Editing Yakmen (section)

==Culture==
The culture of the yakmen is a weird mixture of a malign [[theocracy]] and a malevolent [[magocracy]]. All yakmen have some level of affinity for sorcery, mostly manifesting in their innate ability to use magic items back in AD&D, and their leaders are always [[Mystic Theurge|spellcasters with access to both arcane and divine magic]]. They also have (in AD&D) the innate ability to command [[dao]], having somehow enslaved the entire race of earth [[genie]]s to obey them without question. It's implied that this is due to their dickass god either conquering or allying with the dao leadership, and while they resent this the dao are forbidden to retaliate and must settle for taking their resentment out on the yakmen's enemies.

They live in the highest mountain ranges, building their cities from a strange gray stone that they import from the Elemental Plane of Earth. They dominate the people of the surrounding valleys from small outposts manned by a small number of yakmen and bands of slave-soldiers; considering a good number of those are dao, this is more than enough. The yakmen demand tribute in the form of slaves; those who resist are destroyed and their lands given to more compliant slaves.

The entire yakmen society exists in the worship of their evil, mysterious god. This asshole is known as the Forgotten God by the rest of Al-Qadim, and if the yakmen have another name for him they aren't telling. The Forgotten God teaches that all other races are inferior to the yakmen and demands regular sacrifices, and this as much as their hunger for power is why they take so many slaves. The Forgotten God is depicted as a yakman whose face is worn smooth into a featureless mask, giving them the race something of a cyclopean quality.

When the yakmen venture out into civilized lands in search of slaves, knowledge or new sources of power, they usually send either small parties accompanied by dao or a single scout. Scouts are convicted criminals sent out with the promise of a pardon if they bring back something awesome enough, or just a shitton of slaves; these guys are intended to be the bosses after an adventure spent fighting whatever evil humanoids the scout has managed to con into working for him. Larger parties are usually sent to use their innate access to Magic Jar and infiltrate the local ruling class as spies or saboteurs, then use their unwitting victims to run amok as "shore leave."

For most of the setting's history (read: until the DM builds a campaign around them) the yakmen have been content to hide in their mountains and kill or enslave anything that comes too close, making them the boogeymen that keep sultans awake at night, ruthless and powerful savages that threaten every other intelligent race.