When going through the office of my predecessor, the late Professor Vergilius, I stumbled across materials from around the rise of the hobgoblin empire detailing a curiosity from an excavation in Sylvanor. The earliest piece was by now famed scholar Professor Brunton, a letter from his days as a field researcher:
To Chief Researcher Lucius Camillus Vergilius,
I hope that the summer equinox has treated you well, and that this missive finds you in good spirits. How have you been sleeping? I ask because this far north around the equinox the sun seems to stubbornly refuse to set. The locals seem to deal with it fine, but as one can imagine it has not been pleasant to those newly arrived to the region.
In any event, I write to you so as to provide an update on the excavation. The full report is included in the package with a few artifacts that the excavators deemed safe to transport. However, there is one curiosity that prompted this separate letter in my report. The local villagers introduced me to some of their trading partners. I was stunned upon first meeting them.
They were short. Shorter even than halflings by maybe half-a-foot. If the biggest weighed as much as three stone I'll eat my tool kit. Covered in fur with banded, bushy tails, these... rantar, as the villagers called them, look far more bestial than tieflings, or even the koup'ira that live off of the coast. Each one was tinkering with something small in its hands as it spoke with a voice that seemed too deep for their size and with a harsh accent.
After they left, the villagers warned me that though decent trading partners they are extremely mischievous. Sometimes to the point of cruelty, they play vicious pranks even on their closest friends and family. Before using anything received from the rantar, the villagers thoroughly check for any traps or tricks within. By the time I had left to write this letter, the villagers had found two spring-launched darts coated with a toxin inducing uncontrolled laughter, three fur-lined cloaks coated with an itching powder, and twenty bags of berries that could help Professor Silvershield with his constipation.
I have no intention of doing anything to anger these rantar. From what I understand, the villagers and the rantar have a very friendly relationship. I can only imagine what they would do to someone that they hated.
Your Agent,
Researcher Yorin Agrius Brunton
The remaining materials contained a scattering of notes, which I have compiled in my free time. Outside of the letter from Professor Brunton, no sources have been named so I cannot verify with any measure of ease the validity of Professor Vergilius's notes.
Names
Rantar have between two and three names, the first is a birth name while the second is that of the "clan" that they were born in. Based on the reoccurring nature of those that possess them, I believe that the third name is reserved for those that leave their birth clan and join another. Some examples of birth names for men and women are Ambert, Borok, Donizaja, Relilana, Tolzas, and Ulla. Some examples of clan names are Avdonovich, Kushkiv, and Zuyev.
Physiology
From what I have determined, most rantar average between two-and-quarter and two-and-half feet in height with a corresponding weight, with most between twenty and thirty five pounds. Their bodies are covered in fur, with most being gray, black, white, or brown. They have bushy tails marked with blacked bands, and their triangular ears tend to be topped by white.
Culture
The few notes that I found regarding rantar culture has led me to believe that their lives revolve around pranks. My personal belief is that this is a form of training in tactics, stealth, and trapmaking. Their homeland has many dangers far larger than humans, and rantar are more than half the size of the average human, thus I believe that they use traps as an equalizer.
The two notes on their culture that do not speak of pranks refer to two distinct things, both in their language and not translated into Common: sam'lad and pakhardony. The first was used in reference to their family, but the context was much too reverent and respectful for it to be a direct translation. The last was referring to a rantar that appeared in Eszath, the context leading me to believe that it is a form of pilgrimage where the rantar leaves their clan. How common this is was not mentioned, so I cannot say if there is any shame attached to it.
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