The goblin clans of the Gloaming Vale have erupted into a brutal, three-way conflict that spills onto the streets of Gotham. It’s a chaotic mess of turf wars, shattered alliances, and escalating violence that threatens to consume everything—goblin, human, and the city itself. This isn't just a fight for territory; it's a frenzy of fear, opportunism, and survival that has turned the underworld upside down.
Driven from Gotham's undercity by the Weeping Circle's recent purges, the goblin clans are packed tight in the Gloaming Vale, tensions simmering. The powder keg ignites when a Cipherclaw scouting party, sifting through the marshland near the Vale border, stumbles upon a hidden Falcone family arms cache, half-sunken and forgotten. It's a treasure trove of modern weaponry: compact submachine guns, sharpened fighting knives, and boxes of ammunition.
Skarrik Twice-Burned, a scarred and cunning warlord who has been waiting for just such an opportunity, seizes the narrative. He proclaims the find as rightful recompense for generations of human oppression. "They drove us from the stone homes beneath their feet," he rasps, "so we will take their fire-spears and claim new homes from the ashes." He orders the clans to secure the cache, but his decree is ambiguous, and old rivalries flare. The result is a free-for-all:
The Cipherclaws, who found the cache, begin marking Icebeak hunting grounds with their complex riddle-signs, a psychological tactic meant to spook the superstitious clan into staying away.
The Grinmaws, seeing an opportunity for chaos, set fire to a few Freezefang tents on the outskirts of the Vale, not to conquer, but as a "punchline" to a joke only they find funny.
The Fearspores release plumes of their terror-inducing gas into several abandoned warrens, claiming the empty territory for themselves without a single blade being drawn.
Desperate for an edge, the clans form shaky partnerships, each destined to fail.
The Cipherclaws ally with the Chaincaps. The Chaincaps, using salvaged mind-control hats of dubious magical origin, help the Cipherclaws waylay supply caravans bound for Gotham. Their plan is to use kidnapped quartermasters and merchants to learn the secret shipping routes and passcodes of the major crime families. However, the Chaincaps, greedy for the Cipherclaws' riddle-codes (which they believe unlock a greater magical secret), betray their partners mid-heist, leaving them trapped in a warehouse as the Watch arrives.
The Grinmaws join forces with the Freezefangs. The Freezefangs use their innate magic to freeze City Watch patrols solid in their tracks, while the Grinmaws dart in to poison the rations of others, causing chaos from within. They take numerous prisoners—Watchmen, merchants, and a few unlucky civilians. The Grinmaws, however, sabotage the Freezefangs' ice stores "for the laugh," crippling their allies' ability to control crowds or preserve food, and souring the partnership instantly.
The Icebeaks, masters of the waterways, team up with the brute-force Thornclaws to sink Falcone family river barges, effectively blockading trade along the Gotham River. Their plan to extort the Falcones for the cargo's return backfires when the Icebeaks, viewing the Thornclaws as expendable muscle, capture their own allies and attempt to sell them to a rival human slaving operation.
The Fearspores and the Banebreakers form a terrifyingly effective combo. The Fearspores' gas would weaken the resolve of any fortified position, allowing the hulking Banebreakers to smash through barricades with ease. But the Banebreakers, proud and contemptuous of what they see as cowardly magic, eventually turn on the Fearspore leadership, crushing their chieftains in a late-night ambush and declaring them unfit for true conquest.
With trust completely eroded, a desperate parley of all chieftains is called at the ancient, thorn-encrusted tower known as Grimhollow's Spire. During the tense negotiations, shadowy assassins—some whisper of the Court of Owls, others blame a rival clan—strike from the darkness, killing several key leaders. The parley shatters, and the Vale explodes into all-out war.
The conflict descends into pure anarchy. Goblins turn on goblins with feral intensity, knifing kin over a dropped magazine or a slightly drier patch of earth. Human vigilantes, from the Bat and his family to lesser-known street-level heroes, exploit the confusion, targeting the most exposed goblin raiding parties. The City Watch, stretched thin and besieged from all sides, sees its barricades collapse under coordinated assaults.
In this chaos, kidnappings skyrocket. But the motives are as varied as the clans themselves:
Strategic Hostages: This is the most common reason. Clans grab City Watch captains to force a retreat from a contested street. They snatch the children of human gang leaders to demand weapons or safe passage. A captured merchant from a powerful family can be ransomed back for gold, medicine, or simply for the clan to be left alone for a week. These prisoners are held in damp caves or abandoned buildings, treated not with cruelty, but as valuable, breakable assets.
Forced Labor & Expertise: The Banebreakers and Chaincaps have a particular need. They don't just want bodies; they want skills. They kidnap engineers to shore up their collapsing tunnels, apothecaries to treat their wounded (and poison their enemies), and forgers to create documents or replicate the secret codes they keep fighting over. These victims are kept alive and relatively unharmed for as long as their skills are useful, a terrifying form of professional conscription.
Magical Components: The Fearspores and Freezefangs view captives through a different lens. The Fearspores need living subjects, their terror made manifest, to fuel their most potent gas mixtures. The Freezefangs believe that the last breath of a frozen victim can be trapped in ice and used in dark rituals. A kidnapped victim here isn't a hostage; they're a raw material.
Information Extraction: The Cipherclaws, masters of secrets, know that the most valuable information is often locked in a person's head. They don't just want codes; they want the nuances, the unwritten rules, the private fears of their enemies. They use a mix of psychological torment and their own brand of riddle-logic to break prisoners down, extracting every last piece of useful information before discarding them. Their victims are often found wandering the streets, their minds shattered and filled with nonsensical ciphers.
Slave-Trade Currency: As hinted with the Icebeaks' betrayal, some of the less scrupulous clans have begun selling captives to established, non-goblin criminal enterprises in Gotham. A captured rival goblin, a terrified merchant's family, or a down-on-their-luck street kid can be traded to human slavers for a steady supply of weapons or a promise of future neutrality.
As the other clans wear each other down in the endless, chaotic fighting, Skarrik Twice-Burned plays the long game. He avoids major battles, hoards the best of the Falcone weapons, and sends out whispers of a new, unifying leadership. In a brutal, climactic confrontation at the Thorned Spire, he doesn't just defeat his rivals—he crushes them, demonstrating the cold, tactical genius of a conquering warlord.
The surviving chieftains, seeing the futility of further resistance and the promise of finally striking back at the city that rejected them, kneel and swear blood-oaths of loyalty. The clans, for the first time in their history, are united under Skarrik's grimy green banner. They pool their weapons, their strange magics, and their burning hatred for a single purpose: the conquest of Gotham.
Fires now burn in coordinated patterns across the Gloaming Vale, illuminating the path to the city walls. The chaotic scrabbling is over. Grimhollow stands ready, not as a collection of feuding gangs, but as a single, terrifying, and unstoppable horde.