Foreword
I would like
to officially thank David C. Sutherland III for the yalkhoi.
That was long
overdue. By almost forty years. Though I first encountered the hobgoblin in the
Moldvay edit of the Basic Rules, there were no illustrations to be found.
Seriously? You provide illustrations of the White Ape, Sabre-Tooth Tiger,
Killer Bee, Giant Lizard, Skeleton and Giant Spider? As if no one has an idea
of what those look like! But you can’t be bothered to depict any of the
goblinoids. I think the thoul would’ve been a good choice for a picture as
well. Imagine my excitement when I found the Monster Manual.
So, hobgoblins
were Asian. Huh. Neat! Hey – according to the Sutherland illustrations (two of
them!), hobgoblins wore distinctly samurai-inspired armor into battle. You know
who else had the same kind of look? The ogre mage (oni). And another Sutherland
illustration, no-less. My wheels immediately started to spin. I liked the
hobgoblin. The hobgoblin was (stat-wise) better than the orc (also illustrated
by DCS). Orcs seemed like nothing more than hobgoblins with pig heads to me. It
was at that point that I decided never to use orcs in my games – I was Team
Hobgoblin right from the start. Once that was decided, my mind connected the
hobgoblin and the ogre mage as the representatives of Asian culture in my fantasy
setting.
Hobgoblins
went through a few iterations during the development of the Avremier setting.
There were essentially two castes, the samurai (noble) and the steppe-riders
(commoners modeled after Mongols). Over the years, I merged the two castes, but
split the hobgoblin into two distinct evolutionary paths. Replacing the
half-orc PC race with the hobgoblin (yalkhoi), I developed the “monster”
version of the hobgoblin (yarcha) as another branch. The ogre mage started as
the overlords (shogun) of the hobgoblins, and slowly evolved into a higher
evolutionary form to which an honorable yalkhoi might aspire.
All from a
few David C. Sutherland III black-and-white line drawings. That’s what I call
Old-School.
David A.
Hill
Mothshade Concepts Editor
1 May 2019
Sutherland was indeed AWESOME! :-)
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