They say flinds are stronger, smarter, and more charismatic than ordinary gnolls. Of course, the "they" that say that are mostly flinds…and it looks like Yarrick would respectfully disagree.
It certainly is, yes, timemonkey. I speak only as a weatherman, and the art of meteorology is ultimately based in educated guessing. Still, if I were Yarrick, I’d expect to hear from Dagmar again…
It’s too bad. They seemed so in love at first. Dagmar’s self-importance and selfishness were apparent pretty quickly, though.
Dagmar’s never really seemed like the sharpest of leaders, always seemed like she just skated by on being a royal flind female in gnoll society. Now that it’s just her and her wits, we’ll see if she proves to be any kind of a threat to the Hyeeshat after this.
she’ll be back to banging humans like her mom planned in a weeks time. living in the desert ain’t easy, especially when you’re alone, she’ll either have to suck up her pride and join the humans or she’ll be bleached bones in the sun, and she ain’t exactly got the political power to join the humans as anything more than a hooker. maybe she’ll get lucky and the sphinx/minotaur family will take her in but that’s a long shot.
You’ll likely only find information on Gnolls (a creature from folklore, traditionally a cross between Gnomes and Trolls or Hyena-headed D&D creatures) and Flinds (a creature invented for 1st ed D&D I believe). Aardgnolls were my invention, though I’ve seen other people using the name for their homebrew fantasy settings. Probably coincidence. I got the idea from a photograph of an Aardwolf in an old animal encyclopedia (though real Aardwolves are actually rather cute).
I always liked Yarrick and am glad to see him as a ruler in his own right!
…although, you know… the genders in this revolution leave me with a bit of a weird feeling there. I mean, character-wise, this is very fair, but I still feel a bit weird.
Was going to say something about the ‘monster’ races being *all* matriarchies, but then I remembered Glon
This… doesn’t feel like a gender-issue, simply, the Hyeeshat were tired of the Flinds (or, at least *that* family of Flinds) and decided to get rid of her while she was gone, Yarrick just happened to be the best candidate to take over
It was a racial revolution, less of a sex revolution. Yeah, the Gnollish races are matriarchal for the most part, it’s not unheard of for males to take power on occasion (Note that he says he’s their first Gnoll Hyeesh, not their first Hyeesh.)
Yeah, culturally he’d be expected to defer to an equally powered female Gnoll, they’ll make special cases for him to keep power. Not unlike Queen Elizabeth I who never married or Queen Elizabeth II -where they made her husband a Prince instead of a King so as to make sure everyone knew it was her in charge.
The problem is the Flinds, there’s few of them and they’re (supposedly) superior creatures to the Gnolls. In this fictitious culture, the tradition is that a race of Gnolls lead by a Flind will become more sophisticated and civilized but when left to their own devices will tend to slide into savagery like their Aardgnoll cousins. This Hyeeshat, having been through a few particuarly awful Hyeeshas, are happy to test the theory.
I don’t get any vibe that the gnoll women are suddenly going to become an oppressed class (other than by one another, of course.) It’s possible that future historians will remember Yarrick’s reign as a step along the long road to gender equality for gnollkin, but that road starts deep in matriarchical territory. (I would say the same thing about the Drow and Wolf’s vaguely-almost-kinda respected partnership to Nephilia.)
Yarrick didn’t lead the revolution; he says himself that "they placed me on the throne" after it was an accomplished fact. Presumably he’s a compromise figurehead; the most powerful women among the gnolls decided (with more wisdom than the ruling Flind family had recently showed) that rather than risk everything fighting amongst themselves for the throne, they would name Dagmar’s old mate Hyeesh and work through him. One of Yarrick’s big challenges will be making sure no one rival ever amasses enough power to take the throne for herself.
I don’t like the way Dagmar had been portrayed in this arc; she was the Hogga of the Gnolls, then she suddenly became her mother only younger, slimmer and smarter; But I’m glad about the revolution. All Hail Hyeeshat Yarrick.
She was always a sneaky manipulator out for her own ends. She did what she had to do to make things go her way. Remember she had a plan to marry Kassim and then kill him off while populating Umbril with her own heirs through Yarrick. When it came down to it, she threw her whole family under the chopping block to save her own ass.
Once she had the power she wanted, she got more and more careless. And of course, riding on the coattails of Ranna, she expected to come out on top of it all.
I see the similarities you see between her and Hogga, but Hogga only wanted to go home and have a normal Hobgoblin teenage life, she wasn’t ambitious or particularly malevolent. She was happy to betray her father only so long as he would be spared a death sentence so they could go back to the Goblin Lands.
Dagmar watched comfortably and with no regrets while her sisters and her mother were executed.
They do make for an interesting comparison, though. Thanks for bringing it up!
Well, her mom sort of threw everybody but Dagmar under the bus herself by confessing to everything unprompted – Dagmar just didn’t see fit to jump in after them!
But Dagmar absolutely was a conniving plotter and a horrible person from day one, no questioning that. If anything changed in her characterization it’s that back then she seemed pretty happy to become a puppet ruler, not wanting the responsibility of being a real one, while now she’s planning to take over Umbril and the whole desert. Though that’s a realistic enough development, I can see her megalomania growing over a few years as a ruler, and the idea of being a puppet starting to chafe.
And if she is still even somewhat a pupput ruler, having no clue how much work it is…. I’m sorry the two didn’t make it as afriend couple, but glad he did what he felt right.
Hi, sorta new, caught up some time ago. What exactly is Dogma among the gnoll breeds? I checked tv tropes and the cast page but I couldn’t find anything. I get that there’s a sort of hierarchy. With the Aardgnolls being the warrior class and the regular gnolls being the citizen class. But I don’t see much difference other than the ears between Dagmar and Yarrick
Okay so here’s the story on the YAFGC Gnolls: Many years ago when I was running a massive AD&D 2e campaign (which formed a lot of the foundation background for YAFGC) I had a player who wanted to play a non-traditional species. She selected a Gnoll (after I’d vetoed Drow for various reasons). The source material for the Gnolls I had portrayed them as a bunch of nasty savage creatures with rags and scraps for clothing and a tendency to eat everything and everyone. They also had the Flind which were a subrace of round-eared Gnoll creatures, but sophisticated and superior and rather more powerful. Reflecting the stratified society of the Goblinoids, the Flind were rare, but worshipped by the Gnolls and so the Gnolls were often ruled by a Flind to make them more of a threat. So I convinced her to play a Flind, an up and coming Flind who wasn’t in charge yet, but had a future of glory to look forward to. Thus Dagmar was created.
Now I wanted something more structured than savage lunatics and sophisticated nobles, so I created a third stratus. At the top were the clever, cultured Flinds. In the middle, the slightly less ordered, but relatively disciplined Gnolls and at the bottom, the savage, uncontrolled Aardgnolls. The Hyeeshat (a word I invented for a Gnoll ‘city’ or kingdom) was shaped like a wheel, with the Flind palace in the center, the Gnoll city surrounding that, and at the outer edge, the Aardgnoll slums. So potential invaders would have to work their way through the wild savages, then the hoards of warriors before they could get to the actually vulnerable elite living in the middle. The heart of the Hyeeshat.
I also considered the question of how they maintain their respective rarity. Why aren’t there masses of Half-Flinds if the family in the center is so loved and desired by the Gnolls? Well it goes like this: The various breeds don’t mix genetically. Meaning that an Aardgnoll/Gnoll combo would produce Aardgnolls. A Gnoll/Flind combo would produce Gnolls (and sometimes Aardgnolls which get dumped into the slums and VERY RARELY a Flind) the unheard of Aargnoll/Flind combo would produce Aardgnolls and occasionally Gnolls, but NEVER a Flind. Aardgnolls always produce more Aardgnolls. Sometimes Gnolls will produce Aardgnolls and only on legendarily rare occasionals, a Flind. Flinds of Gnoll parents will be considered sacred and godlike creatures among the Gnolls. Flinds aren’t so impressed, though and they’re shunned by ‘pure’ Flinds. Flinds will create Gnolls a little less than half the time, but NEVER Aardgnolls.
I’ve probably put way too much thought into this, but I like a solid, real-feeling world.
To me is always interesting reading and thinking this kind of things. I prefer by a lot to know there is something behind, that finding an unsutenible worldbuilding.
Now we only need some expert on genetics who will totally explain how this IS possible genetically with the correct number of genes (obviously not just one).
Pick up your copies of YAFGC Volumes 1 - 5 at our online store. Multi-book bundles and sketch editions available.
Panel 10 is my favourite. Very expressive.
And the look on Dagmar’s face in the final.
Can hear the, dink! Gravel.
Yeah, the Aardgnoll’s are stupid, not dumb 🙂
Low int high Wis
What is the difference between a Flind and a Gnoll again?
They say flinds are stronger, smarter, and more charismatic than ordinary gnolls. Of course, the "they" that say that are mostly flinds…and it looks like Yarrick would respectfully disagree.
So, it’s like the difference between Canadians and USAsian’s?
Oh, just CHILL out, my Canadian friend…
Trust me, he ain’t one of us.
It was just a joke, about how there isn’t really a difference, obviously before I read the history about the three races
Maybe I should have said ‘High Elves’ and ‘Wood Elves’
As usual you really should stop instead of digging yourself deeper with every stupid reply. Nobody here thinks you’re clever or funny.
Yeah, if you’re counting Flind as Americans.
Short answer: Flind dont have any negative stat modifiers though gnoll have higher dex overall
Yarrick, my friend…that boomerang you just tossed is coming back around for you, one day.
Be prepared. The Dagmar formerly known as Hyeesha sure will be.
Yes, unfortunately just throwing out of the city could be a disastrous mistake in the future. Exile to a distant island would have been a better idea.
It’s possible she’ll be eaten by something three steps out. She’s alone and we’ve seen the kind of things that live out in the desert.
It certainly is, yes, timemonkey. I speak only as a weatherman, and the art of meteorology is ultimately based in educated guessing. Still, if I were Yarrick, I’d expect to hear from Dagmar again…
You really think a desert dweller would sink *that* low?
Sand worms? I hope not! Shed give the poor thing an upset stomach…
Hopefully, she does not figure out how to extract the Spice from those worms. What? Wrong ones? Oh well.
Yeah, these are the ones from "Beetlejuice" 😛
It’s too bad. They seemed so in love at first. Dagmar’s self-importance and selfishness were apparent pretty quickly, though.
Dagmar’s never really seemed like the sharpest of leaders, always seemed like she just skated by on being a royal flind female in gnoll society. Now that it’s just her and her wits, we’ll see if she proves to be any kind of a threat to the Hyeeshat after this.
she’ll be back to banging humans like her mom planned in a weeks time. living in the desert ain’t easy, especially when you’re alone, she’ll either have to suck up her pride and join the humans or she’ll be bleached bones in the sun, and she ain’t exactly got the political power to join the humans as anything more than a hooker. maybe she’ll get lucky and the sphinx/minotaur family will take her in but that’s a long shot.
The humans likely won’t be eager to take her in after she sided with Ranna.
Depends on *which* humans
Compared to the previous Hyeesha, Dagmar is a very stable genius. But dear ol’ Mom never did set that bar very high.
Why do I hear David Spade as Yarrick now?
Next up, "The Hyeesh’s New Groove."
Well back into the desert she goes and either she does or adapts to the new order
"Also, dear, that’s *Doctor* Yarrick to you."
(Seriously, though, doesn’t Panel 11 look like he’s wearing a head mirror and scrubs?)
Doctor Yarrick, M.D. (it’s not lupus! unless you are talking about Lucas 😛 )
So it wasn’t about "exile or death"–it was just triage in action. Clearly he has a lot more important patients to see. 😀
I didn’t see it until I read this.
Now I can’t unsee this.
Thanks mucat. No cookies this week for you ;D
And… just remember, she was the *smart* one in her family (considering she lasted *this* long is a miracle from the gods)
At some point I have to look up the different type of gnolls
You’ll likely only find information on Gnolls (a creature from folklore, traditionally a cross between Gnomes and Trolls or Hyena-headed D&D creatures) and Flinds (a creature invented for 1st ed D&D I believe). Aardgnolls were my invention, though I’ve seen other people using the name for their homebrew fantasy settings. Probably coincidence. I got the idea from a photograph of an Aardwolf in an old animal encyclopedia (though real Aardwolves are actually rather cute).
I’ve looked them up now and you are correct, those are absolutely adorable.
" And never darken our door step again "
I always liked Yarrick and am glad to see him as a ruler in his own right!
…although, you know… the genders in this revolution leave me with a bit of a weird feeling there. I mean, character-wise, this is very fair, but I still feel a bit weird.
Was going to say something about the ‘monster’ races being *all* matriarchies, but then I remembered Glon
This… doesn’t feel like a gender-issue, simply, the Hyeeshat were tired of the Flinds (or, at least *that* family of Flinds) and decided to get rid of her while she was gone, Yarrick just happened to be the best candidate to take over
It was a racial revolution, less of a sex revolution. Yeah, the Gnollish races are matriarchal for the most part, it’s not unheard of for males to take power on occasion (Note that he says he’s their first Gnoll Hyeesh, not their first Hyeesh.)
Yeah, culturally he’d be expected to defer to an equally powered female Gnoll, they’ll make special cases for him to keep power. Not unlike Queen Elizabeth I who never married or Queen Elizabeth II -where they made her husband a Prince instead of a King so as to make sure everyone knew it was her in charge.
The problem is the Flinds, there’s few of them and they’re (supposedly) superior creatures to the Gnolls. In this fictitious culture, the tradition is that a race of Gnolls lead by a Flind will become more sophisticated and civilized but when left to their own devices will tend to slide into savagery like their Aardgnoll cousins. This Hyeeshat, having been through a few particuarly awful Hyeeshas, are happy to test the theory.
> It was a racial revolution, less of a sex revolution.
There was never a hint of gender overthrow in the strip. In fact, the only sexist character got ousted!
Another great aspect of YAFGC is that, from the first, it’s always demonstrated that not one race/gender/alignment is ever just one thing.
t!
Thank you for the reply! I feel more at ease now.
Heh. Yarrick doesn’t seem as "barely even sentient" as Dagmar claims he is. I’m sure he’ll do good.
I don’t get any vibe that the gnoll women are suddenly going to become an oppressed class (other than by one another, of course.) It’s possible that future historians will remember Yarrick’s reign as a step along the long road to gender equality for gnollkin, but that road starts deep in matriarchical territory. (I would say the same thing about the Drow and Wolf’s vaguely-almost-kinda respected partnership to Nephilia.)
Yarrick didn’t lead the revolution; he says himself that "they placed me on the throne" after it was an accomplished fact. Presumably he’s a compromise figurehead; the most powerful women among the gnolls decided (with more wisdom than the ruling Flind family had recently showed) that rather than risk everything fighting amongst themselves for the throne, they would name Dagmar’s old mate Hyeesh and work through him. One of Yarrick’s big challenges will be making sure no one rival ever amasses enough power to take the throne for herself.
I don’t like the way Dagmar had been portrayed in this arc; she was the Hogga of the Gnolls, then she suddenly became her mother only younger, slimmer and smarter; But I’m glad about the revolution. All Hail Hyeeshat Yarrick.
She was always a sneaky manipulator out for her own ends. She did what she had to do to make things go her way. Remember she had a plan to marry Kassim and then kill him off while populating Umbril with her own heirs through Yarrick. When it came down to it, she threw her whole family under the chopping block to save her own ass.
Once she had the power she wanted, she got more and more careless. And of course, riding on the coattails of Ranna, she expected to come out on top of it all.
I see the similarities you see between her and Hogga, but Hogga only wanted to go home and have a normal Hobgoblin teenage life, she wasn’t ambitious or particularly malevolent. She was happy to betray her father only so long as he would be spared a death sentence so they could go back to the Goblin Lands.
Dagmar watched comfortably and with no regrets while her sisters and her mother were executed.
They do make for an interesting comparison, though. Thanks for bringing it up!
Well, her mom sort of threw everybody but Dagmar under the bus herself by confessing to everything unprompted – Dagmar just didn’t see fit to jump in after them!
But Dagmar absolutely was a conniving plotter and a horrible person from day one, no questioning that. If anything changed in her characterization it’s that back then she seemed pretty happy to become a puppet ruler, not wanting the responsibility of being a real one, while now she’s planning to take over Umbril and the whole desert. Though that’s a realistic enough development, I can see her megalomania growing over a few years as a ruler, and the idea of being a puppet starting to chafe.
And if she is still even somewhat a pupput ruler, having no clue how much work it is…. I’m sorry the two didn’t make it as afriend couple, but glad he did what he felt right.
She still seemed more thoughtfull then her mother and sisters. However I see what you mean.
I’m not too worried about Dagmar. She’s a survivor.
Man, that face in panel 8 – that’s the last thing SOME sophonts have seen, let me tell you.
That moment when Dagmar realizes she really should have been nicer to her old boyfriend.
Hi, sorta new, caught up some time ago. What exactly is Dogma among the gnoll breeds? I checked tv tropes and the cast page but I couldn’t find anything. I get that there’s a sort of hierarchy. With the Aardgnolls being the warrior class and the regular gnolls being the citizen class. But I don’t see much difference other than the ears between Dagmar and Yarrick
Wow! Hadn’t even noticed that Dagmar had humanoid ears…
Okay so here’s the story on the YAFGC Gnolls: Many years ago when I was running a massive AD&D 2e campaign (which formed a lot of the foundation background for YAFGC) I had a player who wanted to play a non-traditional species. She selected a Gnoll (after I’d vetoed Drow for various reasons). The source material for the Gnolls I had portrayed them as a bunch of nasty savage creatures with rags and scraps for clothing and a tendency to eat everything and everyone. They also had the Flind which were a subrace of round-eared Gnoll creatures, but sophisticated and superior and rather more powerful. Reflecting the stratified society of the Goblinoids, the Flind were rare, but worshipped by the Gnolls and so the Gnolls were often ruled by a Flind to make them more of a threat. So I convinced her to play a Flind, an up and coming Flind who wasn’t in charge yet, but had a future of glory to look forward to. Thus Dagmar was created.
Now I wanted something more structured than savage lunatics and sophisticated nobles, so I created a third stratus. At the top were the clever, cultured Flinds. In the middle, the slightly less ordered, but relatively disciplined Gnolls and at the bottom, the savage, uncontrolled Aardgnolls. The Hyeeshat (a word I invented for a Gnoll ‘city’ or kingdom) was shaped like a wheel, with the Flind palace in the center, the Gnoll city surrounding that, and at the outer edge, the Aardgnoll slums. So potential invaders would have to work their way through the wild savages, then the hoards of warriors before they could get to the actually vulnerable elite living in the middle. The heart of the Hyeeshat.
I also considered the question of how they maintain their respective rarity. Why aren’t there masses of Half-Flinds if the family in the center is so loved and desired by the Gnolls? Well it goes like this: The various breeds don’t mix genetically. Meaning that an Aardgnoll/Gnoll combo would produce Aardgnolls. A Gnoll/Flind combo would produce Gnolls (and sometimes Aardgnolls which get dumped into the slums and VERY RARELY a Flind) the unheard of Aargnoll/Flind combo would produce Aardgnolls and occasionally Gnolls, but NEVER a Flind. Aardgnolls always produce more Aardgnolls. Sometimes Gnolls will produce Aardgnolls and only on legendarily rare occasionals, a Flind. Flinds of Gnoll parents will be considered sacred and godlike creatures among the Gnolls. Flinds aren’t so impressed, though and they’re shunned by ‘pure’ Flinds. Flinds will create Gnolls a little less than half the time, but NEVER Aardgnolls.
I’ve probably put way too much thought into this, but I like a solid, real-feeling world.
To me is always interesting reading and thinking this kind of things. I prefer by a lot to know there is something behind, that finding an unsutenible worldbuilding.
That and that I love fantasy xenobiology.
I love the genetics lore!
Now we only need some expert on genetics who will totally explain how this IS possible genetically with the correct number of genes (obviously not just one).
Hmm, is the recently banished Flind about to meet a newly created Lich, one wonders…
Guess the grand second war is not going to come from here.
Oh, and Dagmar watch out for the giant Ant-Lions