Do you like the new gnolls?

4E Gnolls best Gnolls by far.

>tfw a cool thing gets destroyed

Not even a furry (yiff in hell) but the 4E gnolls were pretty neat. I will eventually convince my DM to use the old version some time (but he likes Gnolls as a "spooky evil thing you shouldn't feel too bad about slaughtering" option...)

I think this is the first and only time I prefer 4e's lore.

Gnolls a shit, so yeah, having them be demonic cannibal shitwolf hyenas instead of transnigger furbait sits just fine with me.

As long as you ignore FR 4e has pretty good lore sprinkled all through it.

But FR is the only non-homebrew setting people play in since 3rd

Memes aside, I really liked their article on Bane.

And that is why humanity isn't worth saving.

It was good, very balanced for an evil deity.

>not playing eberron
>not playing dark sun
What bumfuck yokel-ass neck of the woods do you come from where this is true?

>playing FR
>playing Eberron
>playing Dark-sun
What bumfuck yokel-ass neck of the woods do you come from where this is true?

>eberron

Which reminds me, there's a Gnoll singer in Sharn in one of the nightclubs putting the gnoll voice mimicry talent to good use.

The club is called Glitterdust
It's frequented by sailors
It's probably fruitier than a shipment of dried figs, but the setting draws no attention to this.

You seriously need to kill yourself. Your choice of words, ridiculous and inflammatory opinion, jesus. Go away.

Whoa, dude, you need to chillasaurus rex.

Yeah, that guy drank a little too much of the meme kool-aid, but not liking gnolls isn't some crime against humanity. They're hyena-headed dudes at their base, and there's plenty of room for opinion around that.

I like them. Between goblinoids and the new gnolls, I can finally live my dream of orc genocide by writing them out of my games for good.

Lotta loyalty for an evil PC

Yeah, since it buttblasted furries. Also, it made them more evil and fucked up, which is how I like monster races. Only downside is they removed their love of torture, which I think always helped convince the party of how fucking evil they were.

Best post.

4e gnolls were legit.

>your opinion is bad so kys
How about you do so? At least he's not shitting on other posters.

Someone tell me what exactly changed?

They've basically been stripped of any sense of culture aside from "murder everything until you die."

Essentially, the meeting for their design had one guy sitting in the back saying "but that's not metal enough" whenever someone suggested something.

I'll bite. how's your homebrew different?

Is that actually a thing?

Because that's kind of funny if it is.

They became edgy as fuck.

>not metal enough

Yeah, but metal has always been laced with a sense of humor, this is just straight take-me-seriously-dammit edgelord stuff.

Awwww....

Don't have the full write up with me right now but the basic gist of it is there's three groups
>EVIL AS FUCK demon worshiping assholes to the far south, who have gone from tribe, to kingdom, to borderline empire ALARMING QUICKLY, probably have the support of an actual full blown god and are quickly becoming a hub of slavery down south
>Tribal gnolls that live in the closer south, polytheistic but most worship is focused on a totem spirit, usually a demon but some are elementals or other things, not so much evil as "anyone not part of the tribe isn't technically people", though as long as you're not a threat the tribe nor would the tribe be helped by you dying they'll range from not giving a fuck to being actively helpful to strangers admittedly heavily inspired by Digger and younger me finding the sin-eater beliefs some tribes have cool
>Norther gnolls, a mix of refugees, immigrants, and converts, semi-nomadic and mostly ping-ponging between various seaside cities following seasonal work, a recent development due to the expanding empire to the south and the recent increased trade from 'civilized' races expanding down south they follow a hodgepodge mix of old tribal beliefs but with many of the northern gods taking the place of the spirits they used to worship and the teachings and morals interpreted through the lens of their old cultural beliefs, though on a whole they're slowly assimilating and a few true enclaves are starting to form in some of the larger cities

Also there's the standard gnoll femdomish stuff in there, like females being bigger, more muscular, and dominant, and gnoll courtship involving the female affectionately bullying a male into submission, no pseudopenis though, I have some standards

>no pseudopenis though, I have some standards
Weak. Full spotted hyena or nothing.

Heres mine:
There are roughly three groups of gnolls: the northern civilized group who are a mix of kazakh and northern indian cultures with a matriarchal bent. They worship a large number of gods and spirits with O'Istidir She-is-fiercer in azerbaijani leading the pantheon.

The central culture which is more nomadic and mostly herders, with much more ancestor worship and sometimes are demon cults and worshippers of Odur He-is, Lamashtu, and Pazuzu Sweetgrass Voice.

The western border is pretty much filled with demon cults and every awful stereotype of gnolls from D&D, and is the border that leads towards notEurope. They tend to be prion diseased hillbillies and incestous rednecks and tribal people.

The southern border of their lands is a DMZ with the Dragonborn empire and is basically a 10 mile wide by several hundred mile wide wasteland that kills most anything that strays there. Its maintained by powerful Truenaming magic inscribed on giant obelisks created by an act of powerful divine magic during the last war.

Query: if gnolls had replaced orcs as the "bad guy humanoids of choice", with heroic gnoll/half-gnoll replacing half-orc as the "original/default edgy PC race choice" (until 4e made tieflings core, anyway), do you think that their 5e fluff would have come to be?

Probably not. If they fulfilled the same role as Orcs do now, their background would probably be similar. And if Gnolls/half-Gnolls were a PC race, that'd be very likely to prevent them from being retconned into "always chaotic evil and literally being controlled by a demon lord", since that would make them very unsuitable as PCs.

Likely what would happen is that since Orcs would now be "the other barbarian marauder race" they'd get the edgelord treatment to make them stand out.

Morbidly curious now; how would you make a half-gnoll, in terms of appearance & crunch? Hard mode: it's not a hideously malformed abomination (at least, no more so than PF half-orcs are) and nor is it mechanically gimped (like pureblood orcs traditionally are).

Lazy answer to the "appearance" in hard mode is, obviously, a hyena version of the kemonomimis who keep popping up around here - kitsunes and catgirls. Crunchwise... it'd kind of depend on what a gnoll PC writeup would look like.

Speaking of which, anyone interested in a Gnoll PC writeup for 5e D&D? I've got one I've been trying to tweak and make it more balanced.

Crunch wise, 5e has a common trait among most gnolls called Rampage, which lets them get a free move and attack whenever they drop someone below 0hp. That's not particularly overpowered for half-gnoll to have, and it also semi-functions as a way to group the weaker gnolls and gnoll-like beings, with creatures like Flinds checking for whether or not a creature has Rampage rather than whether or not it's a gnoll.

Nah, I'd make them look like someone tried to meld an ape together with a hyena and quit halfway through; there's a very good reason why Gnolls forgo the "rape" part of "rape, pillage, and burn", even if they have otherwise zero other moral considerations, because half-gnolls are absolutely terrifying to both parties.

>Appearance
Fur covered but short and possibly patchy, plantigrade feet like a human, claw like fingernails, short muzzle or no muzzle but dog like nose, large round ears like a mix between human and hyena, enlarged clitoris for women due to influence of gnoll genes, tall, well muscled.

The "Friendly Intimidation" bit reminds me of the Thri-kreen.

Aha, finally found the picture. Here's a pretty good half gnoll.

Eh, they're ok. I don't hate them.

Excuse me, apparently I can't read. Deleting.

Yes. so much yes.

They're not anthro-hyenas or hyenapeople. They're mutated hyenas in a twisted humanoid shape, from feasting on the flesh of the corrupted dead. Their numbers can be easily replenished, so long as there are hyenas and corpses.

They cackle in mockery as they drive at your heels, spreading madness and discord as they go.They are wicked and terrible, the children of Yeenoghu, a demon prince who desires only chaos, confusion, slaves, and slaughter.

All gnolls leave in their wake are ghoulish people, gore, and ransacked villages. Witches and cultists supplicate themselves before Yeenoghu, and are imbued with his power and madness. The Hyena mythologically is considered akin to the black cat for witches.

Some quick notes i've written on Yeenoghu and Gnolls:

Yeenoghu: Beast of Butchery, Gnoll Lord, The Laughing Hunter. Enemy of Baphomet. Wants only slaughter and bloodshed. Hyenas, gnolls, ghouls, ghasts, werehyenas, witches (same assocations as black cats), confusion, treachery, stupidity, cannibalism, thieves (children born during a hyena crying), hyenas can mesmerize victims with their eyes or pheromones, vampires, bodies of werewolves. slavery, Dig up and consume corpses.
"Fisi, the hyena, hermaphroditic self-eating devourer of the dead, trailer of calving cows, ham-stringer, potential biter-off of your face at night while you slept, sad yowler, camp-follower, stinking, foul, with jaws that crack the bones the lion leaves, belly dragging, loping away on the brown plain . . . "

Source?

That's Ribbon, from the Veeky Forums Explained comic, by a local drawfag. You can find all of the strips collected on 1d4chan.

This nigga gets it. Noble savage fags need to move to California and fucken stay there.

Demon murder gnolls are best gnolls

>it's either Noble Savage Furry Hippie Commune or DemonMurderFuckCannibal, because that's the only two things a beast race could possibly be

Thanks for confirming my suspicion that the only people who like this boring one-dimensional shit are folks with no imagination.

Im sorry but 30 years of lore being chucked out the window for horribly simplified demon spawn is utterly shit and should be aborted along with everything else about 5e.

Bumping.

A beast race is a wrong thing. It's animal mixed with human. Warhammer and Glorantha have beastmen right. The Minotaur isn't a race of seafaring bullmen. It's a flesh eating monster born from the womb of a mad queen who laid with a bull by the whim of a terrible god. Beastmen are perversions of nature.

>Johnny Bravo Gnoll

Heh.

>Warhammer and Glorantha have beastmen right

>My preferences aren't subjective

If you like the way they handle them, one would think you could just play in those settings, and D&D wouldn't have to throw out everything we knew about gnolls and replace it with nothing but "They're evil. Like all the time, dude. That's all. Go kill 'em I guess."

>30 years of lore.

Let's look at Gnolls in AD&D 1e shall we?

>Chaotic evil
>Low-Average intelligence
>Gnolls travel in rapacious bands of loose organization
>Will join with other groups to have a better change as fighting, raiding, or looting.
>Largely live underground, some live in abandoned/raided villages
>Have hyenas and hyenadons with them
>Also have slaves for food and labour

You see, you say all that, but they only things Pikeman Paul, Mercenary Mikey, and Nobleman Neddy are getting from that is "They're assholes, kill, burn and torture to your heart's content, possibly enslave And/or rape if ballsy enough."

The thing about people is that the more they can dehumanize their enemy, the more willing they are to do horrible things to them and the less willing they are to learn anything about them that doesn't help with killing them. If you make "Dickass McMurderKill: The Race" not only are the people who have to deal with them do so with less decency than they would treat a wild animal, but they're not going to bother giving shit beyond "shit to kill". Which, now that I think about it, would make for an interesting quirk to have a people that have lost their moral qualms when dealing with scary, evil, irredeemable, Gnolls and now act more horrifyingly monstrous and callously brutal towards Gnolls than Gnolls ever could to them.

But putting that aside, that's not even accounting for the effects on the PCs, whose actions are determined by people that know the world is fabricated and will only ever think of them as "Health bars and loot".

There is a place to hire changlings to play your family for a day.

Eberron is a weird place.

>As long as you ignore FR

Done and done.

That's the idea. Of course you're going to want to kill them, when you find the half-eaten dead in the streets, the enslaved mortals who toil in fear of being eaten next, or the panic and terror then incite in towns and villages when they come near.

You'd be a fool wanting to not want to kill them, for they will do the same to you without remorse, and if not kill you, enslave you and work you to the bone, and when your usefulness has ended, eat you.

The cultists of Yeenoghu and his witches sometimes manage to stave off the gnolls, but as Yeenoghu enjoys chaos, not even that will keep you safe from them. Still, many people think it's safer to be an ally than a victim.

As a specific interpretation of the gnoll, I like it. Purgin an' scourgin an always evil species is just good fun!

However, I take issue with the fact that Wizards are explicitly saying that gnolls can't be anything different, that they can't stop being complete edgelords, and that they can never become PCs. It shuts down player choice and it puts unnecessary restriction on worldbuilding.

I can't believe I'm saying this, but 4e did gnolls better. Much better.

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>The Minotaur isn't a race of seafaring bullmen
Tracy Raye Hickman would like to have a word with you.

Also, sticking absolutely to old versions of singular monsters from myth is absolutely and utterly boring. Its the province of autists and uncreative and imaginationless people.

Listed as a player option in Complete Book of Humanoids and as possible of becoming good. Flinds are even moreso capable of becoming good. Also listed as possible race option in Skills and Powers with no mention of needing to be evil.
Orcs of Thar has them as a playable option with them being anywhere from evil to good.

In addition the gnolls had a non evil beginning with Gorellik, the god of hyenas and the hunt, who has been present in at least 3 editions before 5e.

They have always been an option in D&D to play as. There has always been a faction of good or at least neutral gnolls in every edition. With 5es lore, that option has now been nuked into nonexistence.

No but you don't understand, no one's going to look at any of that. Those names and histories and Lore peices literally won't matter to anyone in the world. Once the shock value wears off, it is logically going to be simplified to "Kill, burn corpses to stop spawning".

Do you think Rome pre-Caesar had a plethora of Information on the Gauls beyond "They're assholes who raided our shit once and have no state"? More importantly, do you think any of the soldiery would have cared if they did? No, because they thought of them as barbarians assholes that were going to die and didn't think of them beyond that. And the Gauls were humans with morals and culture, not Knockoff demonspawn. Making an irredeemably evil race would literally result in the entire world viewing them as murderhobos would: walking health bars with loot.

>Tracy Raye Hickman would like to have a word with you.

>Also, sticking absolutely to old versions of singular monsters from myth is absolutely and utterly boring. Its the province of autists and uncreative and imaginationless people.

She's shit and so are her minotaurs. Using something and not really relating it to anything previously established dilutes the concept into bland crap. I'd rather have something focused and evocative than general and bland.

>In addition the gnolls had a non evil beginning with Gorellik, the god of hyenas and the hunt, who has been present in at least 3 editions before 5e.

Makes no sense for Gorellik to have gnolls since he's the god of hyenas and the hunt, gnolls aren't hyenas. They're a perversion of hyenas.

I'm glad they did away with it. Again, rather have focused than general.

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>No but you don't understand, no one's going to look at any of that. Those names and histories and Lore peices literally won't matter to anyone in the world. Once the shock value wears off, it is logically going to be simplified to "Kill, burn corpses to stop spawning".

You don't seem to understand. They won't have to go look for it, it will be forced onto them. It effects them and having to change themselves to deal with it. Even that will not be enough, because there are cultists of Yeenoghu too, who only need to descrate a corpse and feed it to a hyena to get the gnolls going again. You forget, chaos and madness are also favoured by Yeenoghu, no people can maintain a united front against the gnolls, when your neighbour could very well be a cultist.

The players will understand them through play. They will know they are cruel by what they do and leave behind, they will know they are slavers because they will have slaves. They will see how they reproduce by witnessing desecrated corpses feasted on by hyenas, who will writhe and yelp in pain as their bones shift and snap, reforming into a twisted humanoid shape.

Almost had me, but then you turned the autism dial too high up for the last point.

>They're a perversion of hyenas.
No they aren't. They are quite literally made as humanoid versions of hyenas according to people who had the barest understanding of what a spotted hyena was like, basing their habits and intentions on stereotypes and folklore.

They are as natural as you or I in that world, at least before 5e.

You need to bring up some lore to justify your idiotic notion of them being a perversion of hyenas and not just hyenas made humanoid. And don't use 5es shitty lore.

No bait here, this opinion is absolutely sincere.

Let's go back to AD&D 1e.

>Monster Manual
They aren't literally humanoid versions of hyenas, there is a great resemblance between the two, but they aren't humanoid hyenas.

>Fiend Folio
Flinds are relatives of Gnolls, not Gnolls and hyenas.

They aren't hyenas. They're mockeries of hyenas.

I like my Beastmen as perversions anyways.

>that pic
fukken saved

>I like my Beastmen as perversions anyways.

That's cool, but what you're arguing for in this thread is basically:

>I like everyone else's Gnolls to be perversions, too

'Cause that's why folks don't like the change. There was room for vile monstrous gnolls in the previous D&D books, but no there's room for nothing but.

>Using something and not really relating it to anything previously established dilutes the concept into bland crap
Oh man, and I forgot to take this part to task as well.

What is a minotaur? A bullman from an island culture that did a lot of sailing and who worship capricious gods.

What is a Krynn minotaur? A bullman from an island culture that do a lot of sailing and who worship capricious gods. Oh, and they were made as a curse, something they have in common with the original myth. They also like mazes and maze like architecture. No they aren't exactly the same as the original minotaur, but that's the fun of making a species based on an old myth, the ways in which you can evoke the myth without repeating it wholesale.

It's very much like metaphors in riddles. Another thing autists are not able to understand.

Just looked at AD&D1e monster manual. It only says they resemble a hyena and no actual leaning towards perversion or not. Dragon 63 hints at being related on a much deeper level.
Of course they are only going to say whether they are related to gnolls, that just establishing their relationship to other humanoids.
Monstrous Compendium explicitly says they are hyena men in appearance. Orcs of Thar says explicitly that they are literally hyena people and directly related to hyenas, though they get the scientific nomenclature deeply wrong. Dragon 173 comes out and says they are hyena people and directly related to them, and not perversions of hyenas.

>I like my Beastmen as perversions anyways.
Cool, too bad they have never been that in any edition till 5e. Also Warhammer and Gloranthan beastmen are shit from shit settings.

I think ive also argued about this exact problem of beastmen as perversions of humanity in at least two other threads with you or at least someone who argues very much like you

Again, once the shock value of "oh they're so ebil" wears off, dealing with them will become simple. They can killed through common means, and can be stopped from spawning through destroying corpses. Making them some existential threat for the civilized world would actually expedite that acclimation process, as the world would be forced to raise an actually army and deal with the through war, which would increase exposure to them.

And thinking that Cultists would be the big game changer is stupid. For one, You can't hide giant uncontrollable hyena men in populated centers Long enough to create a population for a meaningful outbreak without one of the edgy dipshits getting discovered. And for another, who would be a cultist of this God, there is literally nothing to gain? No favors or meaningful power, just summon shit and get fucked over by hyenas. The only way you could have a meaningful number of cultists is if this god could could corrupt people into madness, and at that point you might as well just call him Tzeench and slap some demon horns on those Gnolls.

>They will know they are cruel by what they do and leave behind
Gore and violence for the purpose of shock value telling them "hey they're assholes, go kill them"

>they will know they are slavers because they will have slaves.
Just re-affirming that Gnolls are assholes. The Slaves might be a game changer turning it into a hostage situation, but most people can rationalize that as "ehh they were going to die anyways, better an arrow than torture"

>They will see how they reproduce by witnessing desecrated corpses feasted on by hyenas,
Again, all this does is reaffirm that Gnolls are assholes, and lather on the shock value gore

They're like something out of a shitty horror movie franchise. Kinda scary and threatening at first, but progressively lamer every time you see it, leaving you halfway through the third movie yelling at the characters for not growing a pair of learning and dying stupidly.

>I like my Beastmen as perversions anyways.
Just out of curiosity, do you apply that logic to ALL creatures that blend human and animal parts, even ones that were neutral or good in their original myths? Fauns? Centaur? Huldra? Egyptian and fantasy!egyptian gods? Ganesh? Because it seems to me you're not throwing the baby out with the bathwater so much as chucking an orphanage down a waterfall.

I don't know what to tell you, that's exactly their purpose. They're an enemy for the PCs.

You're overthinking how society react to gnolls. Those that become desensitized aren't right in the mind anymore. They exist as the major enemy force of a region that is gripped in terror by them, only safe behind the walls of a city, and hardly even then.

Why is that? Because that's a more interesting scenario to play in instead of the one you're describing. That's literally the only reason I need to have things the way they are. They player's won't care so neither will I.

What's the point of splitting hairs over the "rulebook" cultures of any D&D race? The average DM is running a homebrew setting anyway, and most of the more popular pre-written settings have their own lore that overrides the lore of the published books anyway.

What does this really effect beyond like, Forgotten Realms and Dragonlance?

No, actually, not always. Things like Fauns, Centaur, and Huldra, have animal traits because they're fey things associated with nature.

Gods are however their followers express them as. I normally don't like actual gods that you know the appearance and description of them. I like them to be more subjective. If a god is depicted with animal traits, it's usually for some symbolic reason. False gods are another thing entirely. Those are the gods you can kill.

is that one of the hyenas from The Lion King in gnoll form

>I'm so unimaginative and inept that I can't even come up plothooks to motivate my Murderhobo Players to go commit genocide on an established race.
>What? Just use demons, to go to creatures for no remorse, or homebrew up some DOOM demon knockoffs? Nah! That's crazy talk!
>I'll just support the destruction of the Lore and Culture of an existing race into C+ Horror Movie monsters so that they can fulfill a role that replaces substance and options with edge and Gore and blame it on a God that vaguely sips off the 40k version of Chaos Gods.

How could you not contrive a reason for Murder Hobos to be Murderhobos!? That is like being unable to lead a fish to water!

Are you reading some kind of context to my posts that i'm not putting in?

Of course they have plothooks, that's a given. Plothook doesn't equal = friendly race though. Plothooks regarding gnolls are the terrible things they do and have done, not to get to know them on a friendly basis. Something being Good doesn't give it substance. I prefer to play in a Grey and Black world.

Do you bitch this much about Orcs too?

>As long as you ignore FR
But it was the best incarnation of FR.

>That's not particularly overpowered for half-gnoll to have
Great Weapon Mastery + Rampage + large group of trash monster = Solo XP for a hard encounter.

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0/10, too obvious.

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You can have literally anyone do terrible things on a consistent basis. Hell, Drow do that as an intelligent race and they still have substance.

It's funny you mention substance because these Gnolls literally have none. The only Plothooks they have is "Hey these guys did stuff, to kill them" or "Hey these guys enslaved some people, go kill them and check if the people are still alive, even though they probably aren't". And these roles can be done with literally anyone else, Raiding Drow, Orcs, Goblins, Bandit Humans, regular Gnolls, Demons. The difference is that all of those guys can be other things too. Your Favored Gnolls have all the depth of a puddle.

And no, before you say it being "terrible vicious and cruel and bloodthirsty" is not depth, it's shock value that only serves to hide the fact that Gnolls are waking health bars.

Hey, fuck you, we don't want them.

That said, I'm reading the 4e write up on Gnolls, and I'm not seeing that much difference.

Flinds were also lawful evil, which is a bit of a divergence.

As much as I like Gorellik, he was Chaotic Evil god of savagery.

It's just he would care more about hunting for food, not intelligent beings, and in 4e terms he'd be a primal spirit.

I've been brewing some gnolls and I want to talk about it to someone, so here. Forgive this scribble sketch, it was only to help me keep track of the ideas.

So, in this setting, you have your elves/men/etc who some gods made, and you have a bunch of other "wild gods", including some animal-master types who are basically gods of a particular kind of creature, who see this and go "hands and stuff are really useful we should make servants like that" and that's how you get beastfolk. I know, furry.

Anyway, so at a certain point this arch-demon busts out of hell and he goes after the hyena god, fights them, kills them and eats them to become a demon god. He summons the hyena people, curses them with eternal hunger and says only through him can they be sated. So THEY fight him, and drag him down and since they can't kill him without him just respawning in hell, they eat him alive. And because they do this, the demon blood and the demon's soul passes into their collective race and they get transformed into gnolls, which are basically tiefling hyenafolk.

You have different subraces of gnolls based on what body part of the demon their ancestors ate. They all suffer the hunger curse and also have their own lines of demonic blessings/mutations/madness. The ones that ate the muscle in the limbs become huge warriors, super strength, sometimes go perma-berserk. The ones that ate the brain and face parts are greedy scheming types who can have magic senses and can hear voices whispering to them, sometimes helpful usually evil. The ones that ate the demon's guts got more of the power of their god that the demon consumed, and are the least demonic and have a talent for divine magic of the druid/shaman type, but their hunger makes them especially want to eat from still-living intelligent beings. The ones that ate the other soft organs got super vitality and endurance but have increased appetites beyond just hunger, general slaanesh-type shenanigans.

Sound interesting so far?

>remorselessly declined
>more feral and animalistic

I do not like the way this is written. No sir.

There's outs for non-dickish Gnolls in the Soul of the Hyena bit, and allows for PC Gnolls.

And of course it lacks the whole "Gnoll minds are so demonic that joining your mind to theirs will turn you into a slave" thing.

As someone who hates the demon gnolls thing, that is at least 10x better than the way 5es devs did it.

You and me have entirely different ways of playing this game and what we regard as interesting and having depth.

For example, Gnolls belong in a sort of FantasyAfrica, with the droughts, blights, scavengers, and flies. Other things like Orcs and Goblins don't suit the atmosphere there. Gnolls just fit there, they help set the tone of blazing maddening sun over a hopeless land, people starved and ghoulish.