Going underground, this is the first part of the section on the Netherdeep, covering the history of the Goblin Kingdom, and the Muscheron Colonies, and the Morlock areas
History
More than five thousand years ago, the dwarves of the Northern Mountains founded K’Ran’da, the first dwarven kingdom. Deep beneath the peaks of what they called the K’Ran’Da Heights, they hewed a kingdom out of rock, and secured it against goblins, orcs, giants, and the horrors of the deep. They farmed the valleys, raised their families, and ignored the growing threats around them, secure in their mountain homes.
After four thousand years, K’Ran’da fell, for reasons not entirely clear today. The vermii hold that they were attacked by goblins, backed by demons, and the subsequent history of K’Ran’da certainly bears out that goblins were involved, but it is not clear that they were the instigators of the destruction, or merely its beneficiaries. Regardless, by 500 B.I.R. (Before Imperial Reckoning), the dwarven kingdom of K’Ran’da had fallen, its people enslaved to the nascent Goblin Kingdom.
The goblins, at first owning only a single city and the farmlands outside, began a campaign to conquer the old dwarven territory. The decline of the dwarven kingdom had left the morlocks, the muscheron, the deep orcs, and the vermus in strong positions, occupying many of the cities. Others fell to vermin, such as stercuses, muck men, and spiders. Dwarven slaves, left from the conquest of K’Ran’da, were worked to death in the cities of their ancestors, until circa 50 B.I.R., when human and halfling explorers from Brandobia came to the river valleys of the K’Ran’da Heights, which the goblin accent rendered “Krond Heights”. They established themselves in the mountains, first under the protection of the giants, then the halflings joining the goblins. Still, however, the goblins remained in the Krond Heights, and did not expand into former dwarven territory in the Shashyfs.
Early in the Imperial Reckoning, hobgoblin attacks against Eastern Brandobia increased. As the hobgoblins pushed down from the Heights, they encountered the Goblin Kingdom, and brought it into the empire of Kruk-ma-kali, formally founded in 22 IR with the defeat of Eastern Brandobia. According to goblin histories, the hobgoblins treated the goblins intolerably, ignoring the rights and privileges that should have belonged to the goblin king and his subordinates, leading to Kruk-ma-kali’s assassination by goblins from the House of Knives in 35 IR, and the dissolution of the Empire.
One effect of Kruk-ma-Kali’s empire was that the goblins began to look outside of their kingdom under the Krond Heights. They began to reclaim dwarven ruins and positions in the Shashyf Hills, clashing with Bylenjy Dejy and orcs of the Green Scourge. This fresh source of slave labor reinvigorated the goblin economy, and may have saved the remains of the K’Ran’dan dwarves from extinction, as new sources of labor allowed some of the population stress to be removed from them.
More than five hundred years later, this is still much the situation. Goblin expansion has been focused on the Shashyf Hills, and their long-running war with the Green Scourge orcs is drawing to a close with the Scourge’s conversion to the Blood Drinker tribe and withdrawal across the Ghokhaagr River. The balance of power remains with the giants aboveground, but the giants have not exerted power against the goblins in the river lowlands. To the north, there is a back and forth of dente and aggression between the Goblin Kingdom and the Lady of the Webs and her spider and kobold minions, plus the depredations of morlocks, orcs, and other deep dwellers. South of the Goblin Kingdom, much of the Deeps remains wilderness, the
domain of wild orcs, muscheron, and other creatures, with only occasional goblin scouting parties.
The Muscheron Colonies
While not a cohesive force, nor a collective power, the fungoids are counted by the goblins as being a “friendly state”; one which does not need conquering, because they’re doing everything the goblins want by simply existing and trading, but who wither and die if forced into goblin service. Somewhat bizarre and grotesque by demihuman standards, the fungoids respect the boundaries agreed to by the goblins, and their splintered nature means that they do not perceive a threat to the whole if the goblins are forced to move against one of their clade; there’s no sense of community between fungoids of different species.
The muscheron have no defined territories; each colony is sovereign, and maintains its own tunnels and caverns. Some grow in the ruins of old dwarf outposts, others in natural caves, or in water-cut tunnels and near underground lakes. In travelling the network of tunnels left by dwarves, titanic worms, and other industrious burrowers, one might come across a fungoid colony practically anywhere the sun does not reach. Most are not immediately hostile, but are wary, and they do not like hacking weapons being wielded.
Communicating with the muscheron colonies is a bit of a difficulty. They do not speak, and do not properly “hear”, as goblins think it, and each species has its own language, only parts of which can be sensed by non-fungoids. Over the centuries, a sign language called “Mushroom” has developed that most muscheron employ when dealing with goblins. It incorporates relatively large movements of the body, along with thumps on the ground or chest, hums, and other non-verbal vibrations as emphasis. Goblin diplomats frequently learn Mushroom, and those who deal extensively with one colony will learn some of their language.
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Sidebar: Talking Mushrooms
Most Muscheron languages take place in a way that it is difficult for humanoids and demi-humans to detect or participate in. Can you thump on the floor with an exact strength with your foot? The exact strength needed being determined by the composition of the floor, which you also detected with your feet? Can you adequately spread your gills so they express shock? Tip your headcap slightly to indicate disbelief? Non-fungoids attempting to understand muscheron languages take a -25% penalty to their skill, and those attempting to speak it take a -50% penalty to their skill; someone with less than a 25% is learning the language, and can recognize that language is happening, but knows nothing about what is said, except in very basic circumstances. Mushroom, the language developed to facilitate communication with the Muscheron, imposes no such penalty, but it also faces many of the same limitations of Merchant’s Tongue; its vocabulary and scope are somewhat limited by the simplicity necessary to make it intelligible across the cultural and physiological divide.
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Another communication problem comes from culture. While most of the fungoids do not have a proper hive mind, the subtlety of their communication can make it seem as if they do. They lack many of the urges that drive other species; their emotions, if they even have them, are inscrutable. To goblins, they seem almost entirely survival oriented, and the difficulties in communications (and goblin lack of care) means that any art, literature, or music they may have is completely unknown.
The muscheron, however, also simply do not care about the goblins, and there are some restrictions that the goblins find they cannot enforce. While some attempt to make the muscheron stop dealing with vermii and other non-goblin groups have been tried, the fungoids say they can’t tell the difference between a goblin, a vermus, or whatever else might come to them in peace. As such, many muscheron colonies supply everyone with food. In trade, most muscheron take waste; dead bodies, rotting leather, burnt bones, offal; anything organic that can be broken down by their fungus crops. While goblins generally don’t cart all of their waste to the fungoids (they generate a lot, and have other sources of food), enough goes in that the muscheron haven’t been expansionist in more than a century. If goblin supplies fall short, they can also cart more waste, or even trade metal items if they need to; the muscheron know the value of metal spear tips.
The vermii use the muscheron fields as dumping grounds for bodies; goblin assassins tend to like having their work found, while the vermii find that more confusion is spread by a sudden disappearance than a dead body -- and they get paid in food for giving the fungoids a goblin corpse, so it’s a double benefit. Many smaller communities are also more assiduous about their waste disposal; while the fungus crops of the muscheron are seldom anyone’s favorite food, they’re edible by most species that aren’t obligate carnivores, and even by some who are.
Lest life with the muscheron begin to sound idyllic, there are some difficulties. First of all, muscheron react extremely hostilely to anyone wielding Hacking weapons. On your belt or in a sheath is generally fine, but hacking weapons are forbidden to goblins going to allied muscheron colonies. They muscheron say they cannot tell the difference between goblin or vermus, orc or human, but they know those who have drawn weapons on them before. Their resistance to the damage of Puncturing and Bashing weapons means that they care less about those; waving about a club or pointing with a spear is not seen as terribly aggressive by them. They are also not immune to attack. While goblins are relatively reasonable, muscheron themselves are still regarded as food by troglodytes, unallied bugbears, and orcs. Raids by these creatures makes the muscheron edgy towards all strangers. Speaking even basic Mushroom can allay their fears, but proficiency with Mushroom becomes less common the further one moves from the Goblin Kingdom.
The Morlock Regions
Goblins destroy the morlock fungus wherever it is found, but it can take root almost anywhere in the Deeps, and grows fairly quickly, meaning new outbreaks are not uncommon. It also seems that some have a natural immunity to the morlock fungus, or, at least, a considerable resistance. This can result in them being carriers of fungal spores, especially in warm or moist pockets of their bodies. The spores will grow and propagate on their skin, and rub off where the carrier touches. The young spores attach to the rock and begin to leach lichens, minerals, and slime molds, including the respirator slime molds that help produce oxygen and reduce poisonous carbons dioxide and monoxide. The result is that morlock caverns are thick with “foul air”, which can result in suffocation if there’s inadequate circulation. Those dead areas will recover, in time, but force the morlocks to move into new areas as the old become uninhabitable.
Some regions, such as under the mountains behind the Odril Hills and just north of the P’Bapar Pass, are almost completely filled with the morlock fungus and its victims. The P’Baparan expanse is almost entirely unchecked, while the Odril infestation is continually fought by the goblins, with outposts monitoring it, attempting to burn it back, and sometimes falling to addiction and usurpation.
Muscheron responses to the morlock fungus vary. Some ignore it, able to resist it in their own right but not interested in combating it. Others regard it as a scourge or invasive species in their gardens, and resist it just as the goblins do. And some join with it, symbiotically, treating morlocks as members of their own species, and introducing outsiders to the morlock fungus to encourage joining and harmony. These last are extremely dangerous; the muscheron cultivate the fungus and ensure that the morlocks themselves are fed, and prevent the fungus from depleting the respirator slime molds, keeping their hybrid colony healthy, longer. Morlocks, after all, need not be human; many colonies will have bugbears, orcs, and sleestacks among their numbers, living in blind, drugged harmony.
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Next week: The Lady of the Webs, and some miscellaneous critters... including the tunnel hag.
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