Halfling Tribes

Although normally simple hunters and gatherers (see Villages and Hunting and Gathering Clans), halflings occasionally come down from the mountains in search of gifts for their chief. Usually, these tribes have been assigned such tasks as a form of punishment for some trespass they committed against another tribe or the chief. Halflings have little concept of property, and they regard anything that moves as a potential meal, so it is difficult to regard them in the same light as normal raiders - their concept of right and wrong is so different from ours that it is absurd to hold them to the same moral standards. That does not change the effects of their actions, however. Halfling tribes will sneak up on a sleeping caravan, a village, sometimes even a city, and carry away whatever they can lay their hands on - goods, animals, and people. The animals (and sometimes the people) they eat immediately, but they usually attempt to take prisoners and stolen items back to their village as a gift for the chief. Such raiding parties are led by the clan's normal leader, often a fairly powerful psionicist. If it proves too difficult for the raiders to steal what they want on the first night of attack, the psionicist usually tries to use his talents to help the clan escape. They return the next night with a different plan of attack, and, if they do not succeed, the night after that, then the night after that, etc. They will keep returning until they steal what they want, or until the entire raiding party is destroyed. There are two other peculiar things about halfling raiding parties. First, no one can tell what the raiders are after, not even the raiders themselves. They simply start taking things until their leader declares that they've got what they came for, i.e., an item of suitable magnificence for their chief. This can be an item as common as a kank saddle, or something as exotic as the bejeweled scabbard of a magical sword. Second, when a halfling raider is captured alive, he refuses to eat or drink, attempting to starve himself to death. He will not, however, attempt to escape or to kill his captors, as he views his capture as a sacrifice to his clan's chief.