get though, because when I asked her she was too busy laughing about it, having a great time recounting the details, to actually TELL ME about those details. But from what I could make out from reading up on it later, a jumpy guardsman had a crossbow misfire into a tree that a scout was watching from, and they panicked, assumed hostility, and she jumped the Telornans.

And she, to put it ever so politely, beat the shit out of them.

Using her magical feedback, she summoned up elements into her weapon that let her knock around these trained, armored elite soldiers like toys and backed it with her incredible strength, just having fun playing with enemies she hadn't encountered before.

The fight only ended when Cedric's grandmother, The Green Witch and one of Telorna's Great Heroes who worked closely to help the Gnolls and friend of the royal family, made the entire forest around the conflict shift and bound everyone in the trees until they could explain themselves, reading them the riot act all the while in a rant so scathing and foul-mouthed I don't want to put it to text, despite her remembering every word verbatim (she broke down laughing before she could finish though).

Supposedly, King Telorna was so embarrassed and humiliated at his mistake and the fact that he only survived the encounter because Agren thought he was cute that he left the region without even finishing his trip, but left behind a letter for The Green Witch asking her to help forge peace with the Gnolls and prevent any misunderstandings like that from happening again.

That pretty much says all it really needs to about her prowess I feel... she overpowered the Telornan kingsguard, knights trained to slay threats as immense as dragons, by herself.

For all of that though, she's SO sweet and friendly, and is quick to find humor and laugh at just about anything. Rysa joked to me that when you're as strong as Agren is, you can afford to be the main line of defense against the various wild threats in the Unchanging Forest while keeping your smile intact, so despite protecting her clan from werebeasts, still-corrupted tribes, bandits, and so on and so on, she's nothing but friendly. Even when she fights she never drops her grin, and she'll accept surrenders if she doesn't kill them on the first blow, all of which is how she earned her epithet.

Understandably as “Big Sis” to the entire clan, even the younger Gnolls that have no blood relation to Agren think she's the coolest thing ever and they're always flocking to her when she returns home from being out, and even the adult siblings had nothing but praise and love for her. And since she's basically the apex of attractiveness to the Gnolls, she has a few mates and children, herself.

And of course, she has a place in the relation between Gnolls and the royal family that was created when Cedric and Linara paired off together, due to the former's connection to the Thorncallers. I want to be a fly on the wall if she ever gets to go to the Palace of Wills and sees Arceda again. I know former-King Recarn, gadfly as he is, will probably have some sharp teasing to give his son over their history.

Sometimes the Thorncallers feel like an entire family of eccentrics, but since Gnolls are still trying to find a place in the world around them, those eccentricities are doing them all nothing but favors, really.

- Veluren Thanazel, the Sights and People of Vakkert Sedd.

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It's that time again. A new Gnoll appears!

As ever it goes, when it comes to people rooted in Sedd, I try to look at Archtypes and classes for inspirations, alongside what I haven't done before to keep things fresh.

I feel like Agren as I've characterized her is some kind of weird mishmash of Karlach from Baldurs Gate's personality and traces of Katakuri from One Piece's design and family role stuffed into a Gnoll-shaped framework, and if you get either of those references thank you for being as much of a dork as I am.

ANYWAY, we have a smiling, grinning Barbarian who fights as protector and has no real bloodlust to speak of because she just as a great time being herself and being so strong and confident in her skills that she has no reason to ever let herself really red out, while being up there as a more physically leaning character in a cast where my "adventurer" type characters tend to lean towards being mages.

I also, unlike the previous Gnolls I've gotten, had her custom-designed using just a headshot as a baseline! The extra control over the design and bringing up her relation to Rysa really helped pull the idea together I think.

Artwork was done by the ever amazing  LisaBlack89, my one-stop shop for Gnolls at this point.

And Agren belongs to me!