Gree Gree

"Ya want ta git through the bayou? All it gonna cost is that fancy shooter yer wearing on yer hip—and maybe that fancy knife yer friend has..."
-Skeet, Gree Gree swamp guide

The Gree Gree are an amphibious race that resemble the most unsavory aspects of eels, frogs, and catfish. They stand in a stooped posture, standing between 150 centimeters to the largest reaching just less than two meters, including their stubby, rudder-like tails.

Their skin coloration ranges from dark green or black, going from the darkest hue along their dorsal spines and extremities gradually becoming paler to almost white along their bellies. Slippery looking and smooth, they have a slimy appearance, with a fish like head with "whiskers" hanging from their lower jaw. Their flat black eyes appear soulless and calculating.

The Gree Gree are mostly found in the bayous and swamps of Lanta in what was once Georgia. They may be found in any such environment; by their nature preferring wet, humid and warm regions to live. Less that graceful on dry land, they are swift and agile in any water environment.

Their social norm is tribal in nature, with a chief that is the nominal leader, with a witch doctor known as a krill-gun that serves as medicine man, adviser, and priest to the village. Family units are patriarchal but small, for the brutality of their primitive existence and short life span of only forty years do not allow for extended multi-generational families. The Gree Gree villages are designed with defense in mind with a stockade encircling the low, mud hut dwellings, with secret pools to reach the water as escape points. A village can consist of fifty to three hundred individuals. The usual ratio of female to male is 3 to 1; it is not unusual for a prosperous male to have several mates. The Gree Gree do not bear live young, but rather have hatcheries that are well guarded, sheltered pools, where the eggs hatch and the young live a tadpole-like existence, feeding upon their weaker brethren until the strongest emerge after about six months; miniature versions of adults, coming to full maturity in ten years.

The Gree Gree are technologically unsophisticated, using only natural materials to make weapons and the belts and satchels they wear. Appearing almost sexless, the Gree Gree see no need for "proper" clothing. They use stone and wood to make spears, the bow and arrow, and clubs.

The Gree Gree practice a form of ceremonial magic that involves curses, summoning of spirits, and transference magic, in the use of totems to represent the victim; inflicting harm through the effigy. Ritual sacrifice to the spirits; goods, live stock, and even prisoners, ensure bountiful fishing and even revenge on neighboring tribes. The powers that the Gree Gree shaman, the krill-gun, uses are not the immediate and often beneficial abilities that many L'na control, but a dark, insidious, twisting of spirit and soul.

Some spells require the participation of entire villages, with ceremonies that consist of intricate dances, to the uninitiated appear to be frenzied, whirling madness. Such dances are accompanied by drums, rattles, and whistles, as well as chanting by those initiates chosen to assist the krill-gun in his ceremony. Those that trade and encounter with the Gree Gree note that the magic is akin to what was called "voodoo" before the Event.

Through magic and breeding, they use apoc-gators and other mutated beasts to guard their hatcheries and homes. They make use of the huge puke worms that infest the swamp for its flesh, as the meat is poisonous and inedible; the Gree Gree only uses its outer hide. Malleable at first, the opalescent colored skin hardens quickly. If harvested in time it can be easily formed into such things as armor and weapons. Larger ones have been known to be utilized as skiff hulls.

The Gree Gree will use captured technology to their ends. One village is known to exist solely on board a huge river-style paddle boat; air-skiffs with their large turbines, as out runners. The patrols armed with Apoc High-bred weaponry; though the unforgiving environment usually breaks down such equipment if not meticulously maintained.

Collectively Gree Gree are cowardly and cunning. Preferring to deal and swindle, rather than take anything through out right force. They serve as swamp and river guides just as easily as pirates. They are traders and thieves. To deal with the Gree Gree is to make a deal with self-serving evil. There is an old proverb about not paying the ferry man until the journey is done and he has seen you to the other side. Such advice applies aptly to the Gree Gree. Never to be wholly trusted, and treated cautiously for one does not know what thoughts run through the oily mind of a Gree Gree.