Author notes

Clad in the skins of a cave beast, a blind-eyed Troglodyte emerges from its cave in the side of a hill.

Hurricane Ivan

on June 29, 2011

The Troglodytes of the Night Within were once a tribe of human who long ago sought refuge in the deep caverns form some great disaster which wiped their line from the surface. They are thought by most scholars to be the remnants of the empire of Gith-Zarabon in what is now the northern desolation.

Long aeons in the darkness of the caves changed these refugees, warping them anew into something entirely different to human. First, their eyes atrophied from disuse and their noses and ears started to grow as they relied more upon them, their skin became grey, hard and clammy, and they as a culture forgot their human origins. They prevail yet in the dark caves below, scratching out a living from the cold, unforgiving rock, feeding on the caves other denizens, and any poor souls unlucky enough to wander too deep into the caves.