World of Tékumel

Nonhumans

Swamp Folk

(Tsolyáni: Heglethyál; Mu’ugalavyéni: A’lathish)

The Swamp Folk fit in very well with man’s cultures, and their talents as sailors make them the mainstay of the Mu’ugalavyáni navy and commercial shipping industry. They are usually friendly, courteous, and eager to copy the ways of men, except in their own enclave where they preserve some of their ancient customs. They cannot use other-planar magic at all, but they do have a natural ability to sense ‘wrongness’; for example changes in direction, sloping passageways, and interdimensional nexus points.

Physical Attributes

The Swamp Folk are about as tall as men and have a rotund, rubbery, doughy white body, four slender legs extending at equidistant intervals from the body, two upper arms with four digits and an opposable thumb, and a head with rather humanoid features. The skull is long and backward-slanting, with a bony crest rising from the forehead and curving out over the back—from this crest a flexible ‘drapery’ of skin falls down behind the shoulders to join the body at the base of the spine. There are two sexes; males (70 percent) and females (30 percent).

Enclaves

The watery bogs along the lower reaches of the Putuhenu River in Mu’ugalavyá

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