Wang-liang

Wang-liang were a giant-sized race related to the common oni who inhabited some of the lands of Kara-Tur.

Description
Wang-liang were humanoids that stood about tall   and weighed some. Their bodies were covered in soft, shiny dark brown or black hair,  which covered a thick, leather-like skin. The hair of their heads was wild and long and often tangled, and males typically sported long beards  beneath their chins. They had wide, cat-like eyes with dual-colored irises of black and red. A wang-liang had only two wide toes on each foot, ending in curved, black nails, while the hands ended in fingers with retractable claws like a cat. A wang-liang's mouth was full of sharp fangs,  set within a protruding muzzle.

Most wang-liang favored light-weight clothing, such as silk or cotton, which was often dyed green or red. Males usually wore simple loincloths and capes; females wore smocks reaching to their knees and neck scarves. For armor, they would wear splint mail, which was specially fitted to their large bodies.

Abilities
Most wang-liang were very strong and exceptionally intelligent, by human standards,  and most were naturally ambidextrous.

Like many varieties of oni, they had limited supernatural regenerative powers  &mdash;which could be overcome with fire or acid &mdash;and the ability to change shape into the form of nearly any humanoid between about  and  tall   They could turn invisible with only a thought and could always perceive other invisible creatures.

Wang-liang also had a special form of telepathy that allowed them to communicate exclusively with each other. This telepathy could extend at least and even as far as  by some accounts, but thick stone and other dense material could block it. It took an individual wang-liang a minute to establish a connection with another, but once so established, the telepathic link would remain as long as nothing disturbed the wang-liang's concentration.

Personality
As a rule, wang-liang loathed all humans and actively tried to embarrass, harass, torment, or ultimately murder them. Wang-liang were very long-lived, and so they had hundreds of years to observe the stupidity and cruelty of mankind, and it irked them that lesser creatures such as these were taking over the world. They were indifferent to other races, assuming that they were not living among the despised humans. Nevertheless, they were a people who believed strongly in honor and the keeping of one's word,  even if this meant a promise made to a human. If a human ever saved a wang-liang's life, that wang-liang would be honor-bound to help the human, and if keeping a promise&mdash;even to a human&mdash;meant even betraying one's own tribe and being killed for it, so be it. They rigidly upheld the idea of such honor, yet their society was generally one that advanced evil toward other races;  however, there were no recorded instances of wang-liang harming&mdash;let alone waring among&mdash;their own kind.

The wang-liang had little interest in money; in fact, they were repulsed by greed. They would, however, happily use money to tempt or manipulate humans. They were patient, and would gladly orchestrate the downfall of humans from the sidelines by influencing others into causing the actual harm.

Combat
Wang-liang were known to utilize a variety of exotic weapons in combat, including such as the lajatang. Other commonly used weapons included greatswords, katana, longswords, wakizashi, naginata, and bo staffs. They did not use iron or steel; instead, they had developed a technology of hardening otherwise soft bronze. For ranged weapons, they used bows with armor-piercing or frog crotch arrows.

They preferred to use their sharp teeth only for eating, but used their retractable claws to also slash,   not like swords, but by swinging their arms in a scooping motion to tear off large chunks of flesh.

Their intelligence made wang-liang challenging foes. They used many different magical items in combat, for example, biwas of calm or diamond maces. They usually, however, used less common magic items that had been specially prepared for them by the Elder Circle. (See below.) Wang-liang would go to no ends to recover such an item were it stolen.

Females and males were equally likely to be found in a fighting force, as there was no difference in strength between the two sexes.

Biology
As mentioned above, wang-liang lived very long lives, with lifespans reaching two millenia. Despite this, they had extremely low birth rates, which was partly why their race was dying out. A wang-liang female was only fertile once in her lifetime, usually after she had already lived for several centuries. Though wang-liang were full grown at the age of about 40 years, a female was only fertile at a seemingly random time between about 30 and 1,300 years. The average age was around 400 years. A female always knew when it was her time to mate, and if she did not mate within about year of this time, she would begin to rapidly die of old age over a period of a few tendays. Similarly, a male would age and die after about ten years if not being chosen by a female to mate after reaching sexual maturity at about 300 years of age.

Such deaths were rare, however. The ratio of males to females was almost always balanced, because of a strange fact about wang-liang reproduction: mixed-sex twins were most common. Quadruplets were also possible though rare, but it was not possible for a wang-liang to have an odd number of offspring, and males and females were always born together.

Wang-liang were carnivores. They favored fish, deer, and other wild game. They ate meat both fire-cooked and raw. They were active both at night and during the day.

Society
Wang-liang lived solitary lives or else gathered in tribes of up to 50 or 100 individuals. Temperate forests and mountains were the favorited environments where wang-liang settled.

Wang-liang society was extremely rigid, holding strongly to its traditions and culture, with the family unit being one of its most fundamental parts. A tribe of wang-liang lived in villages organized around the mutual protection of their families. These villages had pleasant huts made of stone and wood. Village members raised deer, crafted tools, weapons, and artwork, and raised their children. These villages were simple, yet not primitive, and were only ever located in the most remote of forests. They did have a large amount of magic in the villages.

When a female felt the urge to mate, she chose a male from, ideally, another village. If unable to find a suitable mate elsewhere, she was allowed to choose from among her own village. Once a pair or set of pairs of children had been born, the new family was ritually expelled from the village for a period of ten years. During this time, the family, called a "pod", had to learn to survive on their own in the wilderness without support, which strengthened their bond to each other. Most wang-liang children found this time isolated with their parents and sibling (or siblings) the happiest time of their lives. Wang-liang almost always spent this exile invisible, since they had the magical power to both turn invisible and see invisible things at all times, so such pods were almost never encountered by outsiders. If they were discovered, the two parents would fight to the death, sacrificing their own lives so that their children could flee to safety.

At the end of the short ten years&mdash;short from a wang-liang's point of view&mdash;the family returned to the village to become full members again. When all children of a family were mated, the parents turned to pursue their interests in the village, in all manner of arts and studies. If any of a wang-liang's children had been slain, it was at this time that revenge would be sought. A couple separated and lived as individuals after their children had chosen their own mates. Unchosen males remained in a village until chosen.

Such vengeance seekers wandered about, killing until the death of the wang-liang child was paid for. In the view of the wang-liang society, justice was not complete unless 100 humans had died for every one wang-liang that they had killed. Such a wanderer might travel far enough west even to leave Kara-Tur, tormenting humans indiscriminately.

Despite their great intelligence, only one in one hundred females in society were capable of learning magic beyond their inherent abilities, and males never were. Such spellcasters could be either shukenja or wu-jen. The wang-liang were guided by councils of these spellcasting females known as Elder Circles. Each Elder Circle was composed of between four and twenty members whose children had already left their villages. No more than four members ever came from the same village. The members of the Elder Circles lived apart from the villages and were supported by them.

The Elder Circles sometimes aided villages that were under threat from outside forces. More often, they provided unique magical items to wanderers seeking revenge. If petitioned for such an item to aid the vengeance-seeker, the elders would join hands and chant, which would put them into a trance lasting nine days. At the end of the trance, they would know how to make a specific an unique item for the task.

Most magic items created in this way by the Elder Circle were designed to act as traps to visciously humiliate or maim unsuspecting victims&mdash;usually humans&mdash;in creative and unexpected, deceptive ways. Such items were often offered by wandering and magically shapeshifted wang-liang to unsuspecting humans, who were unaware that their new boots, for example, would transform into a prison that would bury them alive. Most such items were single-use and had to be activated by the victim, and usually they did not kill the victim outright, giving a chance&mdash;even if slight&mdash;of survival. (From a wang-liang point of view, humans were already good enough at killing each other; it was more satisfying to cause other means of torment.)

Not all magic items created by an Elder Circle were for this purpose; many wang-liang had magic items for their personal use as well. If such an item were stolen, a wang-liang would relentlessly hunt down the thief to recover it.

Wang-liang spoke their own language, and also typically spoke the giant language &mdash;particularly the local oni dialects &mdash;and the common trade tongue of the humans living in their area.

History
The wang-liang were once a more populous race, but their kind fell into decline in Kara-Tur as humans became the dominant people. For this, the wang-liang were filled with zealous anger against all of humanity.

A sorcerer in T'u Lung once captured a female wang-liang, just as she was entering her time of fertility. The sorcerer recorded that she seemed to suffer greatly, seemed to be dying, and begged for release. His notes were never completed.