The hokkai are giants by Loksentan standards, averaging about 10’ tall. The hokkai themselves consider their size normal. They have until relatively recently no one with which to compare. The hokkai had not met another sentient being before the first explorer crossed the River Dheas from Loksenta in 645 C.R. It took some time before the hokkai understood that these humans were another intelligent race, not strange looking toddlers babbling nonsense.
Loksentan relations with its southern neighbor is complicated by the fact that the hokkai have no leaders with which to meet. The hokkai have a sense of being a single people, but they had no concept of nations before meeting the Loksentans. To this day, few hokkai truly understand how humans can organize themselves in anything larger than a family group.
The hokkai are pastoral nomads. They follow herds of large, hairy oxen through a band of grass-covered hills stretching from the Sea of Perryn in the east to Borsen’s Gap in the west and the Tokiro River in the north to the Strigg Mountains in the south. Of course, these are the Loksentan names for these features. These geographical features are the only ones of their kind that the hokkai have encountered. They do not need to identify them with distinct names. To the hokkai, they are (translated into Gwenish) Big Water, Scar, Flowing Water, and Big Hills. It is worth noting that no monsters have come into hokkai lands through Borsen’s Gap.
The hokkai have no permanent settlements outside of a handful of religious communities that they call “places where the spirits speak”. Loksentans call them monasteries, after their own religious communities. In truth, these settlements have little resemblance to the human communities. The hokkai are ardent animists. Their religion has no hierarchy and no rituals, apart from knowing how to make offerings to gain the favor of individual spirits. Their monasteries grow up where those who can communicate directly with the spirits find it easiest to do so. The hokkai who live in these institutions organize according to the only method they know - the family. The member best able to manage the mundane needs of the community is called “Mother” or “Father”. The other members are “sisters” or “brothers”. This similarity in nomenclature to their own monks and nuns is another reason for Loksentans to think that the hokkai religion parallels their own.
Den of the Red Wolf 