Dreams of Empire: Hobgoblins in the Green Coast

We’ve danced around them up to this point, but now we’re biting the crossbow bolt and talking about the hobgoblins and boy is it a big one.

Hobgoblins have resided in the northern plains and north-eastern mountains for longer than any can remember. Raiding, pillaging, and worse in their nomadic warbands, every so often a leader would arise that had the potential to unify the disparate tribes. In the past, these leaders suffered the fate of all hobgoblin leaders: assassination.

     The traditional means of promotion amongst hobgoblin warbands was to kill and replace their superior. As a result, most attempts to unify into a group larger than a warband have collapsed upon themselves due to infighting. This changed with the rise of Imbatur Thraz.

     A charismatic youth, Imbatur Thraz left his warband seeking out answers to questions of faith that plagued his mind. Where he went no one knows, what is known is that upon his return he was covered in ritual scars and carrying a spear with a charred, blackened haft and a head made from a black stone that glowed with an inner crimson light.

    His and other warbands listened as he told them of the trials he endured, weeks without food and water, slaying beasts with nothing but a sharp stone as a knife, before he found a cave. Within this cave was a boulder, upon which his spear was imbedded. Silver light from Zrukal, the elder and larger of the twin moons, shined through a hole in the ceiling, illuminating the spear. As he approached the spear, a voice whispered to him.

     Take the spear, unite all the land under my light. Be my Herald, and none shall stand against your will.

     The voice could be none other than Zrukal himself, guiding the young hobgoblin. How could any refuse the orders of a god? Thus, he pulled the spear from the stone and returned, to forge the bickering warbands into an empire that would cover the world. Beginning with the Green Coast.

Faith of Empire

     The state religion of the empire is centered around Zrukal, the god whose palace is on the silver moon. The Emperor is revered as the Herald of Zrukal, the prophet of their god. The symbol of the Emperor’s divine right to rule is the same spear that Imbatur Thraz found all those decades ago: Zrakul-az Zimgak.

     All other deities and faiths are outlawed, and practitioners are hunted down by Zrakul-az Otzuzak: a state mandated organization specializing in finding and either eliminating or re-educating heretics. Heretical slaves are simply killed, while if heretical hobgoblins cannot be re-educated they are fed to the various beasts that the hobgoblins use as living machines of war.

     As the Herald of Zrakul, the Emperor’s word is law. But more than simply acting as a lawmaker and political leader, the Emperor is also the heart of the Faith of Zrakul. Imbatur Thraz did more than find a spear in a cave; he survived impossible wounds and thwarted an assassination attempt by his first son, whose name has become synonymous with traitor: Azkran. In front of the entire Imperial Court, Azkran ran his father through the heart with a sword; only for Imbatur Thraz to face his son with disappointment in his eyes and say, “By the judgement of Zrakul you are found guilty of treason. The penalty is death. The method: limbs and head tied to beasts that will pull your body apart.” All while Azkran’s sword remained in his chest and continued to bleed.

Imperial Infrastructure

     An empire is more than its military, countless moving parts are involved in making an empire stand. Sweeping across its lands stretches the Azkrag Kriztash. All cities in the empire contain Zana Thrim, facilities where injured and ill hobgoblins and favored slaves are treated. Every boy goes through training and schooling in Gukzoran, a state funded public school system and youth militia. The banks of Thriz Kriztash both mint coinage and stores wealth.

     Imbatur Thraz noted early in the expansion that some of the imperial military’s biggest problems could be linked to logistical difficulties. Meeting with his advisors, the group put forth many an idea to solve the various logistical issues that their army was having. The one that was chosen was later named Azkrag Kriztash: the Imperial Road. Construction began in the capital city of Zrakul-az Bashzith (“City of Zrakul”), and with unending toil and many slaves dying from exhaustion the cobbled highway wove through the entire expanse of the burgeoning empire. The designers were given only a few requirements: it must be able to be maintained without halting traffic and easily added to.

     Another problem noted by Imbatur Thraz was how often skilled soldiers fell not in battle, but after to illness and infection. He himself had survived an infected cut early in his life. Thus, he ordered the few alchemists and mages in his ranks to design a place specifically to research ways to cut down on deaths due to infection. The initial location was called Zkall, after the camps made on the march. The experiments done there showed that sterilizing the tools used by surgeons between patients greatly reduced infection rates. Further reduction in infection rates was achieved by surgeons washing their hands while their tools were sterilized.  As expansion slowed, similar buildings were established in every imperial city. Dubbed “restful places” these buildings tend to any hobgoblin that walks through their doors, and for a fee they will also treat slaves.

     A philosophy espoused by the leader Imbatur Thraz’s warband before his pilgrimage was that the most dangerous warrior wasn’t the one that fought hardest, but the one that fought smartest. This philosophy was shared by the fledgling emperor, and he declared into law that all hobgoblin boys were to be taught more than discipline and martial skill but also math, literacy, philosophy, and history. As regions settled, local schools were built and all hobgoblins that settled in the area were required to send their sons for five days from dawn to dusk. Following the days of schooling there is a day of rest, then the following dawn it is back to school.

     To prevent unit cohesion from being strained due to one member managing to obtain more loot than another, Imbatur Thraz set specific salaries for each position in the empire. An individual’s salary would be managed by a central bank that would mint the coinage to be used. The coins minted are named after the primary symbol on the face opposite the imperial seal: copper collars, silver whips, and gold spears.

Family Life

The father and husband is the head of the hobgoblin family unit. His wives are expected to obey his commands in all matters. Should a hobgoblin man desire it and he has the income to support such, he may go to the Abtuzor Bakra and purchase an additional wife. If he becomes displeased with a current wife, he can choose to send her back to the Abtuzor Bakra. This is treated the same as a hobgoblin man being fired from his job. If the husband squanders his income, or fails as a husband in some other manner, the wives may petition to return to Abtuzor Bakra. If their petition succeeds, then there is none of the stigma attached to being fired.

     When choosing a wife, a hobgoblin may choose his sisters or cousins for the same price as an unrelated potential wife. Daughters may also be purchased, but for each daughter purchased, the price to do so increases exponentially. If the current wives of the shopping husband do not approve of the new wife, then they may overrule their husband and prevent the sale from happening. This is the only time that a wife may order her husband.

     Hobgoblin wives are expected to maintain the household and raise the children prior to schooling age. Boys are sent to the local Gukzoran while girls are sent to the local Abtuzor Bakra if they are not chosen to join Tilnaturo Mata. The women of Tilnaturo Mata are trained in espionage, seduction, dancing, and unarmed martial arts. In larger cities they are frequently found amidst the nobility as courtesans and bodyguards.

     Pregnancies amongst hobgoblins typically result in litters of four to six children, and rivalries amongst siblings are encouraged by the parents. Every year on their birthday, growing children are brought to the nearest Zana Thrim to be checked over for deformities and irregularities. Girls that are found to be barren during these tests are sent to the Gukzoran with their brothers and are from then on considered hobgoblin men in all matters. If boys are found with mild deformities that do not impact their value as soldiers, they are castrated and put into military service. Those that have severe deformities typically are left to die after birth.

Military Structure

The engine that drives the hobgoblin empire is its military. All officers are trained and educated hobgoblins while the majority of the rank and file infantry are slave soldiers. Cavalry are primarily hobgoblins though slaves that are skilled riders may be elevated. Aerial cavalry are a mix of hobgoblins, goblins, and kobolds. Siege engines and line breakers include blood silvers, giants, trolls, drakes, armored bison, and the rare landshark.

     The typical military strategy employed by hobgoblin armies involve sending their living war engines into enemy formations followed by units of slave infantry to take advantage of the chaos wreaked upon enemy lines. The outer flanks are harried by light cavalry and war mages as aerial scouts keep an eye out for enemy reinforcements.

     When laying siege, aerial cavalry will fly over the city or fortress and drop heavy stones to containers of alchemical solutions such as alchemist’s fire. Armored ogres are used to break down the gates while other living siege-engines batter the walls or hurl similar ammunition as the aerial cavalry over the walls. On rare occasions, if the risk is not deemed too great, they will unleash the mightiest slave-beasts they have: dragons.

     In their initial expansion, the hobgoblins managed to capture several young dragons as well as a few clutches of eggs. Most are not used in war, but in breeding experiments. They have managed to succeed in creating hybrids of red and green dragons, but to this date have had limited success with breeding chromatics with their sole silver dragon. The blood silvers thus far seem to be the only surviving offspring, a few dozen out of hundreds of eggs. Even then, all the resulting offspring have not been true dragons, but deformed beasts more akin to animals than their magical, intelligent brethren.

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