Military Houses

Hobgoblins organize themselves into legions known as Houses. In their martial society, every hobgoblin has a rank, from the powerful leaders and champions, to the rank-and-file foot soldiers, to the goblins that find themselves driven into the front lines at spear point. A House is headed by a warlord with several captains serving under its command. A common hobgoblin warlord is ruthless but still engages in honorable combat. Interested in strategy, victory, glory, reputation, and dominion, but above all else, honor, the House Warlord control all aspects of it’s ‘family’ with the House Matriarch acting as the ‘second in command’. Though, there are of course those Houses and goblins who have been found to be without honor and act with subterfuge, but only as far as to not be cast out as a Halv-Orcen.

House Matriarchs, the highest position in a House a female hobgoblin can achieve, is seen as the heart and soul of a House. A House Matriarch is wedded to a Warlord or promised to a Warlord to unite two Houses in an alliance or to merge Houses into one. Women in goblin society can achieve nearly any rank in station a man of the same house can, though a woman may never be Eternal Emperor. On rare occasions, such as a House Matriarch being widowed and her Warlord having been killed in honorable combat, can take up the mantle of Warlord herself.

As loyal and disciplined as hobgoblins are in their own House, rival Houses compete constantly for reputation and status. This rivalry extends to the simplest of transgressions, to subterfuge among the highest levels in the empire to the very throne of the Eternal Emperor. A goblin without a House is known as a Halv’Orcen. Halv’Orcen are known as The Honorless or The Impure. A goblin must be excommunicated from their previous house, not have a family name, or be born an ‘orc’ or ‘half-orc’ -- a marriage of hobgoblin and human blood creating a ‘grey skinned’ abomination.