Hobgoblins

Hobgoblins planning the invasion of Eastern Gersh

Overview

Hobgoblins are one of the three types of goblinkind. Taller than most humans, they tower over the goblins. While not as large and hulking as the bugbears, they are more aggressive, and more organized and disciplined by far. Their society is largely based around the tribal construct, led by a great one, but usually with no family or clan within it; rather, tribe members are organized into fighting units or supporting occupations. While highly competitive, they naturally see the sense of cooperating with each other for the betterment of the group. Like the orcs and the elves, hobgoblins see themselves as a superior race.

Physiology, Appearance, and Ethnicity

Standing slightly taller than most humans, but not so much as an orc, hobgoblins are blessed with rugged physical fortitude, rarely taking sickness, quickly recovering from injuries and strain, and having a high pain tolerance. They are also blessed with a natural agility that lends itself to the dexterity of arms, as well as many of the various vocations necessary for the equipping and maintaining an army.

            Their proportions are much more human-like than the goblins or the orcs, though they also have the hallmark ears of goblinkind that protrude to the side and end in points. In scale, their ears are proportionally smaller than those of goblins.

            As with other goblinkind, hobgoblins evolved a different type of cell in their eyes that allows them to see in the infrared bands of light. This allows them to see in the dark, like orcs, but with superior vision; when there is insufficient light for chromatic vision, they see infrared in greyscale where higher temperatures are brighter. This is generally only when chromatic vision fails, but their infrared vision can take over when very hot objects are in their field of view. The infrared vision also grants some advantages in metal-working.

            Similar to goblins, goblin ethnicities come in four main distinctions by skin color: blue, purple, red, and gray.

            Blue-skinned hobgoblins are primarily from the western slopes of the Kaskev Mountains. Their eyes vary widely in shade with violet, amber, yellow-green, aquamarine, hazel, silver, and green all being fairly common shades. They have hair ranging from black to white, with shades of gray being most common, tending to the darker side. Their hair is prone to sun-bleaching and takes well to dyeing as their hair lightens. Though uncommon, they will occasionally have green- or blue-tinged hair, which becomes more apparent through sunbleaching. Equally uncommon are shades of brown or red hair, which are largely considered unattractive among blue-skinned hobgoblins. Purple-tinged hair is rare among blue-skinned hobgoblins and considered attractive. It is therefore a common goal to dye their hair purple.

            Purple-skinned hobgoblins are primarily from the eastern reaches of the Kaskev Mountains. They most commonly have black hair with shades of blue. Shades of gray are less common, especially lighter hues. Purple hair is rare. Silver or golden blond hair are exceptionally rare and factor into some folktales. Purple-skins also take to sunbleaching. Their eyes are most commonly amber, green, or yellow-green. Rarer eye colors are violet, purple, blue, and red.

            Red-skinned hobgoblins hail from the northern end of the Kaskev Mountain chain on both the eastern and western slopes. Their hair is black and shades of gray with the darker shades being the most common. They are not particularly prone to sun-bleaching. Their eyes are, from most to least common colors: light gray, dark gray, silver, black, blue, violet, red, amber, and green.

Gray-skinned hobgoblins are from the southern end of the Kaskev Mountains, mostly on the eastern slopes. Their hair tends to be dark, beginning from black, with shades into blue, green, purple, brown, and gray. While sun-bleaching is a factor, their hair is thicker than most other ethnicities, so it is less of a factor than with blue-skinned or purple-skinned hobgoblins. Black is, by far, the most common eye color; however, gray-skins may also have violet, gray, purple, blue, amber, green, silver, red, or brown eyes.

Hobgoblins have an exceedingly low fertility rate: less than humans, and far less than orcs. Once life takes root in the womb, though, pregnancies are highly likely to be successful, due to the ox-like constitution of both the mother and the child. However, the problem lies in conceiving and the disruption of a long pregnancy.

Culture and Tribal Construct

Hobgoblins note their physical stature over the goblins and their predisposition for organization and discipline, especially compared to bugbears, as themselves taking the lead over goblinkind as part of the natural order. They further consider all other races to be weak in some way and therefore can only redeem themselves under the leadership of and by emulating hobgoblins.

On the whole, they have amicable relations between tribes, unless there is a clash between two great ones for dominance over a group of tribes, as was the case in the challenge between Oygariyet and Arkiban. As there are comparatively fewer hobgoblins than there are goblins or orcs, they are content to cooperate with one another to conquer and subjugate others and divide the spoils according to their contribution and success. They have a highly egalitarian view of work and station.

            Tribes are led by a great one. Like the goblins, sex is no bar to the station. In most cases, the great one is the only named hobgoblin in the tribe, whose deeds and decisions will be recorded in their histories. The great one relies on their staff, usually four other hobgoblins from the tribe that have demonstrated the mental strength to plan and lead. The staff manages the affairs of the tribe on behalf of the great one and under the great one’s guidance and vision. The staff positions are numbered First through Fourth and it is progressive. If, for example, the Second dies, then the Third is promoted to the Second, the Fourth promoted to the Third, and a new Fourth is selected.

The First is generally the most trusted staff and will most often be sent by the great one to act in their stead for complicated endeavors that require the great one’s supervision in multiple places. The Second is usually one to manage the scouting, reconnaissance, surveillance, and spying to learn about enemy forces and the terrain for any particular endeavor. The Third plans attacks and other major endeavors. The Fourth, usually the most junior member of the staff, has the largest amount of work and learning, as they manage the logistics of the tribe. The Fourth keeps track of the number of warriors that they have ready, in training, recuperating from injury; training and materials, food supplies and production, mounts, breeding and husbandry (for tribes that put wolf cavalry in the field), infrastructure availability, condition, expansion, and planning, and all other manner of considerations.

While this is, arguably, an unrealistic level of workload, planning, and tracking, particularly for the Fourth, each of the staff has several other hobgoblins to assist them and the Fourth, though having the most to learn, benefits from the mentorship of the other staff, as they have all been a Fourth before. The great one’s staff are selected from senior and successful leaders of fighting units.

An older hobgoblin tradition, one largely abandoned in most tribes and only recently being brought back into practice, is that of clans within the tribe. The leader of a clan within a tribe is named and, within the clan, may be called great one. The clan may also be named, but the practice is too uncommon in contemporary times for generalities. In the hobgoblin context, clans are somewhat analogous to fighting units, but with more status. There are no familial ties in the clans, just as there are no familial ties no true families among hobgoblins with rare, rare exceptions.

Candidates for clan leaders are the tribal great one’s staff and successful unit leaders. Depending on the tribe, the great one’s staff and clan leaders, if that tribe has implemented the clan construct, are allowed to own slaves. Otherwise, only the great one is allowed to own slaves and, effectively, maintain a household.

Hobgoblins are the only goblinkind that keep their own as slaves; however, the status of slave is generally considered an honor. For a great one to defeat another tribe and take the losing great one’s household into their own is considered a kindness and an honor. As such, hobgoblins have a sense of propriety on the employment, use, and display of slaves and find the practices of some other races, particularly the orcs, who abuse, humiliate, and kill their slaves, to be crass and distasteful.

An exception to the hobgoblin cultural attitude toward slavery is the use of forced labor. For example, when larger population centers are seized and the whole of another tribe is taken prisoner, they may be forced into work as labor slaves. Labor slaves and household slaves are treated somewhat differently, though there is nothing that prevents a labor slave from becoming a household slave, if selected, or a household slave from becoming a labor slave, at the discretion of the great one.

Comparison of a horse (left) to a wolf (center) and a great wolf (right)

Like the goblins, hobgoblins are a no-waste culture and will utilize everything from hunted game and, whenever practical, the fallen of their enemy and their own. They employ ritual cannibalism as a method of cleansing weakness and forgiving those who failed. Unlike the goblins, the hobgoblins raise this to a level of poetry. The skin and bones of those who failed are turned into pieces of the weapons of those who will win the next victory. Hides are turned into capes, straps, shield coverings, or even parchment. Bones become grips for weapons and tools. Skulls can be the heads of maces, after casting in steel. Captives that refuse a place of honor as slaves may be (forcibly) redeemed by performing the only use left for the tribe: to be disassembled for their parts.

Family, Fertility, and Property

Hobgoblins do not have a sense of family. While they have a very difficult time finding romantic love, they form strong bonds of friendship and comradery in their fighting units and supporting vocations. Lacking the physical weakness of the goblins, they ensure their survival through conquest. As such, their view towards sex is very different. Sex is recreational and part of most relationships, especially within fighting units. They refer to sex and other recreational activities, such as strategy games, mock fighting, or full-contact fighting without weapons, collectively, as ‘sport.’

            Because of their extremely low fertility, there is often no consequence for sexual activity. In the uncommon instances of pregnancy, female warriors are transferred to the support vocation for birthing a child. Male warriors and unpregnant female warriors also transfer fairly regularly into such activities, as a broadening experience, if they are injured or growing too old to fight.

The young are raised and begin military training as soon as they are able. Throughout their childhood, they work in various support activities, before moving on to a fighting unit when they reach adulthood. Every hobgoblin spends at least some time, usually several years, in a fighting unit before transferring to a supporting vocation. They will spend several years in that or various vocations and then the tribal clan, fighting unit, and support leadership decide on the future career of each hobgoblin according to the needs of the tribe and their demonstrated talents.

            Each tribe constitutes a whole family. Biological parents have coincidental involvement with their biological children. Otherwise, for a hobgoblin, their tribe is full of mentors to train them, siblings to fight and work alongside, and lovers to share the joy of still being alive after a battle.

            Half-breed children, by the mating between hobgoblin great ones, staff, and clan leaders, their slaves and any other hobgoblins that they have allowed such access to non-hobgoblin slaves are sometimes birthed. There are also further mixes beyond half-breeds.

These mixed offspring are often in a difficult position. In the view of the hobgoblin benefactors in the tribe, it is best for them to attempt to live life as if they are a hobgoblin, yet they can never achieve the ideals of a hobgoblin because of the taints in their blood. As such, they rarely reach any position of seniority or enjoy much prosperity. Depending on the leadership in their tribe, they may be taken and given as slaves, which is otherwise abnormal, but it is sometimes viewed as the greatest of kindness (by the tribe) to give them the honorable position as a slave to a great one rather than continue their position as the perpetually lowest soldier.

Many of the mixed breed children try to escape from the tribe. Some are caught and brought back, no longer with the option of comparative household luxury as a slave, and forced into dangerous and grueling labor as a soldier or a support worker, resembling a labor slave in all but name.

Fashion

Hobgoblin fashion is primarily functional, though others may call it plain or bland. ‘Fancy’ clothes are simply higher quality. Hobgoblins do not wear dresses or skirts. Trousers and shirts or tunics are the mainstay. Anything heavier usually is a piece of armor or armor lining, such as a gambeson or a leather shirt that can function as an arming jacket under plate armor. Some tribes use dyes on their clothing or paint designs on their armor or shield to denote fighting units.

Music

Hobgoblin music is vaguely similar to goblin music, but it takes a different form. While they enjoy their music, sing to it, tap or dance to it, and hum it when they’re alone, the music forms around its purpose: to give and keep rhythm to work. Whether marching to battle or working in the field, the music is there to invigorate and inspire, or at least break, the monotony of work. Being accessories, the drum is the central instrument to hobgoblin music with other hand instruments that can be played on the move. Their music is very percussive and steady, mimicking the footfalls of a marching soldier.

Cities

Hobgoblins are rarely nomadic or semi-nomadic, preferring the stability of fortifications for added safety and security. Tribes often construct fortified towns in the mountains using natural and constructed stone walls. They fully appreciate the protective value of stealth, and in some cases, construct their dwellings in a concealed way, if the great one believes that the best area for a dwelling is easier to hide than to overtly defend it.

            Golardeg, on the eastern slopes of the Kaskev Mountains, is the largest hobgoblin city and a center for trade and exchange that rivals Kogylar. It is just as much a fortress as it is a city, though like all cities, it was built to serve a purpose other than simply to keep it. The fortifications for Golardeg or any hobgoblin settlement enhance its survivability so that it can continue the purpose for which it was built.

            There is a very small contingency of hobgoblins that choose to leave their tribes, usually through escape. Many of these are mixed breed hobgoblins. Allowing capable soldiers to leave is not something great ones generally do, though there are exceptions to every rule. Some of these hobgoblins are crippled survivors of battles that cannot make their way back to their tribe and fighting unit or would be useless if they did.

These various hobgoblin fugitives, exiles, and deserters form a small diaspora. Most of them stay in the wilderness, hunting, trapping, and foraging for survival with limited trade for other goods. Others settle in towns and cities of other races, generally goblins, but sometimes orcs. Hobgoblins, especially pure-blood hobgoblins, do not allow themselves to be enslaved by non-hobgoblins. Goblins will not attempt to do this, but orcs will.

Hobgoblins, especially pure-blooded hobgoblins, that are taken as slaves by a non-hobgoblin choose to end their life nearly every time unless they envision a possibility of escape or it is an exceptional circumstance. Such a circumstance would be to serve under a very prominent great one or equivalent that they view may treat them well. They would choose to end their life rather than endure the humiliation and dishonor that would be inflicted upon them, especially by non-hobgoblins.

Food and Drink

One of the supporting activities for hobgoblins is producing foodstuffs. This comes in all of the various forms from foraging, farming, livestock raising, hunting, and processing raw materials (for example, processing milk into cheese or butter). For the most part, hobgoblin food tends to lack the passion and joy of the food that goblin cuisine has. One of the only things that hobgoblins particularly relish is alcohol. While the alcoholic drinks of other races will be interesting to them as exotic, their preference is for ridin, a strong liquor made from fermented roots (much resembling vodka, and usually made from potatoes).

            While hobgoblins generally dine on a varied diet of roasted or stewed meats with vegetables, roots, berries, and the like, they do have a few delicacies. One of these delicacies is the remains of a freshly defeated enemy, usually roasted, served whole or as a dressed carcass with the edible organs prepared as side dishes. This is most often done as a celebratory or ceremonial meal.

Organization for War

Hobgoblins, built and bred to be soldiers or soldier support, have a more complex and nuanced framework for organization than orcs and differentiate troops for equipping, training, logistics, and employment.

• Warband: One hundred to one hundred and fifty soldiers with a leader. The leader is expected to control all of the soldiers, but commonly appoints subleaders from the experienced and dependable soldiers. Each soldier is well-equipped and well-trained, commonly capable of fighting in several roles (for example, infantry/archer, cavalry/horse archer, infantry/sapper, and so forth). Leadership titles may vary (i.e. warband leader for any infantry, versus cavalry leader for mounted troops).

• Fist: Four hundred to six hundred soldiers, plus a fist leader.

• Host: As many fists as the task requires, typically several thousand from the same tribe, generally led by the tribe’s great one. The great one is assisted by his or her staff, the First, Second, Third, and Fourth, selected from successful (living) fist leaders.

• Great Host: A host of hosts from multiple tribes, led by the dominant great one that has dual responsibilities for leading his or her own host. The great one tends to rely on his or her First to take over direct leadership of the host.