The Winter's Oasis Wiki

Romps and Reconstruction in Loka: Steam, Magic, and Mysteries in the Frozen Wasteland.

Not everybody was able to flee underground during the Great War. Some of them were left to contend with the aftermath, and their families have survived to this day. The Druj are the contemporary descendants of those unlucky surface dwellers, hulking, hideous brutes driven to the brink of madness by their painful, twisted shapes and atavistic bloodlust. No Druj is just like another. Viramarga records indicate a wide range of infirmities, such as Druj with three arms, Druj with giant heads, Druj with tails, Druj with no head at all, wolf-like Druj, reptilian Druj, Druj with seven eyes, and Druj with only one enormous arm. Some anecdotes recall a male and a female Druj fused at the spine, and one rare case details an encounter between a junker merchant, his mercenary escort, and a completely insane, gibbering twelve-foot Druj that propelled itself through the treetops like a giant monkey.

No population estimates are available since the Druj tend to wander out of the wastes, drawn to the Oasis Thaw, and are soon killed or die of unnatural sickness, but records indicate that Druj appearances average around once a week. The Viramarga patrolling the border drive away or kill most of them, but once about every month or two one of them gets through and gravitates to a city, usually outlying Pasu-Abhasa municipalities like Adele and Leone. They are classified as ‘wildlife’ only because they are incapable of intelligent civility, or coherent behavior.

Elder Pasu tribesmen contend that the Druj are distant relatives of the Pasu as a whole, precursors to the modern tribes, deteriorated by inbreeding and the harsh life of the wastes into the grotesque, disgusting barbarians they are today.

Categories: Wildlife