Quaya Part 1 - The Warm Hills

The Warm Hills 

Sometimes called the Yellow Hills for the variety of wild wheats which grow abundantly in the rocky soil there, the Warm Hills are home to 2 major populations.

The first group call themselves The Dwarven Common Grace, a half dozen villages of mostly hill dwarves who are essentially Dwarven Calvinists. They worship a god of labor and humility which they have dubbed Armok, God of Sweat and Blood. To labor and toil is to praise their God, and most things outside of honorable labor are considered sinful in someway or another. The dwarves of the common grace are notoriously dull and uncreative creatures, as creative endeavors are often sinful and children are taught what they must know to shepherd the great goat herds or work the fields.


Their villages usually consist of a handful of communal dwellings in hollowed out hills, where the dwarves sleep in triple bunk beds packed tightly together with neither personal aesthetics nor privacy allowed. These are usually built in a ring  around a central meeting area and communal dining hall.  On the surface of these holowed out hills the dwarves usually grow wheat or else pen their great goat herds. A dwarven great goat can grow to be massive, some growing as large as 8 feet tall at the shoulder. The dwarves use them as beasts of both labor and warfare.

The largest dwarven community in the warm hills is the town of Great Mill, (the common grace dwarves detest fancy names and believe a thing should be named for what it does) so called because of the massive millstone the town is built around. The stone has a radius of just over 40' wide and weighs several thousands of pounds. It's operated by 20 massive goats, the largest goat from each village is sent to help pull the millstone. A village which sends a small or weak goat to pull the millstone is generally considered shameful and dishonest. The dwarves pay nicely for fertilizer and produce a vast ammount of flour which they sell far and wide. Despite all this seemingly impressive economic activity, the dwarves own no luxuries, and store all of their communal wealth in neatly stacked gold bars beneath their hills, a rainy day fund they'll never actually use.

The second group living in the Yellow Hills are the Great Goblin Encampment of Thanorek Thanorek is one of the least powerful goblin encampments in terms of its ability to wage war, but it is widely regarded as a place of pleasure and excess where those with the coin can purchase all manner of intoxicants and carnal experiences. Thanorek is run by a Hobgoblin named Niu Bo Wei.

Niu Bo Wei is a sybarite and hedonist; he does not care for the responsibilities that leading the Thanorek encampment imposes on him, but he does thoroughly enjoy the pleasures that his position allows. Niu Bo Wei maintains power mostly through his intense charisma and charming decadence—he sees his encampment as the worlds greatest brothel,  where all are welcome and where all appetites are satisfied.

While most goblin hordes move from place to place the Thanorek encampment, is more permanent having been built around The Brazier; a fire pit made of rune-etched iron in which an efreeti is bound by magic. The goblins of Thanorek worship the “Flame Lord” as a god, but the efreeti wishes only to be fre
ed. The majority of Thanoreks population are goblins, hobgoblins, and bugbears, but all races are welcome and it is not uncommon for people to come to Thanorek to disappear or hide frome their troubles. The goblin locals live in low round yurts, and live a hunter gatherer lifestyle for the most part. The pleasure domes, decorated in garish colors, some laced with magic pigments that sear into the eyes of those who view them, are large and varied. It is said there is no pleasure in the Material Realm that Thanorek cannot provide, and few pleasures beyond the material which it cannot find for the man with the right coin.