Population:
730 (85% Gnolls, 10% Humans, 4% Halflings, 1% other)
Primary Exports:
The meat and hides produced at Deathblight are distributed throughout the region. Bones and fat are rendered down and traded to Tennovar to make perfumes, makeup, and soaps.
Physical Description:
Deathblight proper is nestled in a quarry dug out of the side of lonely Blight hill which affords a view for miles around. At the steepest, the quarry rises more than 60 feet above the quarry floor. Reeking cesspits stand at three locations along the walls. Huts stand within the quarry and the most powerful and important Gnolls live in these huts.
Cutting down the middle of the quarry is a blight of burned coals and fat. An armature of steel poles stands over the length of it where the strips of meat are smoked. The hides are also cured in this area. Large kettles also stand at intervals where the fat, bone and other materials are rendered down. A weekly shipment of coal and select woods keeps the fires burning for 5 out of the seven days of the week.
A stench constantly rolls out of the town down into the permanent tent city where the town's laborers and lower-ranking guards live.
Social Structure:
Deathblight is a standard Gnoll community led by a single chief who keeps a harem of four to six females. The harem has a high social pecking order and their pups get the best food and training. The ranking officers in the military, the slaughter foremen, and the shamans (who bless the food and hides created here) all share equal authority in general and paramount authority in their idiom. Common soldiers, laborers, and lastly slaves round out the bottom rung of society here.
Architecture:
Far more effort is put into the slaughtering process than the town's infrastructure. Huts are made from masonry crafted from mud, dung, grasses, and imported bamboo. The roofs are made from stretched hyena skins. The remainder of the population either lives in holes in the ground covered by a makeshift roof or hyena-skin tents. The roads are little more than the naturally most well-trodden areas of town. During heavy monsoons or wind storms, the town must undergo a great deal of rebuilding.
History:
The town of Deathblight was formed ages ago when the anarchic Gnoll society was brought under the control of Svervnux. Gnolls at the time were tamed to be less aggressive towards one another in order to focus their energies on their external enemies. This led to many Gnolls living to an old age. This is rather distasteful to Gnolls who prefer to die in one of three ways: in battle, during childbirth, or devoured alive by one's clan-mates while under the affects of an extract of a psychotropic cactus plant. While Gnolls certainly do die of these things quite often, they also grow old.
Today, old Gnolls of more than thirty-five years (and also hyenas and slaves who have served out their usefulness) of age are rounded up at random intervals by their Chiefs and sent to Deathblight by caravan to be slaughtered.