Pukwudgie

Knee-high even by goblin standards, bristling with quills, and the most potent natural spellcasters of goblinkind. They dwell in the briar barrens and pine thickets that nobody else wants, brewing poisons and remedies out of the same plants and selling both without editorial comment.

They are the only goblin race that has never sworn to the Goblin King, and the reasoning is instructive: they remember that the Kingdom's border once ran through the Barrens, and they expect that his would too.

Appearance

Small, grey-green, and covered in retractable quills that lie flat when calm. The quills are not venomous by nature. Pukwudgies apply the venom separately, and consider anyone who assumes otherwise to have made a useful mistake about them.

Their hide handles Barrens thorn, which nothing else does. An outsider in the Quill's tunnels moves like someone learning a lesson, and pukwudgies watch this with the patience of people who have seen it many times.

Attuned Magic

Thorn — the magic of growing things that defend themselves. A nascent pukwudgie can quicken a bramble, sharpen a thorn, or draw a poison out of a wound. A powerful one can raise a briar wall across a valley in minutes, brew compounds no Faerie apothecary can replicate, and turn an entire landscape hostile to a specific individual.

The last of those is the province's real deterrent and the reason two Kingdom expeditions failed. It does not attack. It simply arranges that everything between a named person and the Quill is against them, for as long as the working holds.

Life

Thorn-tunnel warrens, unfindable without a guide, arranged around brewing rooms and drying lofts. Work is harvest, distillation, and the fire rota, and the year turns on which groves burn and when.

Names. Family recipes are family names. A pukwudgie's name announces which compounds their house holds, which is why introductions in the Barrens double as a price list and why an unfamiliar name is treated with real caution.

Arrival. A new pukwudgie is apprenticed and given the two roots: hearthroot, which cures the wasting fever, and fool's hearthroot, which is identical above ground and kills in a day. Learning to tell them apart takes two years and is the entire moral education of the province — everything here is both, and you are responsible for which one you hand over.

Hospitality. Guests are fed, housed, and guided out safely, including guests who have been refused. The consistency is the reason a knee-high people who have sworn to no crown are still holding their country.

Society

The Quill is a hidden warren of thorn-tunnels that nobody finds without a guide, governed by Thornmother Pesk and a council of brewers. Pukwudgie society is small, old, and organized around the transmission of recipes, which are held as family property and defended as such.

Currents

The Brewers' Council. Nine family houses, each guarding recipes, each convinced it is owed more. The Thornmother's real job.

The Fire Rota. Emberline's burn crews, who decide what burns and when — a technical office holding the province's agriculture, and a house that annoys them finds its groves scheduled early.

The Physicians' Road. The discreet trade with the Kingdom: hearthroot out, unmarked coin in, no records either side, and the reason the Barrens have never needed a protector.

The Long Memory. Those who consider the Unsworn Position cowardice dressed as wisdom, and who have started talking to Gorrach's people.

Relations

They receive the Great Hunt hospitably and sell it what it needs, while declining to join it. They trade remedies into the Kingdom through Spriggan middlemen. They have taken the sensible position that a crown is a crown, and have said so to both of them.

Playing One