When they aren’t picking lice out of each other’s scalp or roasting rats over an open fire, these three goblins of Midgard are carrying out acts of destruction and mayhem.
While few are accounted masterminds among their number, each has a reputation that extends outside their little tribe. Feel free to add them to your game as NPC adversaries.
Roasty Toasty, Female Goblin Rogue
Roasty is an arsonist in the employ of Radovar Streck, alchemist and member of the Zobeck City Council.
Whenever Streck has need of a little urban renewal work, either to keep the volunteer firefighters’ union busily happy or to frustrate the territorial ambitions of the Greymarks, he calls on Roasty.
For especially big jobs, Streck might provide Roasty with a powerful accelerant. But usually, the means of lighting a spark is left to Roasty’s imagination and her small squad.
She frequents the Wheatsheaf Tavern and the Ragpicker’s Guild in Lower Zobeck when she isn’t making deliveries for Streck’s peat and coal wagon. (Her nickname comes from this job, when she hollers from the wagon perch, “Get yer coal. Get yer peat. Get yer roasty toasty!”)
She’s easily recognizable as being the only goblin wearing a frilled cotton mobcap adorned with a rosette of red and gold, the Free City’s colors. She thinks of herself as a patriot, always speaking loudly of her devotion to the city. Of her arson projects, she is very discreet.
Hojal Longtooth, Male Bugbear Barbarian-Sorcerer
Longtooth is the ruthless and unchallenged chieftain of raiders operating in the region between Salzbach and Reywald.
Longtooth’s crew number more than three dozen humans, bugbears, and fell dwarves. He’s led them for more than five years—an eternity for such things. He only dabbles in sorcery; his offensive spells are few, just enough to dazzle his raiders and keep them in line.
The crew terrorizes, robs, and enslaves those unfortunate enough to be living and traveling in the region. Though Longtooth occasionally targets farmsteads and isolated villages, he focuses his raiders on freight trains, becoming the bane of Hammerfell Wagon Company. Each season, the Vikkelscheides’ increase the bounty on Longtooth, so that it is now up to 5,000 gp, dead or alive.
A depraved soul, Longtooth is assembling a seraglio from among his most choice captives at his fortified base in the highlands south of Bren-on-the-Voulge.
Enamored with the luxury items in his hoard, Longtooth fancies himself a “cultured” and “enlightened” brigand, oiling his beard and adorning himself with jewelry.
Aejexes, Male Hobgoblin Fighter
Aejexes is a disciplined and fierce mercenary captain. His company, the Sabers, have chased glory and loot from one end of the Seven Cities to another.
Though some fighters balk at serving under a hobgoblin, veteran campaigners eagerly petition to join the Sabers. They know the company is successful because Aejexes demands good order in camp.
During the spring muster in Valera, Aejexes inspects recruits, often judging them on the quality of their kit as well as their martial skills.
For all that, opponents and allies alike consider Aejexes a ruthless foe who pursues conflicts to bitter ends. Aejexes ignores the conventions of warfare in the city-states that require chivalry and gentlemanly conduct of its commanders. He doesn’t entertain pleas for mercy nor does he engage in ransoming of prisoners, choosing instead to resolve everything with a bloody saber.
More than one general and member of aristocracy consider Aejexes too dangerous. No campaign season passes without at least one plot being hatched to remove the hobgoblin captain from the fields of battle.
