khnumar (Ka-Noo-mar)
The Khnumar were a goat-like mortal race living a semi-nomadic lifestyle during the the Second Age, they were driven to extinction during the Second Unmaking but before tha last Khnumar died, they managed to hide away tomes of their prodigious writings safely where they were rediscovered in the Third Age many centuries later.
Translated khnumar literature is popular among academic circles and Khemra worshipers. The most famous of the suriving Khnumar documents are the Treatises of Maizelic, which pushes forth the values of family, community, sacrifice, tradition, ritual, and stoicism, among other things.
Basic Information
Anatomy
Genetics and Reproduction
Like most humanoid mortals in Scarterra, the khnumar had equal numbers of males and females and they sexually reproduced, with females carrying the young and usually bearing one child (kid) at a time.
Dietary Needs and Habits
The khnumar were omnivores that ate meat and plant matter but tended to rely primarily on plant material with meat as a delicacy.
Additional Information
Geographic Origin and Distribution
The khnumar were not averse to traveling but the only known place they seemed to settle was the interior of what is now known as the island of Khemarok. If they had settlements or roaming lands elsewhere, no evidence has seemingly survived into the Third Age to provide evidence of this.
Perception and Sensory Capabilities
The khnumar's senses were believed to be superior to most other humanoids. THey had slightly better hearing than humans and considerably better senses of smell. They also had a wide field of vision, roughly 270 degrees.
Civilization and Culture
Major Language Groups and Dialects
The Khnumar had their own language, now called Khnush which was not lost because one of the books they managed to safely stow away was a Rosetta Stone-like book with Knush and Elven.
Culture and Cultural Heritage
The Khnumar were staunch Khemra worshipers but they tended to keep to themselves and were not part of the hiearchy of the elven Keepers of their age.
The Khnumar valued history, literacy, tradition, and sacrificing for the greater good. In their context, greater good first met the family, then the tribe, then the Khunmar race, than mortalkind as a whole.
They left behind prodigious writings but either the Khnumar had very little artistic or musical tradition, or if they did, that element of their culture is now lost.
History
The khnumar were either the earliest or just the earliest known vanity race created by Khemra during the Second Age. It's unknown if Khemra had help crafting the first khnumar by the rest of the the Nine or if she created them by herself.
It is clear that the khnumar embodied Khemra's ideals and worshipped her primarily worshipping the rest of the Nine in a very ritualistic fashion in carefully proscribed doses.
Despite being semi-nomadic desert dwellers on a rough continent, the Khunumar were highly literate. They seemed to have a democratic system with tribe's electing their leaders which some view as an anomally because most of Khemra's core worshipers seem to be distrustful if not outright hostile to non-hereditary systems of governance.
Interspecies Relations and Assumptions
They didn't seem to have any major conflicts with other races. They were said to speak and trade peacefully with both Second Age elves and Second Age kobolds. It helped that the Khnumar lived in harsh lands few other mortals coveted.
They were peaceful but they were not pacifists. They arid lands they dwelled primarily in produced many fearsome monsters which led the Khnumar to developing a warrior culture to defend themselves.
The few Khnumar who left their homelands as adventurers were often celebrated monster hunters.
A tale of two goat peoples
"I've heard stories about the Khnumar, but I'm no sage on them. I cannot help but notice that for all the bad blood that supposed exists between the goddesses Nami and Khemra, these two divine sisters seem more alike than they are different. Both chose to create or adopt very few vanity races, but of those vanity races they did choose, both chose their own race of goat people. While both satyrs and khnumar debuted in the Second Age, I don't believe our kind interacted much, if at all. Other than having similar furry legs and horns, we didn't have much in common. We satyrs are individualistic, the khnumar were focused on the greater good. We are expressive and they were stoic. We are adaptable and they loved tradition. The khnumar lived on the Island of Khemarok in ancient times. I doubt there are many satyrs living in Khemarok now, so I would not be surprised if there weren't any satyrs living there in the Second Age. So why did the satyrs survive the Second Unmaking and the khnumar did not? I'm not going to boast about satyr's inherit greatness since we satyrs are far too modest to boast, but I have a theory. Nami, the Lady of Winds, stepped in with her divine power to provide protection to her most fervent worshipers, which included most satyrs. Khemra, the Lady of Light, is truly impartial. I believe the Lady of Light sought to save as many mortals as possible...regardless of whether they worshiped her or not. Why save a thousand khnumar that love you when you can save ten thousand elves who are indifferent to you? There is some nobility in this sense of the greater good, but I find it somewhat cold to leave your friends and family out to dry in this manner. -Aleesia the satyr, vintner and Fumayan Rover
EXTINCT
Lifespan
94 years
Average Height
5' 6" males, 5' 5" females
Average Weight
160 pounds
Geographic Distribution
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