Peoples of the Goblin Deeps
The land beneath the Krond Heights is filled with passages and galleries; some natural, others carved by goblins, worms, or dwarves. There are thousands of miles of these passages, and they change yearly as the Kalamaran plate shoves north against the Brandobian plate, causing earthquakes and collapses. That some dwarven tunnels still exist is a testament to the engineering skills of the long-gone dwarven kingdom.
Bugbears - Above the land, the bugbears toe the goblin line, serving as semi-loyal vassals overseeing their aboveground operations. In the dark beneath? Bugbears are the horror that human stories make them out to be. Their keen senses let them operate well in an absence of light; they may not see you, but they hear and smell you. Despite their bulk, they move quickly through all but the most restrictive goblin tunnels, capturing the unwary and dragging them into the still darkness to be devoured. They wear no armor, carry no shields, and make no sound. For weapons, they use daggers and short blades, or broken half-spears with a blade and a shaft they might use to crush a windpipe. When slaves disappear without a trace, it is the darkness that took them.
Dragon - Not Dragons. Dragon, singular, which is more than enough. Chezzedreth, the White Dragon of the Krond Heights, resides on the Terrace of Infinity. Last active four years ago, in 559, she had spent the previous five years decimating the hobgoblins of the Odrill Hills in eastern Brandobia. Given six years of activity, it is suspected she is asleep in some concealed lair, but none have dared venture to the terrace to find out.
Dwarf, Ragged - Some dwarves still live in the halls of their ancestors, abandoned these centuries by their kin. Twisted by centuries of darkness and slavery, the “Ragged Dwarves” are not the robust warriors who clash in the Ka’asa, but goblin-tongued and pale, their beards scraggly and their skin grimy with lack of care. They lack a dwarf’s skill at arms, since the goblins will allow no weapons of war for them; instead, they prefer daggers, poison, and magic.
The thousand that remain are clannish, used as slaves for the work goblins do not wish to do; largely mining and household work. The goblins love the ability to tell a dwarf to pick up their filth or clean their tools, nevermind that most goblins under the king have never seen a dwarf save their slaves. It should be noted that the Goblin King seldom trusts dwarves near him, not even those crushed under generations of slavery.
When left to their own devices? The ragged dwarves plot murder and rebellion. Their twin gods are the Emperor of Scorn and the Guardian, an unlikely pair to say the least, but a ragged dwarf will tell you that he has no blood, only hatred of the goblins. He has no breath, only a yearning to be free. When they are able, a ragged dwarf will slay a goblin, but opportunities are few.
Goblins and Wargs - The Goblins of the Undermountain are a rich, vibrant society of vicious little bastards. Goblin male society is based on dominance challenges and knowing one’s place in the hierarchy. If you are superior to another, you are free to treat them in any way you please, and must accept the same from your betters. Don’t like it? Don’t want to be pushed around by Glob anymore? Challenge him. Fight him. Pay an assassin to cripple him before the fight, if you can afford it. Or suck it up, buttercup, because it doesn’t get any better from here.
Every goblin male knows his place, and he knows the place of most of those around him. When goblins interact with strange goblins, there will be tests of will and intimidation, and perhaps a few dominance fights as roughly equal goblins sort out who is tougher. Goblins don’t see any shame in acknowledging a superior, but subordinating yourself to another who is not your superior is not only shameful, it shames everyone beneath you. Dominance fights do not need to be lethal, are sometimes informal, and are frequently the subject of betting and a source of entertainment.
Non-goblins who are not slaves may join in goblin dominance games, creating their place in the hierarchy. They may not necessarily win the perquisites of superiority; a goblin who defeats his captain becomes captain, while a bugbear who defeats a captain simply can’t be ordered around by him anymore, and will receive deference from that captain’s inferiors. Orders from above will still flow to the captain, unless the captain’s chief wishes otherwise (and the bugbear is willing to follow orders). Many wargs hold goblin rank, even if it’s simply because a snarl with hackles raised from four hundred pounds of sentient wolf is enough to make most goblins back down.
Female goblins are held as chattel by male goblins, but create their own dominance hierarchies, with the added element of favor of powerful males. The favor of a chief or king can be a powerful weapon in the female harems, and it is one that is not easily dislodged without incurring disfavor on the malefactor; a she-goblin might injure or scar her rival, but unless it is done very subtly, then it is likely she will suffer fatal consequences for it.
Below them all are slaves. Slaves cannot take part in dominance games, and goblins see no reason to accord them the degree of fair play they do other goblins (paying an assassin to cripple your opponent before a dominance challenge is seen as fair play by goblins). A slave who challenges or talks back to a goblin will be turned upon en masse and beaten, if not killed. There are rare instances of slaves surviving that and pulling themselves out of slavery, but it relies, to an extent, upon largesse or calculation from goblins with command of sufficient forces to subdue the slave. A single human warrior might be able to subdue five goblins, or maybe even a whole eight from a work group, with luck and a broken chair leg. But he’s unlikely to be able to handle the forty goblins a captain can easily send against him, or a pair of wargs who decide to join in the fun.
In smaller groupings of goblins, this is often enough to consider. But when thousands of goblins get together, as they do beneath the Krond Heights, the society develops differences to deal with the great concentration of people. In smaller gatherings, goblins most often issue orders directly, but in the Kingdom, orders are issued in the name of a superior. If Glob orders Biznak to do something in person, Biznak may decide that he doesn’t need to listen to Glob and challenge him for dominance. So, Glob will not issue an order in his own name. He brings orders from his captain, Grizzle, and if Biznak wishes to fight Grizzle, well, he’s going to have to believe he can take a captain. Goblins serving as another goblin’s mouthpiece will carry some emblem to “prove” that, though many goblins will not, necessarily, know whether or not a given emblem really belongs to a specific leader. The rare chaotic goblin sometimes takes advantage of that, carrying emblems of captains or chiefs who do not exist, or that were stolen from their rightful holders.
This affects the goblin economy. While the goblins do not mint coins, they do have a fine sense of value, and trade bars of metals, hacksilver and hackcopper, and various trade goods within and between tribes. The dominant goblin offers a price on the goods, with the lesser goblin challenging the price in an imitation of goblin challenge etiquette. Lesser goblins will still argue a price, and attempt to get the best value, often in the name of their own superiors; “Grizzle would not like if I sold it for ten ounces of silver; you must give me twelve, or he will beat you for your insolence.” The goblin so implored might respond with his contempt for Grizzle, the worthlessness of the goods, or the worthlessness of the salesman, until they come to an agreeable price. Prices tend to be within a fair range, as using status to take advantage of one goblin may excite his superiors. Stealing through status can work, but only for so long before the superiors stolen from decide that they’ve had enough.
Many goblins also form interpersonal bonds, in a way not dissimilar to human friendships and marriages. There is always an awareness of hierarchy, but protocol might be suspended between friends, especially in intimate pairs. The goblin awareness of hierarchy is such that the superior will not elevate the inferior above his station; making a weak goblin a sergeant under you is an invitation to have that goblin killed in a dominance challenge by those who are his actual superiors. A vastly inferior goblin may, however, be protected from his superiors by his friend or lover, as the more powerful goblin may make it clear that he would be displeased by mistreatment of his friend. No particular shame is attached to these sorts of relationships, though a high-status goblin who played the lesser in a relationship with a low status goblin might lose face.
Since access to she-goblins is a perquisite of rank that a goblin might share, male goblins who prefer male lovers can obtain a surprising degree of power by offering access to secure loyalty; their own lover is loyal through emotional bonds and patronage, while other useful goblins are kept loyal through access to she-goblins. Some goblin males also amass wealth by selling access to she-goblins they have control of, regardless of their own preferences (and, indeed, there are secret cults of the Vicelord dedicated to just this).
Wargs, it should be noted, are far less common in the Goblin Deeps. Some live in the cities, but they do not see as well as goblins in the dark, and the stinking, dank closeness of the endless tunnels does not suit their hunting style nor their comfort. Wargs who venture far underground are almost always close companions of a goblin, and that goblin is most often on a mission from an aboveground chieftain.
Kobolds - Kobolds under the Krond Heights live in isolated sections, most in the north of the range. Indeed, they are frequent pawns of the Great Queen spider and the Lady of the Webs of the Broad River Valley (see The Valley Lands in Shadesh West). They worship her, make great use of poison, and even ride spiders into battle (they can fit on huge spiders, but more often use gigantic spiders). A kobold abroad in the tunnels may be from a primitive tribe that barely ekes out a living, or might be an agent of a powerful hag, their weapons dripping with poison, and perhaps a few spiders along for companionship. It is not clear if the Lady of the Webs has designs upon the tunnels of the Krond Heights, but her envoys ride massive spiders, and command respect even from the Goblin King.
Morlocks - The Morlock fungus is ruthlessly destroyed wherever it is found by goblins, leading to a minimal incursion of morlocks into goblin territory or the Krond Heights. On the western side of the range, near Cosdol and away from centers of goblin power, they have more hold, partially because there are far more available victims for their addiction. At least one major colony is able to raid the P’Bapar Pass not far from Coniper Gap. There are also occasional outbreaks of morlock violence when enterprising goblins attempt to cultivate the fungus as a narcotic, either for sale or as a means of slave control. More often than not, either they fall victim to their own supply, or their clients become addicted enough to gorge on it and begin an infestation on their own.
Muscheron - The fungoids have vast farms beneath the Krond Heights, and trade extensively with the goblins. In decades past, the goblins attempted to subjugate them, but were unable to match them; the fungoids reproduced quickly, and the spores of their elders crippled the goblin forces. Rather than expend their forces on the mushrooms, the goblins came to trade. Lower goblins live on a diet heavy in mushrooms, and goblin communities produce a vast amount of organic waste. Some goblin communities began to trade their waste for edible mushrooms, sweetening the deal from time to time with other useful items made of metal. Vermii, too, trade with the Muscheron, but their robust constitutions extend to an ability to ignore the spores of elders. As the conflict between the vermii and the goblins grows, the vermii are finding the muscheron useful as a means of disposal; dump a body with the toadstoids and it will be composted in a day or two.
Orcs - The Gray Orcs of the Netherdeep roil beneath the relatively settled areas of the Goblin Kingdom. While they establish occasional outposts in goblin territory, the goblins root these out as soon as they are discovered. Periodically, ranging from several times in a year to several times in a decade, gray orcs will explode into a goblin or muscheron settled area and wreak havoc until they can be contained and driven back. It is not known what drives these incursions. Did the orcs simply happen to dig a tunnel that created a new avenue of conquest? Are they being directed by someone else, being used tactically to remove defenses, or even act as cover for some other scheme? The goblins and muscheron do not know.
Troglodytes - Sleestacks largely live beneath the layer of Netherdeep known as the Goblin Heights, and so are not common. However, they do exert significant pressure on the Muscheron, who they regard as food, which can cause some instability in goblin trade with the mushroom men. Some goblins have established trade with individual troglodyte leaders, but such trade is always tenuous, at best, as the trogs don’t have much that the goblins want; goblins are more likely to trade weapons in exchange for military aid or intelligence, than actual goods. Goblins who suffer from anosmia are often pressed into “sleestack relations”, and may even rise in status because of their ability to tolerate troglodyte stench.
Trolls - The lightless tunnels hold many places for trolls to live and hide, and bountiful food. Both goblins and muscheron will organize troll hunts when their predations get too great, though most such hunts will only kill one or two trolls, scattering the rest into the darkness. While troglodytes and even bugbears might be enticed into working with the goblins as shock troops, they detest trolls; while they can easily be induced to attack a target, they cannot be convinced to not attack their “allies”. Vermus, on the other hand, are less concerned about collateral damage, and have been known to ambush and chop up a troll, depositing their bits in places that will cause difficulty for the goblins.
Tunnel Hags - The tunnel hags are the sad remains of the dwarven empire. The oldest date from that era, and were, indeed, part of how the dwarves controlled the vermus population. Over the centuries, more tunnel hags have been created from the ragged dwarves, and many are dedicated to destroying the goblins. While all standard hags are spellcasters, not all tunnel hags are, though all have innate magical abilities, and many have picked up some sort of magic through the centuries. Because of their mutual distrust, most tunnel hags work singly or in pairs, often with a pack of lackeys. Those that are not part of the Vermii War are pushed to the fringes of goblin space, and are often found among the grey orcs, worshiped as demigods for their ability to remove fear.
Vermii - The vermii of the Goblin Kingdom are different, more driven, than the vermii of aboveground kingdoms. Ages ago, they were the allies of the dwarves, serving as scouts and waste disposal. Their population carefully controlled by the dwarves, they were prosperous and well-fed. In Ratmen mythology, the Time of the Dwarves is remembered as a golden age, and goblins are known as the ones who destroyed that. Today, the vermii wage war on the goblins, believing that the removal of the goblins will bring about the return of the dwarves, and the return of lives of plenty.
Being ratmen, the Vermii War is not one of armored blocks of spearmen facing each other in a tunnel, but one of assassination and theft. The ragged dwarves aid in this, and spread the myth of the Golden Age of Dwarves, while directing the ratmen against targets and leading them to raid stores of food. They spread dissent and encourage the goblins to kill each other, sabotaging supply and communication lines, leaving the goblins vulnerable to other foes, or taking advantage of calamities to cause further chaos. Their efforts will likely never destroy the Goblin Kingdom, but they have checked its growth on many occasions.
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That concludes the first section of the Krond Heights book (sorry I'm a day late; have been having a seriously weird few weeks, and they will stay weird for a while). Next week, we'll take a look at the aboveground areas in more detail. Same Hack Time, Same Hack Channel!
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