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The deserts in the southwest of the continent called Vesbuddji Balwas by the halflings play home to an empire of hobgoblins known as Dokhgham. (Use the stats of a hobgoblin from the Feywild from Unearthed Arcana #77 for the inhabitants of Dokhgham.) Even distant Aoqina sings the praises of the Dokhghamtchyim for inventing gunpowder. Centuries after they did so, the dwarfs of Mwieva Dwesgu Esblasna on the other side of the continent developed alchemical techniques to transform it into fire-rouge. These techniques required adding the strange red dust that gives the Bloody Coast its name into hobgoblin-derived recipes for gunpowder.
Though an empire sits at the head of the hobgoblin realm of Dokhgham, it is ruled in truth by a coalition of artisans' guilds, the most powerful of which can trace their ancestries back to the first Emanations into this world of the divine entities they call the Ayom. It is the way of these guilds ~ known as "izishokh" in their language ~ noble children leave their family home at five to seven years of age to attend kalmakkhatchi, schools where they receive rigorous religious and military training. The khalmakkh tie together the military, political and sacred hierarchies of the empire. Particularly talented (or connected) commoner children are able to attend them as well, rather than the zalvozkhavii that educate other members of their class. Such commoners are destined to join the clergy, while their noble classmates might find careers on the battlefield, in the temple, in the courts of the powerful, or even two or three of those. The commoners and particularly unfortunate noble youths who attend a zalvozkhaviz receive military training but are precluded from the higher ranks of power.
The khalmakkhatch is the students' home for the duration of their training, and they receive instruction in songs, rituals, reading and writing, the calendar, and more. While a hobgoblin's guild and family are the primary means by which they identify themself and their place in society, the khalmakkhatch they attend is almost as powerful an identifier. Indeed, while most khalmakkh are operated by a single guild, it is the rare khalmakkhatch that welcomes not only students but teachers from multiple guilds that has often served as the basis for imperial unity and internal diplomacy.
Let me tell you about one such, the Khalmakkhatch Tchitchami Makhyilaikhtchmi, the School of the Five-Times-Twenty Stances. Our story starts approximately 1100 years ago, with the first Dokhghamtchyitim to ever make a deal with the entity known as the Storm Lord.
Otchangowozi
The Zozghi Izishokhatch (Guild of Hammers) began as the guild for stonemasons, carpenters, and architects. The Emanation known as Vizaz had gathered the earliest members of the Zozghi Izishokhatch to build homes for all the hobgoblins who gathered around and with those Emanations to found the great nation of Dokhgham. In the process, the izishokhatch invented not just architecture, but the arts of smithing and sculpture as well. All good things are destined to end, however, and evil did indeed come to bedevil the young empire, as another of the Emanations (named Angyozom) became corrupted by and gave himself over to Vaimadmanga (Destiny, the mechanistic force that marks the material world as distinct from the spiritual realm of the Vladoma).
The heavy matter of the world thus found a divinely generative force, and monsters began to spew from the place where the Emanations emanated. These monsters ran through the settlements the Zozghi Izishokhatch had built, laying waste to house after house, toppling sculpture after sculpture, and killing good forges with coldness. One of Vizaz's followers, by the name of Khyozi, proposed that the very same skills which the izishokhatch used to build homes could be used to protect those homes. Khyozi proposed building a giant wall, which the Zozghi Izishokhatch did, and to this day this wall stands strong, if scarred, against the hordes of Angyozom's monsters. To this day, because of that wall, Angyozom can only menace the empire with a trickle of sneaky horrors, rather than a flood.
This is not the Vladoma; it is the fallen world, governed by Vaimadmanga, and Vaimadmanga ensures that all things will know death. Vizaz knew death, in time, leaving only his son to rule. He had sired his son upon a far-flying dragon whose sapphire scales rippled with stories of distant Scarhas and who flew far, indeed, after giving birth. Vizaz never saw her again, but took joy in his sapphire-dragonborn son, whom he named Khaashozi Vizaz Otchangowozi, instead.
Dragonborn are rare in Dokhgham, of course, and the young boy spent many hours as he grew in legendary debates with Zoghtchiz, the draconic Emanation who had invented the art of tattooing and founded the Vadghi Izishokhatch (the Guild of Needles).
It is common for tchamodai (the ruling caste) to undertake a journey upon coming of age so that they may learn who they are without supervision. On Otchangowozi's journey, he encountered an old warrior in a desolate expanse of desert and, in his youthful arrogance, compared his young life quite favorably to the elder's. The word for "decrepit" was used. The elder challenged Otchangowozi upon all his honor to defeat death as the elder himself had failed to do, and then breathed his last breath.
Otchangowozi consulted with Zoghtchiz about how to meet this challenge, and soon found himself dangling from a mountain peak during a storm. He knew little of why, other than that the wise one had suggested it. Struck and battered, the winds and rain crashing and cutting at his skin for three days and nights, Otchangowozi endured until finally a massive eel-like creature with white clouds concealing the majority of its form and eyes glowing with golden light appeared before him. Calling itself merely "the Storm Lord", it showed Otchangowozi its favor, strengthening his body and soul.
When the tchamodaiz returned to more mundane ~ and drier ~ ways, the heir to the zaimyozi Zozghi Izishokhtching ("lord of the Guild of Hammers") studied the stories of the fallen champions this great beast had claimed, stretching back through all the many years before the Emanations had come. Otchangowizi had already taken a paladin oath of the watchers, as was even in that early year common among his guild, but to that training he added bardic practices, founding the college of harbingers in his guild's lands. *
Many years later, the desert plain where Otchangowozi met the aged warrior held the buried scrolls of the dongizom Otchido, describing the techniques he called the Hundred Stances. In time, a tchamodaiz Khamalm Izishokhtching (a member of the ruling caste of the Guild of Masques) found these scrolls and founded the Kalmakkhatch Tchitchami Makhyilaikhtchmi; after it was destroyed, a tchamodaiz Khadalatch Izishokhtching (a member of the ruling caste of the Guild of Horns) repeated the process, and it is this second Kalmakkhatch Tchitchami Makhyilaikhtchmi that stands today.
NEXT WEEK: The sacred artifact weapons of Otchangowozi, still in use in Dokhgham and a reference to a Panic! At The Disco song
* I stole both the bardic college of harbingers, and the Storm Lord as warlock patron, gleefully from Genuine Fantasy Press's excellent Compendium of Forgotten Secrets: Awakening. At the time of his death, Otchangowozi was a sapphire dragonborn bard in the college of harbingers 9/great weapon fighting paladin who took an oath of the watchers 11.
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