Chapter One
Hyræƿa

	‘Twas one cool late Summer’s night. The Tribe of Duncan were settling after a day’s degeneracy, when a certain tribesman stood from his bedroll that he was sat upon. He’d heard the sound of cackling laughter. Electing to investigate, he took a torch from its post, wandering towards it. After a few moments of walking, no more than a good thirty paces from the camp’s boundaries, the light revealed three hideous faces grinning back at him, beady-eyed and long-nosed. He shrieked as he leapt back.

“What! child?” shrieked one of the abominations, subsequently erupting in a chorus of cackling. Petrified, the tribesman hurried back to the others, who were awaiting his return, concerned.

“What’s the matter?” enquired the gatekeeper.

“Hobgoblins!” cried the tribesman, panting with panic.

And with that, the whole camp rose, a chain reaction of others shouting the word, taking to arms. In mere seconds, arrows were being fired out, but it was to no avail; they were in. One leapt upon the tribesman’s head, chortling mischievously as he steered him around with his hands upon his eyes, shrieking different directions at him. One charged for the fruit supplies, and forced his head through a watermelon, dancing about the camp with it as a hat. The last charged straight for Kálum, the tribe leader himself, swiping his staff from his hand and sprinting in loops with it aloft, squealing victoriously.

	But the tribe swung their spears, their swords, their pikes, their axes, and before long, the hobgoblins lied dead upon the floor. And the night was calm.

	Though these acts of mischief were far from over. Each night, such a thing would happen, and each night, their numbers grew. But on the fifth, a breaking point was met. Twenty-six hobgoblins charged the camp, but this time, their intentions were not mischief; they were slaughter.

	Dozens of tribesmen were torn asunder by these creatures and their axes. Kálum charged from his tent, staff in hand, breaking open the skulls of a couple of hobgoblins on his way. As he stopped, he took witness to a hobgoblin swaying his axe into the fragile skull of a Northern Degenerate child. Another tribesman slashed the beast’s back open, then tearing its throat in twain, but Kálum had seen enough.

	Early the next morning, following what little sleep the tribe managed, the camp woke to the sound of horns. This meant that they must gather to the war tent.

“These hobgoblins took the lives of our brave! our mothers! and our children!”, Paul bellowed. “The hobgoblin chief Úldrag has terrorised us for some days now, but last night he brought terror to our kind! Well Chief Kálum hath announced it to me; today, we set out for his head!”

	The crowd cheered with excitement. Swords were raised to the air as the camp wailed with a vengeful expression of fury and excitement.