Gnoll Samurai

It's been a little while since my last Pack of Gnolls post, so here we go. Someone found this blog by searching for "what d&d book is the gnoll samurai in" and that query scrambled my creative juices a bit. Stereotypical assumptions about gnoll "society" would definitely be antithetical to traditional Japanese Samurai. However, if your campaign has a Far East equivalent (as I'm sure many of them do) it would not be outside the realm of possibilities that a roving band of gnolls would manage to take down a lone samurai (albeit having suffered numerous losses, no doubt!). That samurai's gear would undoubtedly go to the pack leader, which would result in a gnoll with a katana and full samurai armor. This gnoll, however, would obviously be lacking in the years of training necessary to acquire Samurai combat skills, so he (or she) would just have nice gear. That's a little boring. 

However, what if we dressed Tom Cruise up as a gnoll, a la "The Last Samurai", and then we have a gnoll with full samurai combat training and a sense of honor to match. This can go one of two ways. First, you have a gnoll NPC that blows the PCs' expectations out of the water. Second, you have a gnoll BBEG leading an incredibly well-trained Pack. And of course, there's no reason that over the course of your campaign, that NPC couldn't be betrayed (by the PCs?) and become a BBEG...

I've got way too much work to do getting Saturday's game ready to go, otherwise I'd stat that badass up properly. Maybe next week. Or maybe I'll save it til after my PCs meet him...