Junlocks, Also for you Tiberius...

The Junlocks are a race of wolf-like humanoids that live in a tribal society, similar to ancient european societies like the ancient gauls, or ancient britains (the guys the romans used to invade)
They worship the sun and the moon as gods, (Belmarix being the male moon god, and Jatis being the female sun god.) They build elaborate standing stones to track the suns movements to divine the correct time for festivities and sacrifices to earn the gods favour.
Their home land is very large but relatively sparsely populated. It is a very cold region (its not arctic, but they get a lot of snow and there are cruel icey winds) with snow covered planes and might pine forests.
The Junlock priests are known as druids and they believe in reincarnation, where the brave and righteous are rewarded with a new life by the gods.
They value personal courage and individual freedom above all things. They follow through on their belief in freedom to the extent that they consider imprisoning criminals cruel and unusual punishment. Execution is more merciful to the Junlock way of thinking. Obviously slavery is a right out for the Junlocks, and they view races that keep slaves (such as the Ivos) and those that are willing to trade slaves (such as the Zadakine or Brorg-Dao) very poorly.

Being relatively low tech they have often suffered attacks from stronger nieghbours; raids by the Brorg-Dao, numerous Ivos invasions and most recently crusades by the Darsai.
This has made many of them embittered, and many of their warriors travel to other lands to work as bandits or mercenaries, taking out their resentment on other races directly. This type of thinking makes some of them very open to making alliances with powerful but dangerous forces, such as the minions of the West.

Junlock society is fairly equal in the way it views men and women. Only fighting as a warrior is generally seen as an exclusively male role, though even here there are some Junlock women who have become renown as mighty warriors.
One example is the feared swords woman Valatrex, whose armour is said to have been pieced together out of steel plates torn from the bodies of a hundred Nameless warriors.

Junlock society does not tolerate homosexuality, which is seen as deeply immoral.
Anyone discovered to be homosexual is driven out and banished, though some might be lynched on the spot.
The Junlocks are even more hostile to half castes, especially those found to have any Ivos parents. Half castes can expect only the cruelest treatment at the hands of a Junlock community, unless they have very powerful or influential relatives who can offer them protection.

Junlocks are physically big and strong, and don't feel the cold much at all.
They generally enjoy hunting, out door physical activity and story telling.

Lacking much industry, the Junlocks often go into battle unarmoured, many fighting without even a shirt on (just their brightly patterned trousers.) Leaders and elite troops will often have some armour though, generally helmets and chainmail shirts.
They are brave, fierce, sometimes even berserk in battle, but also disorganised and reckless. Often they fight more as a group of brave individuals, rather then a coherant force, making them vulnerable to more disciplined armies.
They know their icy homeland very well, so they can ambush invaders and pick off supply lines very effectively, though if they were to try and take all out war into another country, without these advantages, their forces would be very vulnerable.
One of their most feared weapons is a heavy forward curving sword called a Falx, which can cause terrible injuries and punch through armour. This is especially useful as many of the Junlocks enemies, such as the Ivos and the Darsaia are well armoured in battle. The Ivos in particular have learned to treat those that wield these weapons with respect on the battle field!

I am expanding the Junlock pantheon with an additional god.
Jatis (the sun goddess) has a brother called Dobolly.
Dobolly is not represented by a celestial body and does not receive any direct worship. He is portrayed as a small scrawny Junlock with a wide grin and wild, staring eyes. Interestingly, despite being a god, he is portrayed as being relatively weak, being pushed around by bullies or frightened by large animals. However, though he cant do much in a direct fight, Dobolly is the master of cruel tricks, with which he teaches those who are wicked, selfish, greedy or tyrannical harsh lessons. And these lessons are indeed very harsh! The villains may be tricked into to cutting off their hands, or wearing red hot irons shoes or all sort so other cruel (and more often then not ironic) fates!
The many stories of Dobolly are humourous in nature but also serve as morality plays, teaching a valuable lesson to the listeners about the price of evil behaviour.
Junlock audience are kept in stitches by the telling of a good Dobolly fable from a skilled bard.
Since in Junlock society, swearing often relates to invoking the name of a character of history or legend, Junlocks commonly use Dobolly or characters from his stories.
"He needs to meet Dobolly!" or just "Meet Dobolly!" is a common exclamation, meaning "He needs someone to put him in his place/ teach him a lesson"

Their intolerance for half castes and homosexuals is partly a fact of their culture and world view, but their views on these topics have certainly been hardened because of harsh treatment from the Ivos in particular.
Getting invaded a lot innevitably results in women being raped and others willingly becoming romantically involved with the invading troops.
So having a larger number of half castes that look like their hated enemy has almost certainly made them more hateful towards half castes in general.
The Ivos have no problem with homosexuality (often considering it superior to hetrosexual love...after all, to Ivos thinking men are clearly superior to women in all ways so the love between too men must be the greatest love of all!) Homossexuality is thus seen as an Ivos trait, meaning that anyone exhibiting these tendancies is not just seen as a deviant, but a possible collaborator with the enemy.

Dobolly was certainly Loki inspired. Also, I noticed that husband and wife god teams were becoming a bit too common in Harkovast (the Golta have that set up, for example) so I wanted to mix it up a bit with a third memeber. The idea of a trickster fits well with the rich Junlock story telling traditions.

Other Junlock powers? I dont want to give too much away, as there are a few cool surprises in store. Remember, the Junlocks have ice AND life magic, and make use of both.

Fun Fact...

The Romans had to deal with Dacians wielding those falx things. They were decent, but not much of a match for Roman legionaries. Fact of the matter is, they got stuck in the shields and the Romans adapted by having a segmented plate arm guard on their sword arm.

ok i know dead topic

i like the junlocks, not everything about them but i like how they love individuality alot
(also frost berserkers look awesome)
i hope in the future we can see at least one junlock who isn't an enemy, i'd say not an ass but we have ki and i like ki, so just not an antagonist would be fine for me

then again i am a fan not a creator

I can confirm that there is indeed a Junlock character who isn't evil. At least, confirm in so far as I've seen the voting incentive for one of the heroines from the Nameless War, a female Junlock who wears looted armour.

Harkovast is incredibly varied in the lore and realism of the world (in so far as culture and psychology goes, I mean, talking animals with energy swords aren't exactly realistic), I'd say it would be out of character if he just had only evil Junlocks.

that is true indeed
sorry i also laughed at the whole cats with energy swords
i know they do it but i never thought those exact words

There should be a section for past voting incentives somewhere around here. You may be able to find the character there.

Junlocks are, indeed, completely awesome!
The ones we have seen before were a bunch of bandits and thugs, hardly the cream of the Junlock crop!
Let's get a more high class wolf person in here to fly the flag for Junlocks-
(Posted Image)

Thanks for posting your thoughts on the forum Frostwolf18, your support is much appreciated!

Don't worry about posting on dead topics. If you have something to say on a topic, I don't care if its old, you say what needs to be said!

Imagine being a Junlock; you're covered with thick fur of moderate length, on your tail, your arms, legs, up the back of your neck...


Now imagine getting that fur jammed in between the links of your mail.

I like the Junlocks because their wolves.

That's pretty much the entire reason.

Barbarian culture is also cool (in rome total war, I always preferred playing as the britons.)

i think it was the same reason for me
but after i saw the frost berserker i kept thinking
wolf men
ice
fenrir
viking
junlocks are the vikings of this world!
vikings!
if there was a place for fan characters mine would be a junlock frost berserker that dual wielded axes, ahh such a sight

I don't think they're the vikings. They'd have to be very big on sea travel/pillage to be the vikings. They seem too land based to be Vikings.

they seem to be some kind of norse to me
as said before we have only seen bandits
but then again i could be terribly wrong here
but then again i just like how awesome they are

I believe they are more analogous of the European barbarians that opposed Rome.

that works too
i should really study up my ancient european history some more

History is cool.

The Dacians were a tough lot, I'll give em that.

As for the Vikings... there is a group similar to the Vikings.

Brorg-Dao. They are, get this, lizard Vikings. Strange? Maybe, but don't tell them that. Try mentioning the problems with cold blooded animals surviving really cold weather and they'd probably kill you and pillage your village. Actually, they'd probably do that anyway.