Connects to: 02.05, 11.01, 14.02, 26.01, 29.07, 33.00, 38.28 and the Freeholds.
Overview
In this valley that opens out into the southern foothills of the Grey Mountains few plants grow because the landscape is dominated by thousands and thousands of petrified stumps of oak trees. The orcs of Hoth Achaar (26.01) come here periodically to perform rites to their strange gods but otherwise the stumps lie undisturbed except for the occasional goat that jumps up onto one to escape the teeth of a warg. This lonely valley is one of the few reminders left of the goblin realm that was shattered by dwarves and their orcish allies in days long past.
These days the western border of the Kingswood lies far to the east of the Draugmere Peaks and the northwestern reaches of the Shrouded Lands contain more cows than trees. It was not always so. When Bergolast (38.28) still kept the Tarrasque in thrall, the Kingswood stretched near to the western coast of these lands and you could walk from Thring to the western mountains without ever stepping out from under the shade of an oak tree. In those days the goblins ruled the western forest as the vassals of the elven Bloodied King (29.07), thieved from the halls of the giants and warred with the dwarves of the north.
Tiring of constant goblin raids, the dictators of the dwarves hired orcs by the thousand and they came to the Grey Mountains, wargs slinking at their heels, and worked with the dwarves to build five great fortresses. But, as the story goes, of the five, four were finished (02.05). Of the four, three were ever manned (14.02). Of the three, two survived their first siege. Of the two only the Titan’s Skull (33.00) is still in dwarven hands today. Some of these fortresses fell to goblin treachery and magic others to the warfare that broke out between orc and dwarf after the goblins were finally defeated and their oak trees laid low. The goblins themselves are only a scattered remnant of their old strength (11.01) but they still remember what the orcs and dwarves did to their trees and they scream out their hatred in their midnight dances around oak trees and grow toadstools in twisted rings that spell out wicked runes. However, the dwarves did not profit from their victory in the goblin wars. Their western holdings were torn from their grasp by orcish rebellions that broke out after the defeat of the goblins and the exhausted dwarves were unable to prevent human and halfling colonists from pouring into what had once been the goblin forest to found what is now the Freeholds.
Connections
- Some goblins that used to live in these lands now live some distance to the west (14.02).
Hooks
- What turned the stumps here to stone?
- How did the orcs and dwarves wipe out the goblins so effectively?
- Why did the elves not come to the aid of their goblin vassals? Or did they?
- Why did the orcs mutiny against their dwarven employers?
- Are there any other remnants of the old goblin realm in the northwestern bits of the shrouded lands?
- What exactly is the connection between goblins and oak trees anyway?
