Nonhumans
Ahoggyá
“Or you might find a normal man to jolly you?” Old White-side gurgled a chuckle. “Some say that your body is appealing in spite of your veil. Now if it’s pleasure you seek, then know that we Ahoggyá have eight sexes and –”
from The Man of Gold by M.A.R. Barker, ©1984 DAW Books
The gruff and boisterous Ahoggyá tend to be rude and insensitive, obeying their own alien customs and displaying little interest in man’s concerns. Some Ahoggyá emerge from their swampy habitat to serve as mercenaries in human armies for a few years, but they eventually return home. They have no curiosity about religious matters, and are abysmally poor sorcerors.
Physical Attributes
The Ahoggyá are four-armed and four-legged, barrel-bodied, bristly and knobbly. Their four arms extend out at equidistant intervals from under a domed, thickly armoured carapace on top of the body. Between and below these arms, protected by a horny ring, are the eyes and other organs: two eyes and a fanged mouth on one side, and two eyes and other organs on each of the remaining three sides. Excretory organs are tucked up under the body. Their thickly muscled legs extend out from the base of the body in a permanent crouch, and their hands and feet both possess three digits and a thumb. They range from 1.41 to 1.60m in height, but their torso is perhaps 80cm in diameter. They have eight sexes, but their reproductive processes are largely unknown.
Enclaves
Along the southwestern coasts of Salarvya, across the sea in Haida Pakala, and in a large and as yet unexplored region in the far southeast called Onmu Tle Hlektis, an autonomous Ahoggyá state.