Laughing Nkishi

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Laughing Nkishi
Skull with a Cracked Bone inserted between its teeth
Aliases	The Laughing Darkness, Blood‑muzzle, Man-killer, the One Who Knows the Path, the Two-faced God, Patron of the Gnolls
Alignment	Evil
Divine Rank	Unknown
Pantheon	Southlands (Dabu)
Portfolio	Gnolls, Raiding, Slaughter, Insanity, Fear, Strength, Courage
Domains	Darkness, Hunger, Trickery
Home Plane	Unknown
Worshippers	Gnolls, Bouda, Werehyenas
Favoured Weapon	Spear

Laughing Nkishi is a malevolent deity from the Southlands region of the Midgard campaign setting, and is effectively Midgard's version of Yeenoghu. Originally a fairly chill deity called Smiling Nkishi who was worshipped by the ancient Carnidine Kingdom, when that kingdom fell, something happened to Nkishi that turned him into a bloodthirsty psycho-killer. To quote from the Southlands splatbook:

His smiles grew bitter, his fangs grew long, and his patience frequently ran thin. Some say that after this transformation Nkishi and Kwansi quarreled over Isis; others believe that Nkishi argued with Ptah over the proper building of a great pyramid. Still others say Nkishi quarreled with everyone, and as a consequence he killed the elephant god Maraut and drove the ape-demon Mechuiti to strange madness. These days, Nkishi is a dark god of cold, cruel laughter, a god who demands great courage and rewards followers with strength in battle. There might be a few followers of the old Nkishi somewhere, but they are few and well hidden. Laughing Nkishi is an active and vibrant god who seeks new followers, triumph in battle, and glory for the gnolls.

A relatively young god, Nkishi has no holy books or writings, relying on oral tradition to spread his faith. Even his holy symbol is a newly fledged thing, and adopted from a common method that his followers use to defile the remains of lone humans they kill in the wilderness. In the few depictions of the god that exist, he is always portrayed as a powerfully muscled male gnoll, often sporting either a second face growing from the back of his skull in the manner of a werehyena, horns that emerge from the back of his skull and curl around and upwards, or both, carrying a spear adorned with trophy-scalps and usually wearing red boots and sometimes a red kilt.

A rarity amongst the deities of Midgard, Nkishi is first and foremost a racial god, whose adherents are concentrated amongst the ranks of the gnolls. Those few non-gnolls who follow him are primarily bouda and Southlands-native therianthropes or other shapechangers, predominantly werehyenas, as well as any humanoids that have attached themselves to gnoll bands and subsequently absorbed their beliefs. Less rare, Nkishi is an extremely jealous god who is determined to become a monotheistic power; his faithful are taught that all other gods are evil spirits whose influence must be crushed, and that gnolls who don't worship the Two-Faced God have been led astray and must be brought back into the fold... kicking and screaming, if necessary.

Unlike Yeenoghu, though, Nkishi is facing a serious uphill battle in his goal to become the one and only god of the gnolls, and may never succeed. Firstly, Midgard's gnolls are matriarchal, and thus there is a natural disinterest in following a male deity in the ranks of gnolldom's strongest members. Secondly, the patron god of Midgard's gnolls is the goddess Bastet, and whilst she may favor her catfolk children more, she is very much an active god who takes an interest in what her adoptive gnoll followers do, unlike poor stupid Gorellik. There are many gnolls who follow Laughing Nkishi, and some are even quite sizable groups, such as the Ape Gnawer tribe of Dabu, but they are outnumbered and outmuscled collectively by the other gnoll faiths.

The followers of Laughing Nkishi typically take caves or rock formations as their sacred sites, primarily using them as places to conduct trials and exorcisms. These can range from natural caverns, to pillared halls or artificially dug underground temples fashioned by slave labor. They commonly feature mirrors and reflecting pools, and the most favored shrines will maintain an emperor's hyena (a powerful undead hyena with a necrotic breath weapon) as a sacred totem beast and (un)living symbol of Nkishi's might.

The priests and priestesses of Nkishi are fanatical and obsessed with two things: terrorizing human settlements whenever possible, and purifying their fellow gnolls of perceived weaknesses. When an uninitiated group of gnolls is encountered, they are given two choices: turn over their spiritual leaders for exorcism—or execution—and take up the worship of Nkishi, or be hunted, killed, and devoured. Priests of other gods who are handed over to Nkishi’s faithful rarely survive the experience, though a few have been wily enough to convince their tormentors that, thanks to the cultists’ efforts, they now see the true path.

In the chaotic, obfuscation-ridden pantheon of Midgard, it's unclear who or what Nkishi may truly be. Some outsiders have speculated that Nkishi may actually be a gnoll-specific mask for The Hunter, the dark god of predation, but Nkishi's faithful scoff at this - they do concede that the Hunter might be a disguise that Nkishi uses to trick humans and other "prey" before devouring them. There is a growing belief amongst outsiders that Nkishi may actually be a Demon Prince, rather than a god, but arguments about this fail to sway Nkishi's faithful, who frankly can't see the difference anyway.

The tenets of Nkishi read thus:

Convert the foul unbelievers, or feast on them and crack their bones. Find the richest bounty of fat camel-drivers and take what is yours. Laugh at your foes, and laugh at death. Never show fear, and always slake your lust for blood and carnage. The night is yours!