Bone Hollow
Bone Hollow’s greatest advantage in its wars against its hobgoblin and dwarven rivals is its strategic location. While Exor and Smashed Skull are sandwiched between two enemies, potentially forcing each citadel to engage two different foes on separate fronts, Bone Hollow’s great distance from the dwarven heartlands significantly lessens the threat from the great clans. Furthermore, Bone Hollow boasts the finest fortifications in the region. Reinforced stone buildings, walls, and towers immediately test the mettle of any potential invader, while their contingent of ballistae and catapults challenges the attacker’s fortitude. Despite these impressive bulwarks, the hobgoblins allow travelers and merchants to pass through their gates into the valley below Bone Hollow if they pay a hefty toll. Circumventing the toll is an offense punishable by death or worse. Non-hobgoblins may pass through the gates, but they are never allowed to enter the city proper or camp anywhere within its walls.
In addition to its impressive defenses, Bone Hollow can muster a mighty hobgoblin army 3,700 strong. Its warlords can call upon an auxiliary mounted force that includes a wyvern, a gray render, a six-headed hydra, two chimeras, four owlbears, four hell hounds, six cave bears, and a legion of wolves. The battalion’s leader rides atop a fearsome blue dragon. Under the leadership of Sahka Khan, Bone Hollow either commits almost everything it has to a military campaign or its military stays safely ensconced behind its ramparts. Bone Hollow may not boast the largest army, but its cohesive force is the best-trained and best-equipped goblinoid army in the Stoneheart Mountains. To showcase its martial prowess and gain experience for its seasoned troops, Bone Hollow annually attacks its southern neighbor Smashed Skull in what feels more like a rite of passage than a realistic attempt to conquer the hobgoblin citadel. Sahka Khan’s army routinely beats its adversaries into a bloody pulp on the field of battle, though the gains realized from these conflicts are minimal. Sahka Khan primarily participates in these exercises to satisfy his people’s lust for carnage. Left to his own devices, he would happily bide his time and watch his hobgoblin adversaries and their dwarven rivals destroy each other.
The hobgoblins rely heavily upon slave labor to provide materiel and logistical support for their organized and disciplined military force. Dwarves and humans captured during one of their rare raids toil in the silver mines beneath the citadel, entertain the masses in gladiatorial games, or become unwilling sacrifices to their depraved deities. In turn, the hobgoblins use the silver ore to finance their wars of conquest. A handful of escaped slaves claim to have seen fleeting glimpses of dread horrors in the tunnels beneath Bone Hollow. Stories of tentacled monstrosities, amorphous mounds of blistered flesh, and skinless beasts represent just a sampling of these fantastical tales.
Stronghold
Bone Hollow, City of
Type
Fortress
Comments