Minotaur Lore and History Part 1

The Minotaur race is a nomadic people, they seldom build long term structures, preferring yurts and longships converted to temporary shelters.  They herded small herds of oxen but relied heavily on raiding to sustain their numbers. For this reason, they often determined their leadership through combat and for a long age only the strongest minotaur could lead the tribes.

According to the vague histories that have survived the ages, the first traces of the clan split started when some great hero of the minotaur race returned as an ally to the other races of the world after facing a grave threat which threatened to destroy the entire realm. This seems to be a recurring pattern with adventuring parties, something about them unites races in ways that seem illogical. More research is required on this topic.

 This split inevitably turned violent, but the violence escalated far beyond any skirmish or internal feud that had been seen before, after a decade of fighting the war had cost nearly a quarter of the minotaur population, millions lay dead on burnt battlefields. These mass battlefield graves are a favorite lairing place for necromancers who favor minotaur skeletons for their denser bone structure and larger size.

Finally a hero emerged, at the head of another adventuring party and gathered every clan behind his banner in ritual combat. The wise hero, knowing that the ideological differences of the clans could not be resolved split the minotaur race into 4 nations. He then set a yearly time and place for the 4 Minotaur nations to meet and trade goods and information. This gathering became known as the Gathering of Asterion, after the hero who founded it.

These four nations each set out in search of their own lands to roam across.  One clan went into the Badlands where they lived as conquerers and slavers, they became known as the Bonehorn clan. Another settled in the vast forests of the Life Cradle to live and hunt the living plants and great behemoths that live there. They became known as the Clan of the Green Axe, after the unique axes they forged from rare materials found only in the Life Cradle. The third, the Stonehoof clan settled in the plains to live a simple life of farming and grazing, the clans' warriors herd great oxen across the central steppe to be sold at the Gathering of Asterion. These herds are one of the few things in the central steppe which are considered above the rule of the Orcish warlords. The final tribe, the Fellhide tribe, went to the Mountains of Madness where they were bent to cruelty and violence. The tribe conquered the local goblins, creating vast mountainside temples to minotaur might on the backs of goblin slave labor. They dwell now in these massive stone temples, raiding the villages below for supplies. Every few years a warlord will lead an army of goblins and minotaurs down to reave through the countryside, returning fat with meat and plunder.  

Minotaur Clans Part 2

A History of Minotaur Clans Written By The Great Archeologist and Anthropologist Endiara Cavendish

The Bonehorn Clan

Any Desert Traveler will tell you to avoid the maze-like canyons that bisect the Badlands. Everyone knows that is the Domain of the Bonehorn clan and their slave army. The Bonehorn clan are brutal minotaur slavers, famous for raiding unwary caravans and Orcish war parties alike, often selling their captives off to the Gnoll Druids of the central desert in exchange for harvested water fruits and stolen waterskins.

The Bonehorn clan are excellent glass smiths and frequently wield elegant glass bladed weaponry. These glass weapons are extraordinarily keen cutting blades and leave wounds that often bleed profusely. The few Bonehorn representatives who travel to the annual gathering Gathering of Asterion bring glass trading goods such as flasks, glass weapons, and various glass containers and jars. They primarily trade for water and slaves.

The Bonehorn Clan select their leader once every few years, Any minotaur who wishes may attempt the challenge and the first to return is crowned the Chieftain for 3 years. The challenge is simple but dangerous. Each contestant walks into the desert with nothing but a glass dagger and small glass water flask. The first to return riding a Bullete is the new chief. The Bonehorn Clan use Bulletes as raiding beasts as well as pulling heavy loads such as slave carts and sand loads. Rumor has it a great Bonehorn chief once constructed a great temple made of glass, but no outsider has ever seen it and lived.

Stonehoof Clan 

The Stonehoof clan is by far the most peaceful of the 4 Minotaur nation. Settled in the Northern Steppes the Stonehoof clan has traded swords for plow blades. Their size assures that no wandering bandit would care to attack a Stonehoof village. The warriors of the clan drive cattle south through orcish territories with impunity. The Oxen of the Stonehoof clan grow to be nearly 9 feet tall at the shoulder and make some of the finest jerky and leather goods on the market. (Stonehoof leather armor grants +1 AC vs Slashing damage)

The clans elders are greatly adept at the creation of traveling foods that last for weeks on end but do not go stale. Aside from the great drying racks of ox jerky, Rodrigez the explorer once recorded a Stonehoof Travel Biscuit (made from almond flour and mixed with ox fat) lasting well over a year without growing stale. The clan typically trades these food goods for whatever their needs may be, typically tools and wood.

The Stonehoof are not great smiths, and they prefer to purchase tools and utensils from traveling merchants rather than forge things themselves. They also rely on trade at the Gathering of Asterion where they bring Oxen and Prepared Travel foods to trade for tools and containers of various sorts. Though less of a tradecraft the Stonehoof clan typically makes most of their clothing from shaved Ox fur.

Clan Green Axe 

This clan was near impossible to track down, but when I finally made contact they agreed to let me follow them a brief time. They've taken isolationism to extremes, migrating in some permanent pilgrimage through the massive living forests of the Life Cradle from one great temple to another, arriving at each temple in time to conduct a great ritual to waken the sun from his slumber that the world might live again. There are several family groups who seldom interact with one another during their travels, except when a few families will gather at a hidden outpost made from carved hollows in the trunks of small world trees. As far as I can tell these family groups have no heirarchal structure and when multiple groups meet up they gather in what appears to be some kind of general assembly to address family needs and spread news.

The temples of the Green Axe clan are sacred territory, and at each clan meet up one family group is selected to stay behind and guard the temple. The remaining groups will bring offerings of slain beasts and foraged fruits upon their return for this great service. The Green Axe clan are highly protective of their temples, I once witnessed the family group guarding the southern temple, wipe out 3 dozen high elven water dancers that strayed too close to their temple. The Minotaur took a single casualty and he was given a funeral pyre the same night.

The Green Axe clans are great beast hunters, priding themselves on killing beasts like giant otters and the hulking nameless behemoths of the ancient forest alike. Their weapons are made from a deep green mineral called Malachanium, it holds a sharp edge and rumors of a deeper latent magic abound but the minotaur that I spoke with were coldly silent on the topic.

The Fellhide Clan

It Has been many years since my last entry in this book. Much has happened in the time of my travels but that lies beyond the scope of this tome. I have finally reached the ancient fortress of
the mountain clan and discovered their historical records. The entry that follows is my interpretation
of that history. I believe the Mountain clan to be lost to history, their existence stomped out by a powerful sorcerer king.

The Minotaurs that moved into the mountains were arguably the most warlike of the clans. They came to conquer, viewing themselves as the rightful rulers of the meek in a very nietzsche-esque "Powerful always dominate the weak" way. They held to the old traditions of ritual combat for leadership and were highly militaristic. It seems they grew very little of there own food, and didn't trade for it either. By all accounts, much of their diet consisted of plundered food, and jerky from the Gathering of Asterion. (Minotaur are equals and therefore worth trading with)


 When the four nations of the Minotaur tribes split their separate ways the Fellhide clan, already the most bloodthirsty of the clans retreated to the Mountains of Madness where the dark energies of that land warped them into cruel creatures, long bereft of any humanity. It did not take long for them to enslave the many goblin clans that inhabited the area, the great chieftain known only as Duuvera Fellhide built a fortress of iron on the backs of goblin slave labor. He had the mountain stripped of its resources quickly for this fortress, and it stands to this day. The walls are rusted over and the great spike battlement lays devoid of life, inside nothing but empty halls and dust.

It is hard to imagine this fortress would have been like in its hay day. This is my final entry regarding the culture of the majestic Minotaur species. None of this work would have been possible without help from my kind friend and fellow researcher Ernesto LaVenta.

Working Draft -- Dragon Gods

The Elder dragon gods -  Before Tiamat and her brother Bahamut created the 10 bloodlines, dragons grew more chaotic and wilder than mortals today could imagine. Many were both the first and last of their lines, others have kin still lurking in darkened glens or forgotten mountains, colorless and feral, some cherished few attained Godhood.

(Clean this later)


Amatsuma the Eternal Storm – A great serpentine Dragon of with vivid yellow scales and the pales of white streaks across his sides. In his mortal life this great dragonlord was a talented elementalist who could wield whole storms as a weapon. He later achieved godhood and became the Eternal Storm, his mere presence spawning horrific hurricanes and massive lightning storms. His worship is found in elementalist temples and ancient draconic shrines a like. Sailors are most often those who call Amatsuma often ask for his mercy in passing through storms, a sea witch on the other hand might curse a sailor by drawing Amatsumas wrath upon them.

Myojin Dragon God of Fire and War.  - One of the first dragon gods, Myojin predates even Tiamat, it is said that all dragon fire was handed down through Myojin who swallowed a long dead dwarven fire god. Myojin is a war god among dragons, but not the petty genocides that dragons might inflict upon mortals, Myojin is a god of draconic war. To invoke Myojins name is to invoke clan rights, and it is under his watchful eye that draconic parlay occurs. For a dragon to breach draconic treaty is to invite Myojins wrath. Dragons seldom wage clan wars, but when they do every ancient rule is abided by on both sides out of fear and respect for Great Myojin


Nerio – A great lumbering beast of a dragon. It is said she was once black scaled, and payed an elvish smith handsomely to gold plait each of her scales. Statues to her honor are often solid gold and depict her with diamond studded wings. Nerio is the Goddess of Draconic wealth, and the richest dragon to have ever lived. She is the original hoarder, from whom all draconic hoarding stems, but she is also suave and cunning. It is said that she coveted the world and so became a god,  but as a god she became of aware of much greater things to covet. Few invoke her name but the desperate and the greedy, once it was said that melting a golden coin in her name could bring good fortune, but those who curry true favor give up so much more to this envious god.


Uthanlos God of Ice and Mountains, Father of Drakes -- The Great White Terror Uthanlos was always a feral dragon, throwing around his sheer size and brutality to get his way. His territory was absolute and he had no need for language or civility, he would wage war against any who dare impede on his domain. It did not take long for Uthanlos to become despised among the great elder dragons, and soon Myojin came to bring Uthanlos into line. The two raged across the mountain tops, ice and fire leveling whole mountains and creating whole glaciers. Dwarves believe this fight is what created the first volcanoes as the two dragons drove the mountains to a boiling rage. After several years myojin, victoriously tore off Uthanlos wings and cast him to the mountain side to die. But Uthanlos did not die, and though he healed his wings never regrew, and his hatred for all dragon kind drove him mad. Uthanlos is the father of drakes, and though his name is seldom worshipped, the druids sometimes whisper his name in their chants of rage, and barbarians depict the great white terror, a coiled wingless beast upon their standards.


Xetesk the Pale – Somber, black eyed Xetesk is a pale and ancient goddess of passing. Xetesk was once a great purple scaled dragon, a ruler of kingdoms, she fond herself immersed in the lives of mortals and their praises rang in her ears. But Xetesk found that none of these mortal praises lasted long, and the sorrow and loss when her favorite humans wilted before her eyes outweighed their praise. She committed ritualized suicide and became a draconic goddess of death in order to be reunited with her lost worshippers, and now she serves as a shepherd of souls. Her worshippers despise necromancy in all it's forms and strive to act as shepherds to both the living and the dead, helping the living to find their "Death Path", a phrase which here  means the path of life which leads them to the best possible death (think of it as really grim dark legacy crafting, how will people remember you?) and helping the dead to find peace with the paths they walked in life. Xeteskian priests are common funeral orators. 

How to kill a God Part 1

 This is mostly a stat workshop for a friend

As such I'm not gonna worry about the lore aspects beyond Fara is an imposter god of lightning. She was a mere titan who usurped the proper lightning god, kinda similar to Orcus. She was imprisoned for that shit and for some reason that's not working out so now the heroes are on their way to kill a would be god.

I feel like I learned a lot from trying to run a God Slaying Encounter of my own about a year ago, in which I did something pretty right but a lot of things really wrong. In the end though, my players felt like they had fought and vanquished a god, and that's what I was aiming for.

Okay hold up. Let's talk about killing a god.

How to Kill a God

Firstly you'll need weapons worthy of such a feat. Deities are immune to most mortal weapons and recovering the weapon or the material that can actually harm them should be a not insignificant aspect of the quest to kill a god. Spells certainly won't impact a Deity and as such she'll simply ignore spells below a certain level. Lastly, while a Gods physical form could die, unless you follow them to the Astral Sea or bind them in the material, it's usually impossible to actually slay the god with physical means.

D6 ways to kill a god -- 

1.  The Mud God draws his power from the earth and can only take damage if they are separated from the ground. (Grappling a mudgod is hard but possible, Gravity reversal would also work, etc) 
2. Ooblek the Ooze God can rearrange his organs at will, regenerating and restitching himself from even the smallest scrap. If Ooblek has less than 100HP at the start of the round he instead has 100HP. (Simple DPS check, stasis and time magic, haste, and action surge could all seal his demise, this information should be known before the fight) 
3. The Huntress Arduin can only be killed by an arrow which has been ritually prepared in the blood of a Stag in heat. (This should happen on screen. Make them track the stag, have it flee, let her divinely intervene in vague ways) 
4. The War God Achilates has never been bested in combat, but prophecy says his death will be at the hands of a trickster. (The final blow must be a sneak attack, this might not be obvious to the players from their initial investigations but if they look into what the prophecies means they should be made aware of this caveat) 
5. Apollon the Sun God is protected by his sister Navara the moon. If he is slain, or endangered, she will heal him. The only way to kill him is during the new moon, however, he is at his strongest during the day. (This one has a lot of nuance, make the decision to fight at night under the new moon impactful, Apollon knows he can only be killed during this time and will try to flee into the darkness and let his followers hold you off rather than fight) 
6. Hekate the Goddess of Magic has no true physical form and can only be killed by the legendary mage slaying sword Weave Reaver, which is attuned to the weave of magic and cuts spells and flesh alike. She is also immune to magic and magic weapons (Resistance to normal weapons, immunity to magic ones and she can only be dropped below 1HP by Weave Reaver, a sentient sword which can only be attuned to by a non-caster who has killed at least 10 mages with it) 

I like some of those, I don't like others, but it's 3AM so fight me.

The key here is that the actual mechanics of D&D combat are mostly what I would call "Solved Problems" There is a Most Effective Tactic to utilize a characters stat block, and most players know what that tactic is by their 3rd or 4th level as that character. Attempting to add wrinkles to this combat in the form of hazards traps and encounter diversity is great but a Deity should go beyond that. A barbarian could swing at the Mud Gods 14 AC forever, but he has no HP bar as long as he is connected to the Earth. Meanwhile Apollon knows about the narrow window to kill him and will try to flee into the darkness when challenged.

You should probably not fight the Mud God

None of these have explicit solutions grounded in the sheet there is no built in answer in a classes kit. (Except for Achilates but again, fight me) Suddenly your players are making decisions, and choices that aren't grounded in "What does my class do?" or "What is my best standard DPS option?" instead you'll have Barbarians trying to wrestle the Mud God off the ground (dificult and he will try to escape the grapple every round) or else find creative ways to push him off a cliff etc. The mage might haste the fighter so he can keep up with the Fleeing Apollon, but can the fighter and the monk 2v1 a God long enough for the main party to catch up? Or is it better to haste the ranger so that he can better track the fleeing God?

The Beastfolk

The Druhokas -

Their name for themselves is druhok, pronounced d-ruh-hawk (males) or druhoka, pronounced d-ruh-hawk-uh (females). Druhokas for plural, and in combat, they're known for being tough-as-hell to kill. 

They all have large horns or large antlers, sometimes both and a sloping face, but these features are defined more-or-less randomly during puberty.  Sometimes this chaotic process produces results that are similar to elk or deer, but their faces just as often resemble no other known animal.  While their faces are furry the rest of their body is hairless, which makes the bestial face look a bit odd. 

Druhok are incomprehensibly virile.  They can certainly impregnate any mammal, and quite a few non-mammals.  Smaller mammals give birth to skewed little halfbreeds that are usually sterile and sometimes have small horns of their own.  (Animals in their homelands sometimes feature horns for this reason.)  Larger mammals actually produce genetically normal Druhokas, so in theory, a solitary beastman could buy a cow and repopulate.

And it's not just the usual methods of transmission.  Even their blood and spit carry their seed, and fertilization can occur like catching a cold (aside from the more traditional vectors).  After warring with beastfolk, soldiers are advised to wash their hands before returning to their wives.

Druhokan warbands on extended campaigns sometimes travel with herds of goats that they use for food, recreation, and procreation.  Druhok warbands are bad news.  Sometimes they go on world tours.  Twenty years later, the warband that returns home contains only a few original members and quite a lot of their children.  Also lots of plunder.  Also a shit-ton of goats.

When a druhok is born, it resembles a baby goat or lamb.  After about six years, the young druhok quickly metamorphizes into their adult forms.  It's a more awkward puberty than most.  It's also a good reason to only buy your baby goats from licensed goat sellers.

Druhoks remember their childhood, when they walked on four legs and could only bleat.  For this reason, many of them empathize with horses, deer, goats, sheep, etc.  It certainly doesn't stop them from hunting, but they treat baby farm animals very well, and most beastfolk are at least mildly uncomfortable with horseback riding, some even defend horses against this abuse with force. 


Beastmen lack a nimble tongue and full lips. Their language is a mixture of grunts, barks, and hand signals.  It's a complex language full of nuance, metaphor, and meme-forms (not the internet meme)










Culture and Women
The Beastfolk worship in hot springs, believing all hot springs to be sacred places.  They cover their kings and queens with ribbons and bells, and their two biggest trades are brewing vast amounts of wine and being the only race known to have perfected yogurt making. The techniques and recipes needed to make yogurt are religiously kept secrets. The Druhok word for Yogurt is Dahirm (Dah-heer-m) 

They're a bit misogynistic, as you might suspect, though not in the "I beat up women" way, but rather in the "Women have a role and Men have theirs, and these should not be mixed" way.  Most people don't know about Druhoka, the beastfolk women.  Unlike the males, they lose most of their animal affections during their pubescent metamorphosis, so that they perfectly resemble humans in adulthood. The only bestial aspect that Druhoka retain are their cloven feet and their unguligrade legs which add 6" to their height.  They still speak in the grunts and waves of their mother tongue, but their perfectly human faces allow them to learn other languages with relative ease.  They, like their male counterparts they retain their goat eyes.

Diagram of Unguligrade legs that I stole from some furry artist.

Only the women can ever learn to be magic-users, since the males can't pronounce words. The women also fulfill the religious niches of society and  wield significant sway on domestic issues.  It's consider vulgar in their society for women to arm themselves, and so the women that do must use "non-weapons" like flat, bladed shovels and big kitchen knives (sometimes with a hilt).  A beastman would likely blush and faint if he saw a woman fighting with a broadsword.

Most beastfolk come from big families and the family bond of a Druhokan family group cannot be overstated. Druhokans are nomadic people, and they usually travel within these tight knit family groups. Most have a few dead siblings that they quietly honor by setting out bowls of water in quiet places, and then letting them evaporate. It is said that a sibling who goes thirsty in death must truly be hated. 

STATS N SHITT

• +2 Con, +2 Wis, -1 Cha
• Men can't speak or wear helmets; women can't wear shoes.
• Can survive just fine on grass and leaves, although they must eat a lot of it.
• Men can gore/butt with their horns when they charge.  1d6+Str bludgeoning damage.
• Women can easily run through rocky terrain and steep hillsides. While you're hammering pitons they're jogging up.  They can climb non-vertical surfaces without using their hands.
• If you have Cha 13+, and die from an injury (drop to 0 hp) you may attempt to roll under half your charisma score on a d20, if you succeed you instead survive with 1 hit point.  (This doesn't work if their head is cut off or something.)

And you know that Beastfolk warlords have, like, 16 charisma. 

Quaya Part 2 Trystero and Salendar

Monkeyrats -

In the cities and towns of Quaya, you'll find very few of the huge, diseased rats found in other parts of the world.  Instead you'll find monkeyrats.

Monkeyrats are the same size as rats, but they're better climbers, and most importantly, they're smart as hell. They're rare in the wild, but extremely common in the cities,  living in huge troops of up to 100 individuals, usually inside roofs or in the drier parts of the sewers. They're smart enough to figure out ways to subsist on human excess, by stealing a couple of nuts here, eating some garbage here, and avoiding people whenever possible. Some Trysteran Lenguamancers claim the Monkeyrats are smarter than the average peasant, although whether this is meant as a compliment to the tiny beasts.

They fight a constant, invisible war with rats, which they usually win (by virtue of cooperation) and also with cats, which they usually lose (because cats are murder machines).  Still, cats in Trystero frequently die when they get surrounded by monkeyrats, or when the monkeyrats drop a brick on them from 3 stories up, so owners beware.

The cities have a complicated relationship with monkeyrats.  They're seen as pests, but they're a bit too intelligent to treat like vermin.  And they're too numerous to ignore.  Huge extermination attempts have been enacted in Salendar with partial success.  But whenever the monkeyrats are killed, normal rats jump up to replace them.


Trystero the city that never thirsts-

The gleaming city of Trystero is surrounded by a gleaming sandstone wall, the stones of which were mined over 80 miles south long before the Moon Emperor descended to the earth. Fragrant fields of hops and wheat grow alongside ginger root beds and raspberry vines grow along the warm hillsides past the west wall of the city, the eastern wall protects the Trysteran Citrus Grove, a sprawling grove with over 15 varieties of lemon grapefruit and various citrus trees as well as a large stand of cocoa trees.

There are 3 major factions in the city of Trystero:

The Casque Masters Guild, where beer masters of renown the world over make finely crafted, often magically imbued ales and wines. The head of the Guild is Mug Brewington, famous for his Eisbock, a strong lager style beer made by partially freezing the beer during fermentation and removing the ice that forms before finishing the brewing process.

The Confectionaires Guild: Where sweets and cakes of a thousand varieties are made, where chefs come to study the art of sugar blowing and chocolate making. There are whispers that the confectionaires guild sometimes dabbles in dangerous and rare ingredients such as the infamous Red Honey and Underdark Cocoa Beans, which must be grown and harvested in the flesh of still living slaves.

The Lenguamancers College, where mages study the magic of the Tongue. The lenguamancers have an ongoing rivalry with the confectionaires guild over who can construct the most universally appealing and ecstasy inducing flavors. They had a brief rivalry with the Casque Masters, but lost miserably as Mages have no idea what people find appealing in their alcohol.



Salendar the city of chimes -

The road between Salendar and Trystero is 40 miles longer when you travel northward from Salendar to Trystero than it is when you travel south from Trystero to Salendar. No one is really sure why, a number of mages have investigated it and believe it might be related to a long dead a lamellar labyrinth of hypertoroidal tissues.

Salendar is known for it's uncountable chimes. Homeless children build chimes of broken glass and junk string, while the richest nobles and merchants build massive chimes from entire buildings. The chimes are all dedicated to the wind spirits who call Salendar home, there's a great cliffside at the edge of the city wear the veil between realities wore thin thousands of years ago, now it's a minor gateway to the elemental plane of air, and air elementals of all sizes and dispositions pass into and out of our reality with relative ease.

There was once an elementalist college here,  mages studied how to bind and control the spirits of the wind now it's great halls and towers lay in ruins, a reminder of the past. A great tempest elemental was summoned and then bound by the elementalists long long ago, but it escaped it's bondage and destroyed the mages, shatteand leveled half the city before becoming entranced with childlike joy over a childs wind chime. Ever since the city has lived in awed respect and admiration for the great creatures and view mages with distrust. 

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.