The Underkingdoms

The Underkingdoms of the Goblins is the collective name for the various Goblin-ruled states in the Deeps, particularly the portions of The Deeping beneath southern Bastonia, the Frontier Counties, and parts of the Lordless Lands. Much like their closes above-ground neighbours, Bastonia and the Orcish Nation, the political landscape of the Underkingdoms is frequently-shifting. Unsurprisingly due to the personalities of the Goblins themselves and the location and hazards involved, the region is rather monocultural and is made up almost entirely of goblinkind.

Though once in its deep history the Goblins were supposedly a highly united culture, for centuries now the Goblin nation has existed in a state of internecine conflict and shifting alliances, owing in part to the evolution of the government in its capital city, Siem, which has now been ruled for centuries by the Great Goblin, a figure that is head of both the region around Siem politically as well as (nominally) the religion of the goblin god, Gob.

For the rest of the underkingdoms, certain significant settlements serve as the capitals of free Kingdoms, some as small as single settlements and others spanning entire regions of the Deeping. While all of these "Underkings" are nominally loyal to the Great Goblin, in practice their loyalty usually extends only as far as paying the necessary taxes to keep Great Siem for waging war against them.

As a result Goblin history, especially contemporarily, is a maze of stories of betrayals, secret and open alliances, and internecine warfare as rich as the Bastonian Wars of Succession. However, since this all takes place far underground, the perception of goblins above the land is much more savage, sparse, and misunderstood. Goblins travelling in other nations - especially aboveground - is a rare condition. The reputation is usually one of theivery as the most common contact between the goblins and above-grounds cultures is through goblin bandits.

With the expansion of Bastonia into the Lordless Lands, some orcish settlements in the Mighty Northern Horde had begun to form alliances with their neighbouring Underkingdoms. This had lead to increasingly common perceptions (by the Men of Bastonia) of the Goblins as a subset of Orcs, though their origins are quite different.

Geography and Government

The Great Goblin

Nominally, all of the underkingdoms are loyal to the Great Goblin in his dual capacities as King of Siem and "Most Magnificent Bishop" of Gob, the Goblin diety. In practice, only the settlements most directly in reach of the Great Goblin's personal armies are loyal in the political sense, and form a state known as Great Siem. The rest of the Underkings are loyal to the Great Goblin only in his religious context, as are the rulers of other Goblin civilizations further afield (and outside the scope of this article).

Interestingly, the position of Great Goblin is not hereditary, because of its status as a church position, and the nominal chastity required of church officials in the Church of Gob would otherwise prevent this - the reality ofter differing widely from this ideal. While a Great Goblin remains the Great Goblin until his death, the position is actually elected by the members of the church heirarchy - usually promoting one of their own to the position.

If you are a goblin lucky enough to be born male and ambitious enough to want to become the Great Goblin, bone up on your skills at court intreague, make friends with assassins and mercenaries, and always watch your back. To even survive long enough to reach the electing body - the Red Masters - is a testament to your greatness. It is only very rarely a testiment that you're favored by Gob - the Red Masters are a self-promoting and insular group, deeply corrupted by avarice and greed, and maintain a faith in Gob only great enough to use the goblin diety's teachings as a lever against the population.

The Underkingdoms

By the contemporary period of the Green Knoll Purge, there are five major underkingdoms:

• Great Siem – A central region relatively shallow in the Deeping, located in an area roughly bounded by Star Rock in the south, Val Verra in the north, Southport in the west, and Crossroads in the east. Its various subordinate cities all have passages which pass through Siem, the historical goblin capital, and it controls passages that link the other goblin underkingdoms. It's possession of Pyrmor, near Southport, enables a rich trade with surface-dwelling smugglers as their goods can be passed across the Bastion Line without ever touching a Bastonian-controlled port - at least, that was the case before the humans captured Southport outright.
• Karlikavajask – One of two northern underkingdoms (relative to Great Siem), Karlikavajask is a small region with most of its surface area in the woods south of Estburg, though it also holds roads that extend under the mountains and back into Great Siem. The Goblins who live in Karlikavajask are often at war, either with the Clans of Magnus or the humans of Estmarch, and raid often in the surface above their underkingdom. However, the rich cultural interchange imposed by Goblin spies and thieves in the area has made Karlikavajask famous for craftsmanship and artistry, and the region itself is rich in mined minerals.
• Padkohn – Karlikavajask's western twin, which is a sparsely-populated and sprawling underkingdom beneath the plains of the Bastonian Heartland. Goblins here have access to - and even hold - two surface settlements, Unseelie Ruins and the Seelie Tower.
• Novyhorad - a long and narrow kingdom, at points less than a mile wide as mapped on the surface, which reaches from an area just south of Star Rock nearly down to Baghar. It is at its widest in its south and is named for its capital, Novyhorad, which is situated with surface accesses near Twowaters. The region is known for its roaring trade in alchemical reagents of all kinds.
• Uschod extends in the deeping under and across the Atlas Mountains, with cities near Grahn Urgot and beneath the Atarlie Foothills. Much like Karlikavajask, Uschod is known for the arts and technologies brought into the Underkingdoms by theft, spycraft, and occasionally trade with the Atarlie Empire.

Goblin Culture

Arts and Architecture

Goblin traditional arts have so intermingled with the arts and craftsmanship of other cultures that they have been accused of directly ripping off several elements of it; even described as "salvage masters". In art, they favour great ostentation, making displays of rare dyes and paints, encrusting objects in precious stones or metals, and generally favouring a style Goblindom refers to as "bling".

Their architecture is similarly grandious and they have learned much of stonework from their incursions into Dwarf lands. Goblins are rapacious observers and are capable of a great deal of learning by proxy, improvisation based on past observations, and the repurposing of existing technologies and objects. They are, accordingly, masters of arcane magic and alchemy.

In spite of this, Goblin economics favours the expedient and the novel, to the degree that above the surface, goblin goods have a reputation for being shoddy, sometimes even crafted from junk. While such objects offer great utility, their limited working life out of the hands of goblin improvisers and crafters means they aren't widely adopted outside of goblin society.

Religion, Festivals, and Timekeeping

The Goblins have themselves a monothiestic religion, centered around the worship of Gob, their creator diety, and similar in rite and ritual to some of what is seen in Bastonia, perhaps suggesting the usual goblin mimickry of practice had influenced it overtime.

The Goblin church is omnipresent in daily life and plays an important role in diplomacy between the Underkingdroms, with local bishops often accessing as proxies of the Great Goblin outside of Great Siem.

Festivals occur monthly and feature revelry, song, drinking, and often other forms of general debauchery.

Fighting, Warfare, and Death

While the commonality of actual warfare varies depending on time and distance from the frontiers between underkingdoms or other overlapping cultures, goblins are almost famous for their raids on non-goblin settlements, and goblins in general are highly familiar with fighting and combat.

Goblin popular culture and histories glamorize warriors and warfare, as well as what are seen of "higher forms" of violence, such as political assassins. As a result, Goblin cities are sometimes more dangerous than the wilds around them, provided you don't know how to play the right games or who the right friends to make are. As a result, goblins tend toward developing either a shrewdly gracious or imposing demeanour, and have a hard time breaking out of those molds when dealing with other cultures.

Death – in all its forms – is believed to be followed by judgment and either a glorious and eternal afterlife in the paradise of Heaven, or a descent into Hell if found wanting.

Language and Scholarship

The Goblin Language is a unique language unrelated to the other languages of Wisteria, owing to their origins as Fae-Dreamed folk, much like many of the Confederacy of Sages races or the Gnomes of the Hearthlands. It has a gutteral quality that many find difficult to speak if they aren't raised to it; as a result Goblins tend to have similarly strong accents when speaking other languages. Unlike in other kingdoms, it's also a natively-viable arcane language.

Most Goblins learn their crafts through apprenticeship.

Adventurers, particularly in frontier areas, may also learn any of the languages of their enemies, especially Bastonian or Orcish.

Diet, Libations, and Entertainment

The Goblin diet is rich and plentiful, even in the lower classes, though the manner of that diet is strongly stratified between the upper and lower class, including the manner in which meals are consumed. The higher classes often eat three meals a day – consisting of a breaking of the nightly fast in the morning, a lunch of leftovers during the noon hour, and larger meals in the evening, made up mostly of meats and fungi. Many Goblin delecacies are considered vermin or monsters in other parts of the world but are seen as inherently delicious to goblins who grew up in the Underkingdoms, with giant spiders being especially valued.

The poor eat a much more varied, though somewhat spare, diet. If the fast is broken in the morning, it is usually with whatever can be salvaged from the previous night's meal. The major meal of the day is usually at the middle of their waking period (where an extended break from the work of the day is desired), most often consisting of a pottage and a bit of meat. If you are particularly well off you would have an additional small meal in the evening – very commonly, this would be fish, as the practice of fishing is easy and blind cave fish are in abundance; alternatively, it is usually small "game". Goblins of all social ranks also enjoy pilfered foods, often cured, and some raiding expedietions exist purely to steal milk, pastries, sausages, bacon, and fresh meat from surface settlements.

The Goblins prize beer – which has sacramental uses in addition to being an excellent libation – but only rarely grow enough hops and barley to produce it, again usually stealing or trading for it. Another popular libation is Goblin Hooch, produced out of whatever is available and then distilled until it is relatively pure and clear.

Goblin Economics

Tithe and Tribute Systems

Unsurprisingly given their avaricious nature, taxation (in various forms) is high in Goblin Society, with a large "upward" flow of wealth perculating from labour upward into higher and higher levels of formal and informal aristocracies.

As an example, the following taxes are all relevant in the city of Siem if you are a common labourer:

• A tax on the income generated by your labour to be witheld by the employer and paid to their patron.
• A "wage gift" repaid by the labourer to the employer formally at the end of each pay period.
• A tax on your purchases, added to the purchase by the merchant.
• A tax on your held wealth, termed a tribute, paid to the Great Goblin.
• A tax on your held wealth, termed a tithe, paid to the Church (ultimately joining the treasury of the Great Goblin).

In particular the tithe is universally relevant to all goblins. Failure of various underkings to appropriately collect and transfer the tithe to Siem has been the cause of countless wars amongst the Goblins.

Wealth Gap

As might have been implied by the above there is a pronounced wealth gap within Goblin Lands. Some Goblin nobles carry wealth equivalent to any of their surface breatheren, but the average goblin peasant is almost wrechedly poor.

Focal Industries

As a nation frequently riven with internal warfare and beset by enemies on six sides, not counting enemies within, it is not a surprise that defence and military equipment are major economic drivers in the Underkingdoms. While agriculture remains a key industry and a facet of that defence, Bastonia deals in great quantity with stoneworks, mining ore, and refining metals to produce the implements of destruction they require.

Goblins have perfected an arcane and alchemical reagent known as Ahren's Blood. This thick black substance can be further refined into other materials and are particularly useful in evocation magic and explosive alchemy. Because of these special talents, they do a decent trade at mining. Their refined metals may not be as in demand as dwarven ones, but they do for a pinch in the Lordless Lands and unscrupulous humans in Bastonia have been known to trade for goblin ingots at dramatically cut rates over other sources of unworked metal.

Technology and Craftsmanship

Like many of their goods, Goblins excel in making expedient items, and this includes technology. The short lifespans of Goblins and of the things goblins make, and their natural talents at observation and knowledge synthesis, mean that they advance in technology relatively quickly. However, their constructs are usually made to solve one specific problem for no longer than the problem itself persists, and anything intended to last longer than a few hours of continuous operation usually needs to be continually remade an repaired.

Some of this is due to a paucity in the usual raw materials. Goblins do have stone in abundance, and to an extent can produce metals in volumes (but not necessarily quality) equal to the dwarves. Wood is almost absent, as are textiles, but leather and bone are in abundance.

As a result goblin technology and craft either directly mimics the work of other races or, left to its own devices, has a ramshackle appearance and quality.

Goblins and the Adventuring Class

As always, some exceptions exist to the below guidelines, but these are general interpretations of how common adventuring classes are seen.

Barbarian – rarely seen above ground, but not unheard of, and even specialty-trained in Karlikavajask, where the Goblins are beset with enemies from most angles. Goblin Barbarians are shrewd ambush specialists, waiting for their enemies to stumble into their traps before falling on them in a roaring wave.

Bards – surprisingly common given the Goblin predeliction for arcane magic (as a dream race) and their civilization praising music, chicanery, and intreague all at once.

Cleric – While there are a surfiet of clergy in the church of Gob, many are better represented with arcane caster classes such as Sorcerer. However, a limited number of Clerics do exist. They rarely become true adventurers, preferring the more comfortable lives their positions of authority allow.

Druid – rare indeed, though some surface-dwelling goblins that are loyal to Great Siem, especially those that have been mingling with Orcs, pick up the discipline. Mainstream goblins do not enjoy finding themselves above ground, and the belowground reaches they dwell in offer precious little comfort to the tradtional druid archetype. What's more, the cultural reliance on technological advancement runs contrary to the natural harmony preached by druids.

Monk – Almost unheard of. Monks require a degree of mental discipline and life of restriction not often seen in goblinkind, as well as a physicality to which the Goblins are not suited.

Fighter – anywhere a dedicated martial combatant is likely to be seen. This includes professional (i.e., non-militia or non-conscripted) soldiers, castle guards, wardens, some Knights, and so forth. Most chivalric orders include fighters in their makeup.

Paladin – Unheardof. Gob is not of an alignment that could support Paladins; the few goblin paladins in existance are expatriots living in other lands and would be especially remarkable.

Ranger – Quite common, actually. Goblin rangers are usual specialists in navigating the Deeping and hunting the things that occur there naturally (like monsterous vermin and elementals) and unnaturally (like aberrations), as well as traditional enemies of the Goblins, like Dwarves.

Rogue – the “clever” element of the Goblin Banditry, and the "Traditional" class in which to find a goblin. Goblin culture and economics supports almost every usual variant of rogue you'd see, including tomb raiders, simple thieves, forgery artists, conmen, assassins, and even arcane tricksters.

Sorcerers – Quite common, from a variety of sorcerer bloodlines. Born of the Dreaming, the same way as Gnomes, the Goblins are easily capable of manipulaing the arcane by raw talent, seen as a gift of Gob.

Wizards – Less common than sorcerers, but not unheard of. While Goblins have their own magical tradition - the Understanding of Gob - they borrow ideas from the orc progenitor of wizard-magic, Gul Spell-Speaker, as well - though don't often recognize him as a divinity.

Goblin Attitudes on the Other Nations

Wisteria is not a monoculture, and neither are Goblins, though they are certainly one of the more monocultural nations upon it. That said, Goblins do occasionally have dealings with most of the other nations upon Wisteria. It should be noted that the attitudes shown below are general in nature and that each unique Bastonian may hold more or less extreme versions of these positions, including the exact opposites of them, as befits their own experiences and understanding of the world.

• Bastonia is viewed as an enemy, and derided as a pretender nation, whose peoples are only crudely implementing an immitation of Goblin culture. For centuries this was the same as with many other nations - the goblins raid against and steal from you, on small scale, and are largely "just annoying". However, with the expansion into the Frontier Counties came an increase in violent purges against the Goblins, leading to what is effectively a state of war.
• The Carcolie are rarely observed or acknowledged. Some, especially in the northern kingdoms, tell fifth-hand stories of wild demons of the sky who ride on crowback, having borrowed the worst rumours of the Carcolie from the humans they both raid against and prey upon.
• The Atarlie Empire is a known quantity, seen by most as far away. Elves are seen as being soft and helpless by the Goblins, sometimes derided as decadent. While they have much in common as arcane-favourable races, their religious incompatibility - and the animocity caused by Goblin raids - has put a negative spin on the relationship.
• The Orcish Nation is one of the largest populations of the Lordless Lands. Once myths among the orcs (whose dreams created the Goblins, as the halfings did with Gnomes), Goblins eventually became a sort of parsitic culture on the side of the Orcish Nation until the increasing human expansion in their overlapping lands. Prior to the Green Knoll Purge, an alliance had been formed between Great Siem and its more loyal tributaries and the Mighty Northern Horde. The nature of that alliance is up in the air with the collapse of the horde, but in general, goblins and orcs have a common enemy in Bastonia.
• The Confederacy of Sages are sometimes prayed upon by Goblins, and sometimes hunt Goblins in return. In particular, the goblins of Great Siem maintain a favourable relationship through tribute with the Minotaur in order to ensure the safety of their surface settlement at Pyrmor.
• The Clans of Magnus are perpetual enemies. Some early mis-step in the relationship between Goblins and Dwarves, combined with the Holy Dwarven Grudge, has meant that peace is impossible between the two factions. The relationship goes beyond two nations at war: each effectively considers it "open season" on the other.
• Opinion on the folk of the Shimmering Shore is greatly divided as the Goblins have no real presence there, apart from what is brought back by traders from Pyrmor and adventurers returning home.