Orcs and goblins have no home in Sublanarya. Instead, they are host to a uniquely disturbing and dangerous horde of their own humanoid savages; the beastmen.
Less than a millenia ago, Kalibos the Bastard Prince, the god of butchers and cannibals, was reborn in eastern Thule to a barbarian witch. The powerful and hateful brutality of Kalibos's tribe quickly saw The Hold's southern tribes fall to his savagery or join his quickly growing cult. The diabolical and monstrous god infused his servants with blood and transformed them into monstrous shapeshifters able to switch between their human and lycanthropic form. But even a large army of primitive shapeshifters wasn't enough for Kalibos and he intended to tear civilization down and drown it in a sea of blood.
Kalibos's "great innovation" came in the creation of a dark ritual that allowed him to impregnate his priestess with his own demon seed and transform them into the progenitors of a menace that would last long after his second defeat. These priestesses transformed into bloated brood mothers capable of bearing the monstrous spawn of a demonic god. After the ritual, they are able to produce the Cannibal King's offspring indefinitely without repeated ritual. However, they do require copious amounts of blood and flesh to create their spawn. Luckily, barbarian cultists of Kalibos and the beast hag's own children are more than happy to oblige.
While they are hardly picky, cursed with a ceaseless hunger that would see them eat their own children if made to wait to long, the content of their diet is important. In fact, the contents of a beast hag's diet contribute to the exact variety of beastmen formed: a beasthag who is fed rodents, rabbits, and other small woodland creatures produces hobbs, if she eats porcine flesh she produces mobbs, cougars and leopard meet makes prowlers, excess primate and human meat allows them to create orgs, tons of beef and mutton create butchers, horsemeat makes for tramplers, and gnolls are created from dog and hyena meat. This means that raiding for food to feed the beasthag is central to beastmen "society" as the contents of the beasthag's food directly contributes to the creation of specific beastmen subspecies-- the "better" the diet, the better the beastmen a tribe can produce.
Due to their bulk, beasthags are vulnerable in the open and spend most of their time in beastmen lairs to protect them while they spawn more warriors and hunters for the tribe. That doesn't mean they are unable to defend themselves and are not threats on their own: beasthags are capable of wielding devastating magical effects to keep their spawn in line and defend themselves from would be beasthag slayers.
BEASTHAGS
Now, let's look at the beastmen that beasthags spawn in greater detail:
COMMON BEASTMEN
HOBS
Hobs are the common rabble of the beastmen horde and make up the bulk of any group.
Opportunistic, easily-distracted, cowardly, stupid, and nasty are all words that perfectly described this wicked ankle-biters. As they are the result of a diet of rabbits, rats, moles, voles, and other mammalian vermin, they have similar but exaggerated features in the face with uneven ears, bulbous eyes, flat noses and a mouth full of sharp teeth. Hobs are usually about 1-3 feet tall with yellow to reddish leathery
skin stretched over the boney bodies that are a mockery of the humanoid
form. A trademark and unusual feature of the hob is the small horns or antlers they often have growing out of their temples. Some hobs headbutt each other in silly little games that often devolve into bloody fights between the creatures.
Hunched like apes with short legs and long arms, hobs rely on numbers or ambush to get their better of their prey, as they have neither the size nor the strength nor the intelligence to do much better. They are so common that many farmer's almanacs consider them pests and include handy descriptions on how to deal with hobs poking about your property. Still, like any beastmen, they are dangerous and a large enough group of hobs can go from barn thieves to raiding the villages if not dealt with quickly enough.
In a tribe of beastmen, they are the lowest of the low; hobbs quickly fall in-line under the scrutiny of bigger, meaner beastmen.
MOBS
Mobs have been described as a parody of orcs by loremasters and they're not wrong to categorize them as such. Usually in hues ranging between blue to green to yellow with porcine feature, such as snouts and tusks, mobs are the second most common breed of beastmen and make up the bulk of any tribe's warriors. They are not much smarter than hobs but are clever enough to prioritize, make tools, weapons and armor, and come up with strategies to overcome more than farmers with pitchforks. The biggest thing they have over mobs is size: they are between 4 and 7 feet tall with powerful builds but are prone to fattening themselves up on the spoils of war. They enjoy bullying lesser creatures, especially hobs, and are known to force the hobs to play cruel games for their amusement.
An organized group of mobs can make for a fierce army of brutes.
PROWLERS
Not even predatory animals are safe from the insatiable appetite of the beast hag. When a beast hag has been fed a diet infused with meat from predatory animals, such as mountain lions or wolves, she births prowlers.
Covered in shaggy fur, with powerful limbs and a terrifying fang filled mouth, they are remarkably stealthy for their intimidating builds. They use their natural predatory instincts, enhanced senses and survivalist aptitude to stalk the area surrounding a brood's cave or a beastmen camp for intruders or prey. They are gifted with surprising cunning when it comes to tracking prey and the elite of their kind are infamous for taking pleasure in picking off straggles of traveling party over a several day period before making a more direct move.
Still, they are known to be the most cowardly and lazy of their kind, and are the first to run when things don't go their way.
ORGS
Brute strength incarnate, orgs are the most valuable and difficult members of the common beastmen rabble. Not only does a beast hag require a steady diet of man flesh to birth these huge monsters, they are dull-witted and their power/size makes them difficult to control. Furthermore, their own monstrous appetites can often rival that of the beast hag and, in a pinch, they will kill and eat their own brethren.
Still, you will find at least one org in any band of beastmen. They are used for tasks that require immense strength, like lifting and moving trees or boulders, and in battle they crush all but the swiftest and most experienced warriors with their superior reach and their enormous great clubs. Furthermore, as they develop, their hides becomes so tough that they can shrug off blows from most practical weaponry. While other beastmen are feared for their ability to overrun small villages, a full grown org is enough to terrorize a county on his own.
Next time we will look at the more elite and uncommon breeds of beast men.
