Mawgrin Kin
The Mawgrin Kin are a grim and secretive goblin clan dwelling in the blizzard-scoured wastes near the Frozen Maw, a vast, jagged sinkhole in the far reaches of the Icy Wastes. Unlike other goblin clans that revel in chaos or cunning, the Mawgrin Kin are zealots—cold-eyed worshippers of a slumbering entity they believe lies beneath the Maw’s depths.
Wrapped in thick bone-patched cloaks and painted with ritualistic ash and ice, the Mawgrin Kin conduct dark rites in silence, broken only by the shrieks of sacrifice or the low, groaning chants they sing to awaken their frozen god.
Structure
Leadership and Structure
The Mawgrin Kin are ruled not by strength or intellect, but by prophetic madness. Their leader, known as the Mawcaller, is always chosen through a ritual where several candidates are cast into a cave of whispering winds—only one returns, changed and bearing the "voice of the Maw."
- Mawcaller Vrex the Hollow is the current leader—a goblin whose eyes have gone pure white and who speaks in a rasping echo.
- Bleedsingers act as priests, interpreters of dreams and screams.
- Toothcarvers are warriors who sharpen their teeth and weapons on bones of past sacrifices.
- Frost-Diggers excavate tunnels toward the Maw’s unseen heart, always deeper.
Culture
At the heart of Mawgrin culture is The Sleeper Beneath, an ancient being said to be buried under the ice, dreaming of hunger. The Mawgrin Kin believe that feeding this entity with flesh, blood, and fear will grant them power—or perhaps devour them into eternal unity.
Key beliefs include:
- The Maw Hungers Always: The ice is never still because the Maw stirs. All life must eventually feed it.
- To Feed is to Serve: Sacrifices—animal, enemy, or kin—are considered sacred acts of devotion.
- Fleshmarks: Scars ritually carved into the skin to emulate the “bite of the Maw,” often shaped in spiral or jagged patterns.
The Mawgrin Kin live communally in ice-cairn villages, built around ritual pits and bone totems, each centered on a crude shrine of black ice where “the breath of the Maw” is said to rise in mists even during still air.
Practices and Rites
- The Ice-Hollowing: A rite in which initiates dig their own grave-like recess in the glacier and sleep within it for three nights, seeking dreams from the Maw.
- The Red Descent: A festival of sacrifice where captives are thrown into the Frozen Maw, and the screams are interpreted as omens.
- Silence Marches: War parties that approach in total silence, often days in advance, hiding in ice hollows until the moment to strike with frost-blades and bone axes.
History
One tale tells of the First Mawcaller, who heard a voice in the deep and tore out their own tongue so only the Maw could speak through them. Others speak of The Shuddering Night, when the ice cracked for miles and a giant limb, black with frost and hunger, reached out of the Maw before sinking again.
Some fear the Mawgrin Kin are not merely delusional cultists but chosen custodians of something very real—and very old—beneath the world’s crust.
Foreign Relations
- Ash-Ears: Considered blasphemers who defile the ice with flame and noise. Often targeted for ritual sacrifice.
- Frost-Nibblers: Tolerated as distant cousins of the cold, though the Nibblers whisper that the Mawgrin Kin are “already half-eaten by their god.”
- Whitefang Orcs & Frost Elves: Feared and occasionally respected for their strength—but the Mawgrin Kin see them as “delayed offerings.”
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