Kenku

Key Similarities with Faerun's Version

• Kenku are a race of bestial humanoids, who appear as large walking crows or ravens. They have hands similar to a human, with apposable thumbs, and will tend to have more muscle mass and sturdier bone mass than actual birds, but in every other way, appear as large crows or ravens.

Key Differences with Faerun's Version

• Kenku are not just able to mimic other sounds and voices that they have heard - it is their only way of communicating. Kenku are born without a voice of their own - it is only through listening to others, and mimicking the exact things that they say, can they communicate. Of course, all children have to learn languages based on listening to others, but Kenku, at least at first, cannot form unique sentence constructions in a single voice - they must mimic individual phrases and words from different people, meshing them together to create unique sentences. Kenku who are allowed to grow and learn will often eventually be capable of creating their own voice in the aggregate, by taking syllables and parts of syllables of words from a few speakers, and wiring them together to form any sentence they might wish to, and doing so in a natural sounding way.
• The ability to communicate in one's "own voice" is considered a true marker of adulthood among free Kenku communities. While the point at which a Kenku achieves this feat will vary from person to person, it usually happens at some point between 10 years (for the extremely gifted) and 25 years of age. There is no shame in attaining this ability later in life - all Kenku who do so are given a celebration when they do, no matter how long it took. While this is considered a symbolic adulthood, Kenku have no real rights or responsibilities granted to Kenku who achieve it before 12, and none they keep away from those who don't achieve it until much later in life.
• While some Kenku communities are free-folk, these are rare, and tend to live as their own sub-cultures imbedded within other cultures. Unfortunately for them, the vast majority of Kenku living in Adra do so in bondage - the slavery of Kelior, and its Satrapies (save for Yuyake) utilizes systems of racial slavery. Among those enslaved are Kenku, Kobolds, and Goblins, but no race is so thoroughly in bondage as those of the Kenku. More than anything, Kenku are valued as slaves because of their difficulties with learning new words and phrases. Kenku in bondage are kept under supervision, and those who oversee them or work with them are forbidden from using anything but the most simple of words, and only those needed to do their job and nothing more. This prevents Kenku from as effectively organizing with one another (particularly since slaves born in captivity are kept illiterate), and was happened upon as the best way to cut down on slave revolts. Still, the Kenku continue to fight against their bondage, and many clever Kenku have led efforts among their fellows to learn their own sign languages - though teaching these languages in secret can be extremely difficult.
• The exact origins of Kenku in Adra is in doubt, though some historians have begun discovering the signs and remains of what they believe might have been a 1st Era Kenku Civilization of some advancement.

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