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.
