Dark+Hand+Goblinoids

=Dark Hand Goblinoids=

//"What we don't know about the so-called Dark Hands would fill a Tome. I'm just glad they were stopped before they really did some damage."// -- Prince Oargev ir'Wynarn of New Cyre

Sometime in the second half of 997 YK, a small force of elite Goblins and Hobgoblins infiltrated into northeastern Breland, presumably by passing through or over the northern Seawall Mountains from Darguun. Unlike other such incursions, intent on raiding and pillaging a couple of villages and then melting back into the mountains, this force set up semi-permanent camps in two known locations just west of the foothills. One was a old flour mill, constructed early in the century to service the region's grain farmers, abandoned during the Last War but reoccupied by a family of Cyran refugees intent on rebuilding it. The other was a tunnel complex underneath a low hill, atop which was the ruins of an old Dhakaani monument. The tunnel complex meandered for several hundred yards to the west and south, to another entrance at a well. Said well was the center of a planned Homestead for another Cyran refugee family, the Murnies.

Both families, the Millers and the Murnies, are now dead.

Their name, Dark Hands (//Draar'Mac//), was signified by a black handprint motif on the bandits' armor and shields. Most of the time, this was crudely painted over emblems and insignia of the previous clan/tribe affiliations. This indicates that the Dark Hands are not a not a distinct clan or tribe bound by family or cultural ties, but instead are mercenaries culled from the outcasts and rejects of better-known Goblinoid groups.


 * Update:** The Dark Hands engaged in several losing battles with a party of adventurers and a muster of veterans from New Cyre in early Zarantyr 998 YK, during which time their bases under the Murnie Homestead and the old flour mill were lost, and an abandoned Eberron Dragonshard mine under Monument Hill was liberated. Their apparent leader, Diizina the Barghest, escaped. Later, another group of adventurers captured the Dark Hands' base camp in Breland, an abandoned Dwarf Hold in the western face of the northern Seawall Mountains overlooking northeastern Breland. The Dark Hands' other leaders, the Warforged Plow and the House Cannith excoriate Tyvon, also escaped.

All told, more than 100 Goblins, Hobgoblins and Bugbears, almost all of them veterans of the Last War, died in the incursion.


 * Update:** According to Professor Grigg Wunsin (and later, Matron Soorghaas of Darguun), the name //Draar'Mac// has an ancient, and not benign, meaning. More than seven millennia ago, a Dark Hands Clan served the Dhakaani Emperors as crafters, mages and innovators. This service culminated in the short-lived, tragic Ku'un Dynasty, which failed to predict or stop the fifth (and final) Daelkyr incursion despite many "Dark Hand" inspired innovations to do just that.


 * Prequel (Rhaan, 997 YK):** A //Kech Volaar// strike team uncovered evidence that the //Draar'Mac// were, on the surface, nothing more than a recruiting tool to draw in outcasts, ex-mercenaries and other clanless Goblins to be part of the "Thirteenth" Dhakaani Clan (the //Kech Volaar, Kech Shaarat// and //Khesh'Dar// being three of the other 12). Recruiters, freely-spending ancient coins dating from the short-lived Ku'un Dynasty, were having great success throughout northern Darguun -- although they were stopped cold in the village of Chaardon, in an area known for its vineyards.

The team also uncovered a connection between these recruiters and a local Warlord, a member of the //Gan'duur// (Eaters of Sorrow) clan, who had relocated to western Darguun and refurbished a keep built for a Cyran noble more than a century ago. The Warlord, a Hobgoblin mercenary officer called Kogaa, was also a patron of the Cannith excoriate, Tyvon, and may have had a pipeline to the Eberron shards being dug up near New Cyre.