The goblins were not included in the god’s plan for the world. They were dragged to Gorgh from Somewhere Else at the height of the Elven Schism, a living weapon as a dead man’s switch vomited from some dank part of the Feywild to infest this world.

Goblins have no illusions about being the favorite children of the gods, nor of their place in the hierarchy of beings. They have a god, Maglubiyet, whom they regard as a spiteful older brother, and who for his part sees the goblin race as occasional playthings to sometimes reward but mostly punish. He is still fed by their spite, by their trickery and backstabbing. He is a god of treachery, deceit, and spite, and the most common act of worship endemic to goblinkind is the sharpening of a knife.

Goblins stand about three feet tall, with wiry limbs and knobbly joints belying a surprising strength. They are always some shade of green, ranging from high yellow or ghostly pale to a deep, verdant tone. Despite their extraplanar origins, the goblins show a huge amount of adaptability, and can be found in almost any biome, from frozen wastes and high peaks to the steaming jungles and vast deserts. The secret is in the goblin’s huge amount of mutations and variance from one goblin to the next. Although this means no small number will the malformed or puny, it also means some small number with be strong and clever. It is these strong or clever goblins who take power, the brutal tyrant and his scheming vizier being endemic amongst all the varied goblin tribes. Their feywild ancestry means that those blessed by Maglubiyet with extra wits often can manifest sorcery, flinging curses and searing magic from behind the (relatively) broad back of whatever chieftain they’ve attached themselves to.

The cave goblins of the Drakespine Mountains have been infesting the area for centuries. They’ve crawled and wormed and, when they had to, tunneled deep into the roots of the mountains, fighting a quiet, dirty little war with the dwarves in the eastern reaches. The goblins poison wells with noxious fungi grown on the bones of the murdered, and the dwarves burn nests, sproutlings and all, with their powder and their liquid fire. Dwarves taken alive are mostly eaten, while goblins taken alive are enslaved to work the forges and generally do the wildly dangerous jobs no self-respecting dwarf would risk. While slavery is illegal in civilized lands, dwarven law holds that goblins are technically livestock, and their lives are bought cheaply and spent easily.

North of the mountains, the goblins of the tundra compete with the local barbarian humans for food and resources. Known for their reliance on huge wolves, the northern tribes ride the beasts under the midnight sun, striking small camps quickly and then loping away.

On Orcs

The orcs of the Southland Wastes were said to have been made by their god, Gruumsh, as a mistake. Gruumsh was said to be an aspect of Maglubiyet, or perhaps a son or brother, and found the goblins wanting. He raised them up, to stand as tall or taller as other races, and bulked them out, giving them a huge amount of endurance. He embodied in the orc all those goblin-y traits he found admirable: their toughness, their violence, their ability to survive, and their pleasing green hue. But in doing so, he cut out the cleverness and the cunning.

The orcs hardly build. They see no need for shelter, when they can run all day beneath the unforgiving sun and lay down in the dirt without issue. They see no need to farm, when any orc who cannot run down prey or chew the bark from a tree is weak. They do not work metal, as any orc who cannot drive a sharp stone through armor is a shame to his tribe. So they circulate in the badlands, warband against warband, forever being suborned by a stronger chief and then splitting off after the chief’s inevitable untimely death.

Their clerics guide the tribe, interpreting the will of Gruumsh from clouds and dust devils, mumbling and rocking as they pierce their flesh with sacred bones. Most of all, they favor the mushroom spirits brewed by the cave goblins, enthralled with visions of walls of green flesh smashing the world. And that’s when things get complicated.

The delirious shaman are easily suborned by the clever cave goblins, and when the brutish orcs are covered in dirty goblin iron, they are thrown northwards in a war horde. This tide of savagery is sent against the dwarven fastnesses, to die in droves to raking dwarven cannons and break upon the steel-clad lines of dwarven defenders. This has happened four times in the memory of the Huddlelanders, but each time is a horror for the people of the fertile valley, with orcish raiders burning and slaying a meandering line to the mountains, there to break apart and continue to raid until they can be put down.