Mabrouk
The thing before me was like nothing I'd ever witnessed before in my life. It stood, or more appropriately slouched, like the weight of it's disproportionaly long arms were dragging it down, a little shy of 3 feet tall. Its face was a sight I'm not likely to forget, covered in patches of scraggely hair, with two putrid yellow eyes occupying nearly half of its face. The other half was devoted to a set of teeth that resembled nothing more than the pirana that infest the waters surrounding this gods forsaken island. If this is but a sample of what horrors this island holds, I feel that I would be better off finding the next boat back to the sixty kingdoms.
Anonymous Colonist
When I got off the ship on Bisaya, I was poorer 'an dirt. I had the clothes on my back and Cassandra, my sword. Anyways, I heard that the Company was offering a bounty for Mabrouk scalps, 2 silver bit a head. Now, I'd been there long enough to see some of the tame ones they've got running 'round, with that Stone tattoo on their forehead to show that they ain't worth nuthin' for a bounty. Well, I headed off into the jungle, intent on making enough to at least spend a night or two at a tavern and get dead drunk.
Now, let me tell you something 'bout them Bisayan jungles; once you get some hundred paces or so into them, the sun dissappears, it's like your walking around in the Shadow Court. You hear things too, horrible things, noises that shouldn't exist. Well, 'bout two days in I run into a small troop of them, only about 20 of them. Now, I say a small troop, and 20 is small, but when you got 20 shrieking, howling demons dropping out off the sky, smelling of death and piss and less mentionable things, you stop thinking and just try your hardest to not soil yourself.
Anyway, I was lucky that time, I just started swing Sandra round wildly, not really trying to kill any of them, just keep them away from me. Now, soon as I'd cut one of them itcs mates would turn on it and tear it too pieces. Soon I was standing there, bleeding from a dozen places with 20 mutilated corpses at my feet. Worlds got a sick sense of humor too, only 'bout five of their scalps weren't shredded and worthless. 'Round a week later I managed to rawl my way out of the jungle, my wounds enflamed and racked by a fever that I thought was gonna kill me. A silver and some bits ain't enough to pay for a healer, so I ended up having to sell myself into a couple years of indenturtude to pay for the healing, shoulda just done that to begin with. I'm telling you kid, the two bit a head ain't worth your life.
--Graf, Temple Guard
Excerpts from Bisaya, its People and Stories, by Gyma the Scholar
The Dark Elves of the Bisayan jungles tell a story of how their Goddess punished the Mabrouk for their hubris. They say, in the time before time, that the Mabrouk were once a great people, builders of tall towers and massive cities, but they were a godless people. Not in the religious sense that they worshipped a false god, but in the sense that they were a people who didn't have a god of their own. So they sought to make one, whether they succeeded or not the Elves tales don't tell, but they did succeed in angering the Goddess, who gave them the Curse that they stuggle under to this day.
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According to Smyt, the proper name for his people isn't Mabrouk, but Gobliin, or Gobal in the singular. Mabrouk came into common use because it is the Gobal word for hunger.
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The Mabrouk are a wild people, and generally not much given to intelligable thought, let alone magic, but every once in a while there are born a few of them that could be described as more than intelligent. They abandone the troop of their birth and travel to the ruins of the abandoned civilization found scattered throughout the island. These are the magi of the Mabrouk, possessed of an intelligence well past the human norm and with an animal cunning that you only find in the wild people, these Mabrouk are more dangerous than anything else found on the island.
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ia ia garong
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