Chapter X - The Kankorans

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The kankoran are a fierce and savage people, descended from the ancient wolves. Near the average human height, kankorans appear as heavily furred wolf-men, complete with savage jaws and lupine demeanor. Strong and hearty, they are relentless warriors, more skilled with the ways of weapons than with what dabbling they have in the magical arts.

Kankorans appeared in the annals of early aelin explorers, as well as the records of the early Republic. They do not figure significantly, however - mainly as savages living in distant and frozen lands in the far north. It was not until the years following the War of Night that the kankorans came with any numbers into the lands of the south.

Driven by some unknown force, red-furred kankorans began a long and protracted' series of raids along the borderlands of the Republic. Gathering momentum along the way, the kankorans formed into a rampaging horde, rapidly sweeping through the already weakened provinces of Earendam, looting and pillaging along the way.

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This spree was not stopped until the kankorans reached the very gates of Earendam itself. The Republic was victorious over the kankorans, but the victory was a painful one -- with no one to hold the reigns over surrounding territory, the political landscape of Avendar fractured, leaving power vacuums here and there.

It was in the more northern reaches that a second wave of migrant kankorans arrived, brown, rather than red-furred. Victims of the long winters which had driven the earlier kankorans south, these wolf-men were more willing to share hunting grounds with the war-ravaged humans. Trading the fur and hides of their kills with hard-pressed human settlements, they carved a niche for themselves in the mainstay of Avendarian life.

Kankoran society is chiefly structured around packs of nomadic tribes, usually headed by the strongest and most powerful male of the pack. Occasionally, in times of crisis, or under the leadership of a truly powerful or charismatic male, one pack will rise to dominance over the surrounding packs, forming them into a horde. A mainstay of kankoran life are also their religion, which views their gods as manifestations of ancient wolf spirits -- a practice bordering on ancestor worship.

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Kankorans are seldom bound by any sort of law or rule, save the very primitive behaviors that typify behavior in the pack. In more recent times, the kankoran peoples have spread through Avendar, and one may even find them occasionally walking the streets of Earendam or Var Bandor, though those who leave their pack are still the exception, and not the rule.