One of the dangers of travelling through the Galloway Hills is the faerie 'clan' Mac Arawn. This band of goblins is notorious among the Galwegians for misdirecting or murdering travellers, stealing livestock and spiriting children away in the dead of night.
Appearance
The MacArawns look like twisted, stunted humans, with sparse, stringy hair and albino skin under layers of grease and filth. Their eyes are a pale yellow and their ears are very large and pointed. When they smile (which they do frequently to intimidate people) their teeth are uniformly pointed and sharp.
Clan members often dress in scraps of stolen clothing which they modify into crude leines and trews. Like other goblins, they can move silently and invisibly when they wish. However, they often announce their presence with their call, which sounds like a slow, guttural clicking. Galwegian legend warns travellers hearing such a sound in the woods and hills at night to turn on their heel and run to the nearest settlement. Even enemies of one's clan are to be preferred to capture by the MacArawns.
Social Organisation
Like their human neighbours, the MacArawns are organised into a kinship group under the rule of an elder, who takes the title of the Mac Arawn. The MacArawn adjudicates the clan members' incomprehensible, often centuries-old feuds (though in ways that never fully resolve the issue) and dictates which mortals are to be left alone by the clan and which are acceptable targets for theft and murder.
The clan includes a bard known as Cockerel Keith, who originally hails from another faerie court, though exactly where varies from questioner to questioner. Cockerel Keith feels belittled by being forced to entertain his degenerate hosts, and constantly schemes to overthrow the Mac Arawn and proclaim himself chief. The Mac Arawn appears to be fully aware of these plots, but makes no move to punish the lesser faerie.
Clan Caverns
Like all other goblins, clan MacArawn dwells in subterranean caverns. The clan's main feasting hall is one such, with a roof seemingly held aloft by great stone trees and a river of warm blood flowing through its centre. Here the Mac Arawn sits on a throne carved from a great gnarled root with his feet in the lap of a young woman who may very well be a mortal human, though she has not been seen to age. Given the unusual surroundings, it is all but certain that this cavern is a faerie regio.
In conversation with Brennix, among others, clan members have mentioned other caverns containing centuries worth of stolen treasure and gnawed bones. One of these was used to store the Academica's Ale Keg following its theft from the Academica Septima Superior. Most have never been seen by mortal eyes, but Galwegian legend has it that any tree in the hills bearing eight twisted limbs has an entrance to the MacArawn's caverns in a hollow beneath its roots.