Hobgoblin

If you're out among the deepwood and you think, even for a second, that you might hear the beat of a drum? Run. Leave your supplies behind, if you have to. Trust me, it's better than letting them find you.

— Colcu Ua Maoláin, Listyrian Scoutsman

Hobgoblins are a species of goblinoid demikith bearing close relationship to the orc typically featuring slimmer though still powerful, musclebound builds as opposed to their southern brethren. Standing at average a head or so taller than the stature of a human or elf, they are often described by kithfolk as more animalistic in appearance — slightly elongated skulls with ridged and forward-tilting brows, the characteristic elongated ears of goblinoid species and sharpened rows of razored teeth. Their bodies are similar enough to a human or orc's in shape and build save for their height, though their skin is notable more thick and course than the former's and may hold pigmentation ranging from a light brown or dull orange to a deep red. Their hair grows in denser and thicker strands than a human's as well and is colored only from rich browns to deep blacks, though may gray and whiten with age as typical of goblinoid species, and are often pulled or braided into dreadlocks and ponytails in styles similar to those observed across Northern Eletheros and Southern Arekahs each.
Believed to have originated in the Evergreen Ocean – a massive forest to the north where their kind is still found in its greatest numbers – they are scattered more sparsely across most the world over, seemingly drawn more naturally to woodland environments even when integrating into foreign societies.

Civilization and Culture

Major Organizations

In terms of global presence, the vast majority of hobgoblins – even those who exist in isolated communities with others of their species – exist in the manner of a majority of demikith varieties: culturally similar in more ways than not to their neighboring species, with any traces of their ancestral homeland and people remaining only in their physical appearance.
Frighteningly little is known, to outside scholars, about the single location where this is not the case.
The Evergreen Ocean is a poetic title assigned to the massive chain of kingdom-sized forests found in the central north of the greater Eletherojin continent, far past the valley between the Bhaldish and Emmar mountain ranges and ranging between the Great Gem Lakes and the northern coast. Here among the trees lies the hypothesized homeland of the hobgoblin species, though nearly all details related to such a possibility remain unknown to outsiders of hobgoblin and foreign races both. Minor and fleeting instances of mutual trade have been noted in the eastern reaches nearer Yojin between Evergreen Hobgoblins and the denizens of Xingparkang, though no names of either kingdoms, tribes, nor individuals have been officially recorded; in the west, by contrast, the names 'Kohorsan' and 'Ikrat' have repeatedly been associated with large gatherings of some variety, though it is unknown the type — they may be the names of kingdoms, tribes, villages, communities, armies, or something else entirely.
Western relations with the hobgoblins of the Evergreen Ocean have been historically fraught, accounts regarding denizens near the modern-day regions of Listyr and Folcbald coming into conflict with forest-dwelling hobgoblins able to be dated back centuries into the past by the current age. Neither trade, ceasefires, nor proper contact of any kind has been successfully established at any known point, though inhabitants of these border regions seem to hold one another in similar regard as trespassers on their native soil. While sightings of meager hobgoblin dwellings have been described on occasion by Listyrian scouts far within the deepwood, the pictures painted of hovels dug into hillsides and huts strung together with twine are imagined more often to be temporary shelter than permanent places of dwelling.
The sheer length of conflict between hobgoblins and outsiders has mythologized the former somewhat in local lore, with hobgoblins' routine penchant for deadly ambushes often said to find its roots in cavorting with fey, supposedly leaving them the ability to travel through the trees themselves.

by Alexander Shatohin