Grimkin

Grimkins are muscular, primitive cave-dwellers with thick gray or greenish skin and broad, powerful hands capable of grasping tools, stones, and clubs. Their hunched posture and protruding jaw give them a brutish appearance, and their small, fierce eyes glow faintly in low light. While still driven mostly by instinct, Grimkins exhibit the earliest signs of structured behavior—basic tool use, coordinated hunting calls, and territorial marking.

They live in clusters inside abandoned tunnels, old mining shafts, or natural caverns, gathering around shallow pits of glowing moss they treat with surprising care. When threatened, Grimkins charge as a unified group, pounding the ground and bellowing deep, resonant cries. Their strength makes them dangerous even without training, and their hands are dexterous enough to wield clubs or heavy stones with surprising accuracy.

Grimkins are not yet sentient in a social or cultural sense, but they imitate sounds and gestures from other humanoids, suggesting a capacity for rapid future development. Some frontier scholars believe they represent an evolutionary stage between animal and sapient—creatures that, under pressure or influence, could one day become a unified, warlike people.