Remembering hearing errant rumors of a Gnoll living in a sleepy Xyrisan town, I was curious enough to want to go and meet this inventor myself, and was surprised to find another commonality to spread to my web of relationships.

For the unfamiliar with them, being freed from outside corruption and returning to druidism and the ways of nature also instilled something of a dislike of industry and worked metals in the species. This has stalled out their growth as a society a bit, but in most regards their newfound mastery of nature magic has made up for it by allowing them to shape plants and forests however they liked. One of my inventor friends who ended up marrying into the Thorncaller tribe is trying to find a middle ground by showing them stonework and non-metal forging and workaround agricultural techniques, but that's slow going.

Of course, where there's a species that tends to follow a rule, there's always an outlier, people are people after all.

No sooner did the Gnoll tribes find redemption did they discard ALL metal they had picked up from their raider lifestyle, either casting it away or trading it back to society for things that they used. The few Gnolls that still had their tastes for worked metals and industry found themselves in an awkward spot. Especially the ones who were born totally mundane and without any magical potential - rare outside of Xyrisa, but not impossible.

So it was that Coska, the middle-eldest child of Rysa Thorncaller's multiple children and the only one who had no magical potential, left his homeland of his own volition for a place that better suited his creative mind without the limitations that would have made his family uncomfortable, moving to settle in a sleepy Xyrisan town between the capital and Vastel where he could practice tinkering and scrapping, as well as settling in quite comfortably in his new home. I have a theory that Gnolls that leave their tribes can get swallowed up by and imitate other cultures with shocking ease, perhaps because Hyena are pack creatures, and Gnolls are more feral than your normal anthro-Hyena, so their instincts mix in a weird way to avoid lone wolf syndrome, hence settling in so well to Xyrisa's society of inventors, but that's conjecture.

The Thorncallers are the leading tribe when it comes to open, friendly relationships with non-Gnolls, and I'm sure Rysa is proud of her far-off son for continuing that trend. For a Gnoll he's extremely well-spoken when it comes to Common, and he's also incredibly warm, welcoming, friendly and downright cuddly, being more docile and tame since he's male. He works as a small-town tinker fixing up the mechanisms and technology, while working on his own passion in his free time with things that go "boom" - he enjoys firearms, explosives and projectiles a lot, but he works carefully on them with intention of being put purely towards beneficial outcomes like self defense. In particular, he's quite proud of his masterpiece, the "Scrapmaw" cannon, which has multiple swappable nozzles that makes it everything from a shrapnel launcher, to a flamethrowing, to a vacuum gun that repurposes anything into a projectile. He's so proud and possessive of it though that the reason he hasn't gone home in a while is because he knows he'd be asked to leave it behind.

He calls his inability to return home without leaving the weapon behind "exile", but with an unserious smile on his face, and Rysa confirmed to me that is just him being dramatic, the entire tribe still adores him and he's welcome back at any time. Thanks to my friend Mari's work with the Gnolls he might have reason to go and visit home more often, I imagine with the mediation between advancement without metalworking, he'd be a huge boon towards her efforts.

I also cannot say enough - he is a treat to be around, he's fluffy, friendly, and like many Gnolls he experiences BIG emotions and can't restrain them, so if he likes you, you have a cuddly giant (relatively speaking, for 7'2") for a friend.

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

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I have a few backlogged characters, so starting off with this one!

At this point I think the Thorncaller family might end up being one that's almost entirely represented in artwork and as characters I and Lurker play and commission stuff of. Since I went with the idea that they're a druidic society, seeing an adopt that jumped out with me in design and personality but not theme made for a fun excuse to have one that's a bit more tech-focused on my very magical world, and going along with Rysa wanting the Gnolls to be better than they were, he's grown up into a sweetheart, even if he has an affinity for heavy duty weaponry and explosives.

Coska Thorncaller belongs to me!

Original adopt is by  LisaBlack89!