The Ku-Hakkara (pronounced COO-HAH-cah-rah), also known as the Desert Vandals, are an gnoll people who live in the deserts of the Taizzan Expanse. Long relegated to the margins of an inhospitable land, these gnolls make their livings as hunters, scavengers, and raiders, using their improvisational ingenuity to their advantage.
History
The history of the Ku-Hakkara is long and tumultuous. Constantly driven into fights both amongst each other and against those living around the Taizzan by competition for the scarce resources of the desert, all clans and tribes retain long histories of their victories and defeats in battle, all of which shape their modern identities. The Ku-Hakkaran as a whole have undergone cyclical periods of peace and warfare, building up prosperous communities that eventually decline and fall apart once they get too large to support themselves. In the modern day the Ku-Hakkaran gnolls are in a time of internecine violence, having turned once again to the raiding of other tribes, caravans crossing the desert, and the settled communities of outsiders to survive.
Other gnoll peoples elsewhere in the world, most notably the Bleached Bones and the Moon-Gazers, split off from the Ku-Hakkara during times of particularly pronounced strife to find new lives in other lands.
Geographical location
Ku-Hakkara settlements have been established across the Taizzan Expanse, especially in the western and southern parts of the region. Nomadic groups regularly wander the breadth of the desert, their travels taking them to places as far apart as the Banai Mountains in the Tirionite hinterlands, the Shedet Hills near the ruined cities of Akhom, and the edges of the Shields around Dur Untash and Kudurru.
Of the various gnoll heritages of Kishar, the Ku-Hakkara are the most likely to leave their traditional communities and tribes to journey the world more broadly. Often finding work as mercenaries or adventurers, individual Ku-Hakkara tend to travel wherever opportunities lead them, attracting a reputation as unconcerned who pays them as long as they get paid.
Culture
Religion
Ku-Hakkaran religion centers around the worship of their ancestors. The remains of the dead are often consumed as a sign of reverence, in feasts that bring together whole clans and tribes. Doing so is said to allow the living to learn the memories and gain the traits of the deceased, allowing them to live on in perpetuity. Not only family are consumed in this manner, but also worthy foes and other outsiders who have proved their strength to the tribe.Certain remains from the departed, particularly their bones, are then kept by their descendants so that they might further guide and assist their kin even after death - skulls are placed over hearths or near fire pits, and other bones are carried with each individual, often spoken to directly and asked for advice.
The Ku-Hakkara broadly eschew religious leadership, as it is instead the responsibility of each family and clan to keep to the proper traditions and consult the dead on their own.
Some tribes also adopt animistic beliefs, typically venerating the spirits of water sources in the harsh desert, while a small number of others have adopted aspects of the Chaskan and Kirnashal pantheons into their religion.