The gnolls of the Burning Lands steer well clear of this region during the fall daggerfoot breeding season, which disrupts much of the river trade along the River Hyad. Of course the daggerfeet do gather elsewhere to breed, it is simply that the plentiful nearby hippopotami (44.22) provide them with a great deal of food to sustain their frolicking and bounding.
It comes as a surprise to some that these relatively small animals can bring down a hippopotamus. After all, their long-eared doglike heads do not include especially large teeth, their forelimbs are weak and short and even their fur is a boring shade of brown. But seeing the daggerfeet in action (preferably at a great distance) is usually enough to dispel these doubts. The great hind legs of the daggerfeet, which give them their strange hopping gait, allow them to leap onto the backs of their prey and slash at them with the pair of enormous claws that give them their name. These fierce beasts have been known to drive full lion prides away from their kills and only the greatest gnollish hunters sport necklaces strung with their claws.
However, unless driven by hunger or the madness of mating season, daggerfeet generally avoid healthy humanoids. But if they notice wounded or weakened humanoids they will follow them, often for days, waiting for their chance to strike.
Daggerfeet hunt in small packs, much like wolves. This has led some gnolls to try to tame them, often with disastrous results. It is theorized that daggerfeet display dominance by bounding higher than their rivals. It seems that would-be daggerfeet tamers were able to control the young joeys but as soon as the creatures reached adulthood the pathetic (by daggerfoot standards) jumps that gnolls are capable of caused them to view their tamers as crippled or aged and thus only worthy of death.
Hooks:
- Except for hippos what do daggerfeet eat?
- Is it possible to tame daggerfeet? How? Stilts? Constantly casting jump? Perhaps if one of the which clans were able to cast jump at will they could do it…
- Do daggerfeet claws have any use aside from being stabby?
