Strolg the Inventor

Hoblins, the bright-green, physically far less imposing, bastard step-cousins of the universally feared and reviled olgs. If an average human peasant's intelligence ranks at a ten, at half that of a human noble's, olgs can boast a solid six as long as it's something they're interested in - and often higher when it comes to matters of battle and war.

Hoblins, on the other hand, were never even placed on that scale, to begin with. Generally regarded as little more than animals, they're barely sophisticated enough to use their opposing thumbs for manipulating the simplest of tools.

Hoblins, the treacherous, cutthroat, uncontrollable pests that live in forests, hills, mountains, abandoned mines, ancient lost dwarf holds, and any other place they could hide and stab from the dark. At best, a nuisance that steals from farms; at worst, a band of marauders that can overrun a hamlet lacking even the most fundamental walls. And when the Green Comet comes around every seven years, they're used as battlefield fodder by their larger, far more intelligent cousins, the olgs.

This is the story of one hoblin who rose above and beyond the limits of his race and turned the world upside down.

And explosions. Copious amounts of explosions.

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Rat. Snotling. Maggot. Scum. He grew up learning that he was known by many names, all of which he shared with his hoblin peers. To him, the towering olgs with their muscular builds and long tusks were masters that expected absolute loyalty - which they demanded through verbal threats and beatings.

And even if they followed orders, they were still kicked around at every turn. For that was the life of hoblins in a band of olgs on the cusp of coalescing into a horde. Only that this particular individual was their favorite punching bag.

After all, he was an aberration.

The eye color in hoblins was limited to that of phlegm, ranging from yellow to green, with the latter held in higher regard than the former. The most powerful hoblin shamans had glowing green eyes that seemed to emulate the Green Comet from which they drew their magic.

But his large irises were blood-red as if somebody had punched him in the eyes in a particular way. While he had taken plenty of such hits in his lifetime, they had already been this way when he first crawled out of the cesspool the previous year.

Thus, he was shunned by the other hoblins and abused by the olgs. The only reason he lived even now was that he had the same usefulness for menial labor as any of his peers. As such, whenever he was beaten or kicked, it was within the limits of his natural recovery. No olg would waste medicine on a hoblin, but neither would they waste a perfectly usable slave.

But he was more than met the eyes. Unlike any other hoblin, he was interested in more than the next meal and sleeping off bruises from their olg masters' heavy boots. From the moment of his birth, he showed hints of his unnatural intellect that any other race would have noticed - and, depending on their inclination, fostered or snuffed out.

For one, he loved tinkering. He would head for the scrap pile and plunder it for parts whenever he had the chance to. His corner in the hoblin pen was hidden behind a pile of metal and wood that the others of his kind were too lazy to care about. If not for the collective snoring of the olgs and hoblins in the camp, the sound of scraping tools would have been heard throughout almost every night.

Nobody wondered where he got the energy from without squeezing every little moment during the day to rest. To them, even thinking was a waste of precious slacking time that olgs punished with their boots. The other hoblins always laughed at him for getting scratched up by the sharp metal from the scrap pieces and the tools he fashioned from them.

Nobody laughed when he shot the olg boss in the head with a repeating crossbow he had built in secret. The utter disbelief among the olgs, already battered and tired from having lost a skirmish against the manlings that day, gave him enough time to rile up the hoblins into a frenzied mutiny.

By the end of it all, he sat on the skulls and bones throne that the former boss had the hoblin slaves carry wherever he went. His blood-red eyes were looking across the reveling hoblins and the few olgs who were smart enough to surrender, but his gaze was affixed on something far beyond his victory.

He had grand plans for the future. And when those came to fruition, nobody would call him Rat, Snotling, Maggot, or Scum ever again.

As he directed the horde he had so suddenly taken over toward its new path, he gave himself the name Strolg - he who stands above all olgs. He would be known as the greatest inventor Horoth had ever seen.