I was supposed to do very serious gesture drawings of Maxence, something where it's not a character simply standing stiff. Instead I did Zucchi. It is funny because in the first idea, Zucchi was Maxence's far ancestor, as Max was supposed to be a gnoll more than a thousand year after my other character before I started exploring him being just a people guy anthro like I like to do them. Yes, Max was a gnoll in modern times, and that is why he had ADHD and played elecrtic guitar, as in my story, gnolls already have an hyperactive temperament, and so it was an ironic joke that he also had the condition, as it made him the most unstable one on the planet.

Zucchi seems to have joined the Red Scarves. She is holding two extremely reviled weapons: a knight-killer arrow and a gnollish war bow. The knight-killer was designed to beat armour, which it did, and was a clear proof that gnolls were more than just tribal savages, and possessed the ability to evolve and innovate, at least when finding better ways to hurt was involved. The war bow, however, had even greater implications.

In the gnollish badlands of Kasha-Varka there is no such thing as the concept of "warfare". Violence is not regulated by treaties, objectives and declarations: it is simply used for its purest need, survival, and should you ask them, they would answer it is the only right way. Violence is part of life just as eating is, as you will need to kill something if you ever hope to not starve. Therefore a gnoll must always be ready to employ violence wherever they are, be it a struggle against a predator, or an encounter with members of a rival tribe, or even a dispute with another pack mate. Their equipments and tactics have then evolved to fit this situation, with most archers being hunters, and carrying composite bows, and the favoured hand weapon being the axe, which is also a sturdy tool easy and cheap to make.

Which makes for a puzzling consideration of how did the gnollish warbow come to be.

A durable longbow able to shoot the hated knight-killers hundreds of meters away with ten times the strength of a good spear hit, it was clearly designed for war as other races know it, and not small ones. And while mastering a longbow takes years and years of practice, even just so as to gain the strength to draw it, the bow culture inside gnollish tribes meant that rare were those that did not know how to use a bow with good enough accuracy to be a danger on the battlefield. While it came from hunting, just as much as talented seamen come from fishing, in the rare times gnolls form a host to wage a real war most of their warriors will also carry a bow into battle, therefore completely overwhelming enemy formations with barrage after barrage of arrows, breaking shields, piercing helmets, and of course, passing right through mail.

The natural strength of gnolls meant that they could draw bigger bows and shoot stronger arrows than their human counterparts. However, the best of the best (or the worst of the worst, depending on which side you find yourself) of the gnollish archers are the females; as not only are they stronger than the males but they also practice the bow for killing and not just hunting. For females are valuable, and while they are the best warriors and the ruling military and political elite of gnollish society, they are also the breeders, and the size of a tribe is to be measured in the amount of females in age able to bear children. Therefore they most often would stay behind the male warriors and instead fight with these bows. Experienced and strong, they are to be considered elite war archers, and perhaps even the very best of the known world, reportedly able to fire an entire quiver in a minute while always finding their mark.

While in the human world and their neighbors, except maybe for the Vash, killing with arrows is considered honourless at best, and cowardly at worst, the huge prevalence and also numerical abundance of great archers, with surprisingly effective equipment for gnolls, meant that archery was what would win most of their battles; coupled with their surprise and harassing tactics, often before they started). However, the gnolls don't really care what prey races say, as they only ever fight to win, and their only concern is how effective it will be, therefore gleefully unleashing their volleys knowing full well the strength of the future traumatic impact, both physiological and psychological. It is merely another reason to laugh for them. And to their enemies, a very hurtful memories of the great invasions of the past.

"Arrows you can't hurt. But they hurt you."