The Lhirogref, the great nation of the goblinoids, hold themselves as the first people. They were here when the dragons first crashed out from their calderas. They were there to see the Titans first step down from the clouds. When the first dwarves broke free of stone. When the first elves tumbled out of the feywild.
Lhirogref is not a nation-state, it is a civilization-state. Lhirogref is old and has rarely been conquered - cowed by the Dragons during their golden age and dominated by the Titans before that, Lhirogref regards only forces such as those as its equal. Others may come to Lhirogref and assert they have conquered the place, but after a time it is found that they have become Lhirogref themselves, assimilated and now part of the long, long tradition. Most goblins have trouble maintaining focus or resisting impulses which makes them quite chaotic and disorganised but over time groups such as tief-goblins, dragonblood orcs, and hobgoblins have found a shared affinity for a national project and shaped Lhirogref into something that looks to outsiders like a realm or nation.
Their culture split down into four great clans centred around the things they do best
- the Chain delves for the riches of the earth
- the Forge shapes the magical essences of everything
- the Pit harnesses the power of beasts of the land
- the Maw plumbs the riches of the sea
Numerous minor clans gather around affiliations like a location or a people.
d8 This sled you run into...
1. is drawn by reindeer, festooned with harpoons and drying racks and crewed by a cheerful team of Maw fishers
2. this sled of Maw traders has a hooped cover and a mixed bag of bundled up traders. Their sleeves and belts bristle with hilts
3. tears across the tundra propelled by a shrieking, spinning mechanism with a pair of excited Forge test-artificers
4. smoulders while a goblin in a large buckled robe pokes through the wreckage while their manticore mount chews on a leg
5. is enormous, hauled by a pair of mammoths, ridden by a quartet of ogrishly-large beings from the Pit festooned in chainmail
6. carries an enormous sea-creature and is being man-handled along by a dozen goblins from the Maw
7. is a tar sled, drawn by ogres or other brawny teams bringing barrels of thick bitumen from the great step wells to the smelters
8. slices across the land, sail billowing, up on one runner, crew of goblins hanging far over to balance
Because Lhirogref is the origin for all goblin-kind, potentially all life on the world to hear them tell it, they also have the greatest variety of form. While other places tend to have goblinoids with a certain look in Lhirogref they have the original 'goblin market' variety of form - displaying a range of body-shape that far out-spans anyone else. Outsiders often wonder how goblins don't mistake each other for animalfolk of various types but goblins always recognise their own. Goblins are welcoming to others, because hang around with them long enough and you'll become a goblin. Young barghests in particular often turn up, blending in more easily here than other places in the plethora of colours and shapes.
This acceptance of all as future-kin is in tension with a culture adapted to scarcity and the fight against that. Lhirogref has accumulated many things over its long, long existence but contrasts strongly with elves and dwarves in a ruthless pruning of their ways once a thing is no longer fit for their needs. Lhirogref adapts, sometimes by shaping their environment around them, sometimes by shaping themselves. They are expert operators of things that they find but less good at the long-haul planning and commitment of time and effort that starts mines or forges. Their mines were originally marked out by dwarves, their forges by titans, their towers of sorcery by the elves. All these things continue, changed, adapted, made Lhirogref. It means they have some of almost everything but often not a great deal of it. The lands of Lhirogref are dense with sites, old temples, lairs, fortresses, layered one atop another.
d6 These markers:
1. commemorate the elimination of some cult. Defaced idols, bones and melted metal remains heaped in the centre of this place
2. declares what has been laid down beneath this glacier, noting a time far in the future when it will be ready
3. stand outside the entrance to a cavern. Painted on the walls within are millenia of lore telling the true history to those who can read it
4. are but the top of a great obelisk locked in the ice, remanant of the Titans folly
5. point to a valley where a last glacier from the reign of the north lurks, waiting for its moment to cover the world with ice once more
6. are etched with the tales of those who pass here, worn down by wind and snow they are recarved anew by later travellers
People continuously leave and return to Lhirogref, tribes of goblinoids of all sorts venturing out to work the places they know to be abandoned, recovering treasures from the hoards of dead dragons, ores from abandoned mines, gleaning food from the underground caverns and seas. The other nations guard and war over the harvests of the surface, Lhirogref scurries around and beneath them, picking up the things they have forgotten. Often this means adventurers raiding a tomb find it empty or mid-plunder. Sometimes questing knights find that the relic at the heart of their quest has been removed to the far North. To Lhirogref all things sprang from them long ago, everything is theirs to take back as they need it.
No comments:
Post a Comment