Goblins¶
Underestimated. Inventive. Mutating. The empire that runs on coin and clever hands.
Most people think goblins come from the swamps of No-Dan-Kar. The educated whisper they lived in the depths of the Aegis Mountains before the dwarves arrived. The eccentric claim they appeared from the void when the world began. No one is certain.
The goblin genetic heritage is erratic — since the mutant outbreak of 820, no characteristic can be universally verified across the race. Most are small and cold-blooded with little physical resilience, but enormous tactile sensibility, intuitive imagination, and innate curiosity. They are unequalled inventors and the main promoters of written language across Aarklash.
Some goblins are hardened city-dwellers; others live in tribes hidden in forgotten forests.
Culture and Treatment¶
Goblins are underestimated, often outright abused by other races. They take vexations badly: their inventiveness turns to vengeance, and they show a tendency for perversity when they have the upper hand. But they also show spontaneous, fierce solidarity when their community is threatened — attack one goblin, you attack his family and tribe.
Once danger passes and goblins are alone together, the unity tends to dissolve into squabbling.
The No-Dan-Kar empire is Paths of Destiny-aligned. Its currency — the ducat — has become the trade standard across Aarklash, including in Cadwallon.
In Cadwallon¶
Goblins are everywhere. The Ferrymen, the Harbor Office officials, the smaller merchants, the back-room inventors, the No-Dan-Kar embassy (the city's largest, a goblin village in its own right). Their official ambassador is courted by Lady Chlorine and others; visits to him are frequent and increasingly secretive.
Ghieronburg was originally a goblin colony before it was elevated to a fiefdom.
What's in the embassy
The No-Dan-Kar embassy grows yearly. Half-ramshackle palace, half-village, walls expanding outward through bureaucratic accretion. What's it become? Who actually runs it? Lady Chlorine has been trying to reach the Ambassador less and less successfully...