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Unconquered Peoples

Low priority — developed over the course of campaigns as needed

An overview and jumping-off point for the peoples no nation has ever actually conquered: the Goblins, the Lizardfolk, the Ice-Trolls of the Northern Reaches, and the Rephaim (Giants). Each gets its own document for detail — this page exists to name what they have in common before sending you there.

What ties them together: In every case, "unconquered" is a fact of biology and geography, not a political stalemate that could tip with enough will — dinosaurs make the interior continent uneconomical to hold at any cost a human army could pay, regeneration makes the Northern Reaches a losing proposition regardless of numbers, and the Rephaim are simply too physically dominant on their own ground to be worth the fight. None of these peoples are "monsters" in the mindless sense either — each has a real, internally consistent culture and (where it's been developed) a real religious or magical tradition behind its reputation, not malice standing in for characterization. And where a magic tradition exists outside the Sigil-House school system, it tends to rhyme with the Elves' own Primal tradition without being taught by it — the Lizardfolk and the Northern Reaches hags both draw on a similar raw, untutored current, arrived at independently and shaped by a much harsher relationship to the land than the Elves' stewardship model.

The peoples:

  • The Goblins (and Hobgoblins, and Bugbears) — unconquered Mexico; nobody, Giants included, actually controls the interior, and the goblins filled the vacuum the Catfolk Diaspora left behind. Demon-worship out of the southern volcanoes, the civilized Hobgoblin branch that left for Ssyrathis and devil-worship instead, and the Cinder Sigil. See Goblins.

  • The Lizardfolk (and the Kobolds) — an ancient warrior culture holding the dinosaur continent's interior, the dominant power on the continent before the Great Houses rose. Raw, savage, and alien rather than evil, with a blood-and-territory shamanic tradition that parallels Elven Primal magic without ever having been taught by it. See Lizardfolk.

  • The Ice-Trolls of the Northern Reaches ("Yeti" males, "Hag" females, plus Witches and Ettercaps) — naturalists defending mammoth grazing land the same way any nation would defend its farmland, backed by regeneration no army can shrug off. The hags answer to a single wronged patron spirit, the White Widow, whose grievance about outsiders taking without giving back mirrors the Ice-Trolls' own territorial logic exactly. See The Northern Reaches.

  • The Rephaim ("Giants") — 10-to-20-foot tribal kingdoms across a wide, disconnected territory, too physically dominant on their own ground to be worth conquering and too culturally sophisticated (oral epic, oracle-consulting, honor debts) to be written off as brutes. See Rephaim for the people, Giant Kingdoms for the politics.

The Wildlands

Beyond the mapped nations, unconquered territory that nobody governs and everyone is cautious about. Not tied to any single landmass — a catch-all for unclaimed space on the map wherever it's needed.

See Geography document for the dinosaur continent's scale, density, and climate notes, and for Mexico's geography. See Giant Kingdoms.md and The Myrean Confederacy.md for the other powers with a presence on the dinosaur continent, Goblins.md and Catfolk.md for Mexico's peoples, and The Northern Reaches.md for Trolls, Hags, and Witches.