Ashbound March

The Ashbound March is a land of broken mountains, wind-scoured plateaus, and extensive gray wastelands where very little flora survives without a struggle. External forces find the terrain strategically challenging: natural trails are unstable and prone to rockfall, potable water sources are scarce and typically located deep underground, and severe sudden weather events can strip a camp bare in an afternoon.

What distinguishes the March from other harsh territories is not the terrain but the administrative arrangement it has produced. Goblins and Hobgoblins occupy the same land and serve entirely different functions — not by formal decree, but by the practical outcome of their biological differences. The arrangement has persisted long enough that it operates as a system, however contentious the day-to-day running of it is.

The Goblin and Hobgoblin Folk

The population is composed of two symbiotic species whose biological differences dictate a crucial division of labor:

• Goblins: The organizational backbone of the holdings. Goblins are smaller, quicker, and better suited to the sustained concentration required for construction, fortification maintenance, labor coordination, and military training. They are not, in most circumstances, the ones doing the fighting. They are the ones making sure someone is ready to fight, that the walls hold, and that the food stores are counted.
• Hobgoblins: The March’s primary scavengers, miners, and raiders. Superior physical toughness and larger size enable rapid movement across harsh terrain and effective combat. A Hobgoblin warband without Goblin logistics behind it runs out of supplies. A Goblin administrative network without Hobgoblin enforcement behind it loses authority. Both sides understand this.

Political Structure

Governance in the Ashbound March is functional rather than ideological — driven entirely by mutual defense and economic necessity. No central authority unifies all holdings. Individual Hobgoblin warlords control territory through strength, with Goblin administrators maintaining continuity of operations beneath them. When warlords change — through death, challenge, or displacement — the administrative structures typically survive the transition, which is the primary reason the March functions at all.

Constant argumentation and infighting between the two species is documented in every Chronicle Project account of the region. This is not a sign of dysfunction. It is the normal operating state, and the March has functioned in this state for generations.

Military Doctrine

The Ashbound March utilizes terrain-specialized defense: Goblin standing forces hold fortifications while Hobgoblin raiders employ ambush tactics in the surrounding landscape. Their primary strategy is making the cost of engaging the March higher than whatever the March offers in return — a calculation that most outside powers have historically agreed with.

Religion

The March holds no formalized pantheon and no organized clergy. What persists across all holdings is a shared orientation toward endurance as the highest value — expressed through the concept of the Unbroken. To be unbroken is to have survived what the March demands of you. The rock endures. The wind endures. Those who endure alongside them are considered to have earned their place. Those who do not are not mourned.

Ritual observance is local and inconsistent. The underlying concept is not.

Neighbors and Enemies

The Ashbound March maintains a defensive and antagonistic stance toward most external powers (located in the North-West of the continent):

• Humans (Roaring Wastes): To the West. Interactions are characterized by opportunistic raiding and skirmishing over scarce resources. Neither side sustains extended campaigns; both sides take what they can when the opportunity exists.
• Orcs (Kraghvor Expanse): The Mon-Ogers of the far north represent a persistent pressure the March must guard against. Their raids are larger and more organized than anything the Roaring Wastes produces. Temporary alliances with nearby Goblin-kind occasionally form against mutual threats but are fragile and driven purely by immediate necessity.
• Pig-Faced Orcs (Gorhask Plain): The Gorhask Orcs to the South-East are a known presence. Relations shift with the season — temporary alliances, open feuding, or mutual disengagement depending on which threat is currently larger.

Notable Settlements and Points of Interest

• Ironmaw Crag (Capital): Built directly into a massive split mountain face. Forges burn day and night producing weapons and armor engineered for durability over aesthetics. All major administrative and strategic decisions originate here, usually amid significant debate.
• Skerrik Rift: A city sprawled throughout a naturally shattered canyon. Its network of rope bridges, tunnel warrens, and scrap-built towers makes conventional large-scale assault nearly impossible without causing catastrophic structural collapse.
• Brasshollow Keep: A critical economic and military flashpoint on the eastern wasteland border. Functions as the mandatory toll point and customs station for the only reliable caravan route entering the March.
• Redstone Warrens: A Goblin-controlled subterranean network beneath a field of jagged red rock spires, serving as the central staging area for scouting missions and raiding parties.
• Gravewind Hold: An exposed high-altitude stronghold for observation and defense of the mountain passes, strategically designed to slow any organized army attempting to push through the peaks.

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See also Goblins and Hobgoblins, Mon-Ogers, and Pig-Faced Orcs.