@Thinslayer What if your witch is in fact a Tragic Villain?

@Thinslayer
Cool cool. Would it be ok if I did a little worldbuilding for goblin stuff too? Because I have a few ideas I totally haven’t blatantly stolen that I might use for them if I can.

@Dark Cloud Yep, sounds like her. She tried for years to persuade people that the Voidspawn were a threat, but they all treated her like a crackpot lunatic and threw her out. As Number One Persona Non Grata among the Voidspawn, she doesn't want to be anywhere near this entire planet when they finally decide to give the Overworlders what-for, so she's not about to take humanity's inaction lying down. She's gonna build an army to stop them, and people can either get on board or get out of her way.

The monster tribes, however, would believe her more easily, since they're often among the first victims of Voidspawn incursions; their main problem is that this news is coming from a human, whom they don't particularly trust - hence the necessity of a mask.

@Thinslayer I wonder if she knows of Dexter...

@ThinslayerSent the sheet ^.^

@Thinslayer Or rather how she would regard another Voidspawn..

The thing is Dexter is unlike most Voidspawn, he isn't interested in power and domination. All he wants is to feel loved and accepted, but its impossible due to his dubious origins. He is interested in experiencing new emotions and feeling new feelings. He just wants to find a place in the world where he won't be hunted or attacked.

@Rabidporcupine Absolutely! I'd love to see what you come up with.

And now that I'm home and have access to my fancy-pansy gaming laptop, I can type more easily now. The Badlands are a dry, cold desert where not much lives. The land is mostly clay beneath a few inches of dry, rocky topsoil, making it nearly impossible to farm. The water table is sunk a long way down, and considering the difficulty of digging through the clay, making a well is not terribly feasible for the average community. The Empire seized most of the good land and holds it pretty well, so the monster tribes have little choice but to live here and fester their discontent.

The Badlands do have a wealth of strategic and precious metals a short ways under the earth, which the Uruks have tried to take advantage of, but they don't have the magical or technological know-how to really capitalize on it. There are also several edible plants that grow really well in the Badlands, and a certain observant goblin might be able to make something happen with that.

The northern coasts aren't in much better shape, as they're close to the north pole and frequently frozen over. The tribes living up there have managed to scrape a living regardless, and there's even a town or two up there. The residents will defend those settlements with their lives, and they're among the toughest, meanest monsters you'll find in this region.

Can we start soon?

@Dark Cloud I'd certainly love to. I'll double-check with @Conejitoooo when she comes back.

@Thinslayer
Ok, so not much in the way of wood then? And also dang, that means my original plan of hydra farming probably won’t be much of a thing for a bit.

Anyway, what I’ve got so far for goblin lore is really just a lot of the usual stuff. They give birth to a hell of a lot of children at a time, they reach adulthood fast, and any that survive childhood usually die by the age of twenty, but nobody knows if that last bit is meant to happen. There’s actually a common joke among humans that goblins are secretly immortal, it’s just that nobody will ever find out for sure because it seems like a hundred percent of them die by being killed in battle or eaten by predators, so nobody actually even knows what an old goblin looks like, let alone how old they have to get to be one. The oldest goblin ever recorded was thought to have been thirty-three when they got eaten by a drake. Living that long has earned him a spot in goblin legend, both for his own tribe and among all the others, which is a really rare feat because they usually don’t interact much beyond fighting over territory or resources.

There’s probably more I came up with but I’ve forgotten it for now.

Oh, also for the most part they don’t understand whatever language the human speak. Like, at all. Maybe some of the most well-travelled goblin raiders would’ve picked up on some of it, but only very few. Hence why my character, now having grown up with gob language and at least knowing his old human language could probably put it together well enough to stumble his way through a conversation.

@Rabidporcupine Funny you should mention wood. I was developing this lore for another story, and I was wrestling with the lack of wood for quite a while. And I have to tell you, orcs had to get really creative in that story. The orcs who lived by the one or two rivers that flowed through the land would build whole cities out of mud, while those who lived in the middle of the dry desert would have to live underground, tough though it may be to dig through the clay. On the flipside of that coin, any dwelling they managed to dig out of the clay would be pretty sturdy. Additionally, their leader managed to forge trade treaties with a couple other orc tribes, trading away iron and other strategic metals for food (because they can't farm, remember) and other resources. Specifically, they traded with the northern orcs for fish, and the southern orcs near the more fertile Imperial border for vegetables and wood.

So, the lack of wood problem is solvable; it just takes a bit of creativity to work around.

@Thinslayer
Oh yeah no I had ideas for that kind of thing. I was thinking either yeah, digging out or building structures from the clay, or also maybe using bone and hides from larger animals, or maybe even carapace if you’re open to the idea of giant wasteland bugs. Also there’s probably still be shrubbery and small bushes for smaller wooden things too, right?

@Rabidporcupine Exactly! Yes, they could build structures out of bones and hides - although, given the scarcity of life of any kind out in the Badlands, most of that biological material would come from...well, their fellow monsters. >_>

And yes, there's some small, hardy plant life out in the Badlands. Cacti might be a thing too.

Ooh, I just had a wicked idea for the Witch's motivation: what if the Empire were secretly trying to build a Void army, and the Witch found out? That could definitely explain her animus against the Empire...

@Thinslayer
Yeah, cool, just as long as there’s some stuff to build fires with and actually survive the cold. Also, I know the answers probably no, but there wouldn’t be any volcanic areas in the badlands would there? Like, not necessarily proper big active volcanoes, but just like, maybe geysers or hotsprings or something. Somewhere you can find those kinds of natural minerals like sulphur and stuff a little easier. Just hypothetically.

@Rabidporcupine In the frozen north, surprisingly, maybe. I always imagined the dwarves lived in a volcanic region just west of the orcs' land, too, so there might be something we could work with there.

@Thinslayer
Yeah cool. I was thinking sort of like a iceland style environment or something, with a bunch of cool igneous rock formations and stuff. Totally not just so I can have my guy use that stuff he learnt from Drifters and introduce gunpowder to the world. Assuming guns aren’t already a thing because I’m only now remembering you did mention a potential pirate kingdom at some point.

Also, just because goblins in caves is kind of a staple, are there any natural cavern networks in the badlands the goblins might be able to build in?

@Rabidporcupine An icelandic environment sounds awesome. Let's do that! Cavern systems are perfect too, not only for the reasons you mentioned, but also because they make great labyrinthine dungeons for adventurers to explore. It would totally fit with the theme we've got going.