Hobgoblin

Diet
 Attributes
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 Manna Type
 Kingdom
 Native Language

The infamous Enemies of Valadae, hobgoblins are feared and abhorred by every sentient creature-kind across the eleven kingdoms. Destructively violent and bloodthirsty, they hold no empathy for other living things and take pleasure in the torture and conquest of others.

They are bestial by nature, with a strong pack mentality. Whatever a leader orders, their subordinates obey. Rank and cast play a large role within their populace, with higher-ranking groups subjugating the lesser casts with heartless severity. The lessers, by nature, submit without question, but subsequently, externalise their own thirst for dominance by brutalising other creatures as well as each other.

## Appearance

Hobgoblins are described as having a rough blend of feline and porcine features. Their eyes are yellow with vertical slit pupils, like cats. Their ears are also long and flexible, enabling them to have *directional hearing* (able to move one ear independent of the other), again like a cat. Their skull structure, however, is more like a wild boar, as it the texture of their fur (stiff and coarse), which only comes in shades of brown to black.

Hobgoblins are incredibly strong, their broad upper bodies packed with muscles and large internal organs—primarily the heart and lungs—perfectly adapted to bouts of extreme physical exertion. With coarse fur, well-insulated flesh, and a slow metabolic rate, hobgoblins are capable of adapting to almost any climate and can survive without food for several wreegns.

With large hands and paw-like feet, and thick grappling claws, hobgoblins can scale structures—like cliffs and trees—with ease, and run for hours over rugged terrain without stressing the muscles and tendons in their legs.

As well as tusks, hobgoblins have a set of curved horns protruding from their foreheads. Once, the horns grew symmetrical and large and were the prime physical feature of a male hobgoblin. But sentydes of corrupted bloodlines and unnatural genetic replications has seen the horns deform, becoming small, twisted, and often brittle.

## A Culture and Creature-kind Lost

Though notorious in recent lifetimes for their role in the War of Shores, hobgoblins were not always the fallen enemies of Valadae. Once, they were a proud and reserved tribal creature-kind that dwelt in the northern mountain regions of Valadae (once known as the Border Realm, or *Border Lands*, as the hobgoblins called it). Hobgoblins lived in close-knit clans, and held no desire for conquest beyond their domain, warring only with each other over matters of pride or territory.

Due to their impressive strength and skills in stone-craft, the hobgoblin tribes were offered friendship and trade by the duards, in exchange for physical labour in the construction of the duarden city of Hunadreas, during the Age of Covenants. An alliance formed between the two creature-kinds and lasted over seven sentydes, until the arrival of the manticors.

With their domineering cruelty and dark mysticism, the manticors corrupted the hobgoblins and enslaved them to their will. Swayed, the hobgoblins turned on the duards and drove them from their mountain kingdom, allowing the manticors to establish their stronghold and set the stage for what was to become the worse war in the history of Valadae: the War of Shores.

Using unspeakably abhorrent manipulations, the manticors experimented on the hobgoblins, infusing them with corrupted magics, indoctrinating them with violence and twisted subservience, and worst of all, slaughtering their females in favour of their own unnatural propagation methods.

Their culture decimated and wills broken, the hobgoblins became mindless puppets, bred for war and conquest, fearless of their own deaths, oblivious to the inevitable extinction of their kind.