The Guns of Gez'rek

A sharp crack rings out in the night and everyone looks to the shadows in fear. Was that a gun? The goblins are coming!
The story is common in the western lands of Beltiar. Almost everyone knows what guns are, even though they have never seen one in person. Tales of small, cloaked figures moving through back alleys or leaping from the trees on a lonely stretch of road are commonplace. They always come for their guns.
In the middle of the 2nd Age, the goblins residing on the Shattered Coast and Black Fang Bay discovered a powder mixture that would explode when burned. Their crazy alchemists and inventors quickly found applications for this substance in mining, but the goblin responsible for creating the fearsome weapons was Gunbar Gunson.
Knowledge of these weapons spread as the goblins used them in many successful campaigns against their neighboring foes, but they became obsessed with keeping their secrets from falling into the hands of the enemy. Goblin agents hide in every major city and when rumors of someone there using guns, these elite operatives stalk the gun-wielder and retrieve the weapon by any means necessary (typically in a lethal manner). They also target any alchemists who try to recreate the formula for gun powder and enact a similar fate to them.
Because of this, the use of goblin style firearms is banned in every nation and the centers of learning prohibit the study of explosive powder. Instead, they focus their efforts on more effective applications of Manatech.