NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="steeldragons" data-source="post: 6460042" data-attributes="member: 92511">I don't really know anything about Blights....which follows Beholder. I gather they are "plant-based monsters" but I've never used one or seen stats or whatever. So we're gonna skip those. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />BugbearTales of bugbears are used in borderlands to scare children into behaving or wandering beyond the forest's edge. They are shapeless bogeyman who go "bump in the night" and steal children for their supper. This is patently false as everyone knows a bugbear on the prowl will not make a sound for you to notice before it is too late. They are large hairy brutes of uncanny stealth and silence of gait. Goblins of the largest size and foulest demeanor. Unlike their smaller cousins, Bugbears are notoriously difficult to wrangle into servitude. This is born, mostly, from the knowledge that they were essentially a slave race for (if not created by) the Selurian Empire's armies and laborers. Their general size and above average intelligence for a goblin make them difficult to coerce and only the cruelest and most powerful warlord dare try. Though they, as all goblinoids, delight in bullying and enslaving those weaker than themselves including goblins, orcs, beastmen, and even for one particularly noteworthy bugbear chief, hobgoblins.These days, they are generally found roaming a solitary territory or gathered together in small bands/hunting parties for plunder of larger settlements or big game. There are tales of a great empire of goblins that, following defeat by the dwarves of Naradun, migrated to the Daegun range and there established a long and powerful kingdom, ever at war with the elves and men of the Green Tribe [modern day Mostralians] of the surrounding region. Eventually, with the great migration of the dwarves from Naradun to Daegun, that dynasty was shattered and so the barely more than savage race persists in the darkened woods and secluded caves across the world. In Mostrial and the Freelands, moreso than the realms north of the Lost Sands or Grinlia, the existence of bugbears is taken as fact, even though its been some generations since most could say they've seen one in person or heard of a confirmed bugbear raid on any settlement. Around the Arm of Tyris, the more civilized and urban centers of the Grand Kingdom, bugbears are believed no more than fable, stories of the monster-slaves [just one of many] from the times of Seluria...now milenium past and surely extinct.There are known, however, to be other bugbears housing themselves in [or beyond?] the Worldcrest, far to the north, in the eastern reaches of those mountains. These bugbears, as the barbarians [indigenous humans] aver them to be, are said to be more "advanced" in the ways and speech of Men. Enough so that they engage in trade with the Gorunduun barbarian tribes, traveling during the first weeks of spring and again at the end of summer to their trade-outpost, the Gorunduu "city" of Steppe. Similar bugbear "merchants" are rumored to have traveled as far south as Thelitia and Andril to engage in various ambitious business pursuits.There is also said to be a pirate, among those murderous scoundrels of the south sea, a bugbear of the largest size and cruelest intentions, whose thickly furred pelt is rumored to be a deep red (unlike the darker shades of greys and browns bugbears are better known for). The sailors of Talas Eoril whisper the monster-captain is called "Bloodbeard" and claim many a cargo lost, crew slain, and ship sent to the deep by this merciless criminal. Few, even among sailing folk, believe such a base creature could rise to any substantial position or reputation in the deep waters...but don't dispute seeing monstrous humanoids (including goblinoids) among crews or less reputable ports, and that "stranger things have happened" out over the blue waves.</blockquote>

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