The Goblinoid Menu

To the goblinoids, plants are for medicine and spices. Eating plants as food would be like trying to get drunk on water. Food is raw liver, brain soups, and lots and lots of roasts. Food is meat.

Goblinoids all enjoy hunting, and maintain some forested areas as game preserves, but the majority of food comes from great herds of auroch and boar. A large minority of goblinoids make their living off of cattle, rounding them up for slaughter, killing monsters that threaten them, clearing land for them, or stealing them.

The shift from humanoid plant-based diets to goblinoid meat-based ones has caused a shift in the entire landscape. The great herds of cattle eat their way across the landscape, leaving only the thorny and poisonous plants untouched. Deforestation is occurring rapidly and deliberately, as trees are cleared and burned to expand grazing lands. Floods and brushfires are becoming more common. A rough, goblinoid equilibrium is asserting itself.

The Halls of the Mountain-Kings

The dwarfs had always been isolationists, and with the curse killing the human world they had a reason to indulge their most paranoid instincts. The gates of their great halls were sealed, but that was only a temporary solution. Once they had a reasonable semblance of security, they fell restarted all their old feuds. Now, however, the old arguments were framed by a larger concern: how to survive. The surface world would not be reconquered, that was agreed. They must reclaim their most ancient heritage and seek self-sufficiency underground. The dwarven kingdoms almost erupted in civil war over how this could best be done.

Eventually, it was decided that every hall should be allowed to take its own path. A single strategy would either fail or succeed, but out of one hundred strategies, surely at least one would succeed. They constructed great vaults, each with its own strategy for self-sufficiency, survival, and security.

Many vaults have been discovered by adventurers over the years. They are treasure troves of technology, magic, and lore, but the one thing they have in common is a lack of living dwarves. So far, no successful vault has been discovered. What has been discovered includes a vault shielded against all magic that developed sophisticated gearwork and explosive powder, a massive terrarium vault containing the last of the thunder lizards, and a populated vault, populated not by dwarves but by intelligent fungi that seem to have hijacked their bodies. There are surely many others.

The Dragons' Empire

Half of the ten dragons of the world joined, and became the Pentarchy. They crushed and conquered, destroyed and then created, until they had made a great empire in the south. They have given their empire no name and will admit to none for themselves. They are only called the Gold, the Silver, the Bronze, the Blue, and the Green.

Reptilians

The vast majority of the dragons' empire are reptilians, organized into a race-based class system.

At the top is the Pentarchy. The dragons' power, both personal and political, approaches godlike. Each dragon is unique, but can be briefly described by its niche in the empire. The Gold is a philospher-king, defining the virtues and values of empire society. The Silver is the master of masters, the greatest of scholars and craftsmen. The Bronze is the lawmaker and supreme judge. The Blue is spymaster and practitioner of realpolitik. Finally, the Green is a great hero, often leading the empire's armies, investigating mysteries, or solving problems for the people.

Second are the blooded. To be blooded means that you descend from a dragon, but this is not defined by who your ancestors were. You are blooded if and only if you manifest sorcerous powers as a result of your ancestry. If you manifest no magic, you are not blooded, even if you were fully half-dragon. Blooded are the only legal practitioners of magic.

Third are lizardmen, humanoid lizards averaging 2 feet tall, with small, beady eyes, they have great patience, a dulled sense of pain, and require little in the way of sleep or sustenance. They are the workers and soldiers on which the empire can depend.

Last are kobolds, child-sized lizards with large, snake-like eyes and great flexibility. They are noted for having no teeth, their diet consisting of small animals and large insects swallowed whole, although stews are becoming popular. They have much the same role in the dragons' empire as goblins do in goblinoid society.

Empire Society

The empire is a designed society. The dragons took scattered tribes, broke them, and rebuilt them. The empire has no state religion, because in many ways the empire is a religion. Virtue is defined by the Gold, justice by the Bronze, value by the Silver, truth by the Blue, and valor by the Green.

Tusk and Fang

The curse spread like a plague, and the dead piled up faster than they could be burned. Humans, half-orcs, half-elves, and halflings are extinct, elves and gnomes have withdrawn into faerie, and the dwarves have sealed themselves in their holds. The goblinoid races find themselves, for the first time, with breathing room. Now is the age of tusks and fangs.

Goblinoids

There are four principle goblinoid races: goblins, hobgoblins, orcs, and ogres.

Goblins are small, with an ape-like stature and long arms. They are typically hairless, with jet-black eyes. They are prolific, hardy, and seem ever-present. They are the smallest of the goblinoid races and often coerced into labor whenever someone larger needs something done.

Hobgoblins are also hairless, are usually pale white or gray, and are always tall and lanky. Their most recognizable features are their earlessness and cat eyes. A majority of hobgoblins live in militia: mercenary cartels who live like Spartans and fight like landsknechts.

Orcs resemble neanderthals, with sloped foreheads and pronounced jaws, teeth, and noses. They are most often hairy, with reddish-brown skin. They are the most human of the goblinoids, once even interbreeding with humans.

Ogres come in two types. The majority are large and stocky, usually between 3 and 4 meters tall, with goat horns and goat eyes. In every litter there is a "magi", hornless and scrawny, who rarely survive childhood. When they do however, they have never failed to become geniuses, and have define many aspects of their society. It was ogre magi who formed the ogre banks, and an ogre magi who created the goblin script.

Goblinoid Society

Goblinoid society is not unified, and is composed of clans, petty kingdoms, and city-states, based on medieval Germany and eastern Europe. Few formal organizations last long, although the ogre banks and hobgoblin militia are notable exceptions.

The goblinoid races were never considered "civilized", in part because they have little interest in the heavenly and ethereal. They still remain interested primarily in their surroundings and their bodies. Old, "savage" traditions are maintained, but have been steadily refined and innovated. Body modification has especially blossomed, expanding from a ritual demonstration of pain tolerance to beautiful forms of tattooing, piercings and body paint.

Notes

Inspired by this thread from /tg/.