Zegrig and the Green Gaunts

1. Zegrig the Tall

Zegrig the Tall is, as implied, tall even for a gaunt, almost seven feet. He has a bulbous head, eyes that are both bulging and sunken in his head, and a glower like an impending storm of blood. He is a Warlord class warrior, and through various exploits and lucky survival, has managed to level up and gain power greater than most goblinoids. Zegrig, and the other gaunts, hail from the Zogrom Dungeon in the Zogrom Wastes, a desolate land of desert volcanoes, chemical lakes, and boiling fissures. After leaving the dungeon as an explorer and raider, Zegrig survived several monstrous encounters, and after managing to kill several desert raiders with his spear, and then a slag camel and consuming its core, awoke and became a leveled mob. This garnered him the warlord class, and a band of followers. Zegrig now works to expand the boundaries of the Zogrom dungeon, increase the ranks of his gaunts, and garner as much wealth, power, and fear as possible.

Followers - the gaunts have a single source currently, the Zogrom dungeon. No longer under its control, he is aware of its role and his own history, so he routinely brings the dungeon tribute. In exchange for this, the dungeon sends Zegrig more gaunts to command. The gaunt leader has yet to understand or realize the dungeon could provide him equipment, supplies, and weapons. It isn't going to suggest it for him, but would comply with said requests. If he dies before realizing this, the dungeon's gestating Zegrig II will have these ideas already fermented into its brain. Currently, Zegrig has twenty to thirty gaunts under his command, with about a third of those being non-combatants who keep the base camp working. The rest are primarily animal handlers, standard warriors, and slingers.

Slaves - there are between two and three slaves and captives for each gaunt. Most of these are horrifically treated women and children, generally too weak or unable to put up any sort of fight or resistance. These are treated worse than the animals of the gaunts. 

Equipment - primitive hide bracers and greeves, offensive goblin codpiece, Zogrom Spear (spear +2, adds bleeding effect)

2. Standard Green Gaunt

A standard green gaunt counts as a medium sized technically goblinoid creature, though they are tall, thin, and highly disturbing. The standard gaunt is over six feet tall, lanky of limb and thin. They have large foreheads that overshadow their sunken and often bloody looking eyes. The skin is paradoxically drawn tight in places across the face and body, and and disturbingly loose and saggy in other places, such as the face being hard and angular in its brooding darkness, but the flesh of the neck being loose as a turkey's wattle. 

Equipment: Spear, short sword, or collection of long primitive knives, frequently paired with an animal hide large shield. This shield offers more cover from projectiles than being effective in stopping melee weapons, and are frequently decorated with mortal remains, bright colors, and the green gaunt's own pictography of sigils. They have no armor, and roughly half only have a loincloth or similar primitive garment, with the remainder being starkly naked.

Usage - Standard green gaunts are a basic troop type mob, deployed in as large numbers as possible. They have better than average morale for greenskins, and avoid actual pitched battles in favor of raiding patterns, ambushes, and other scenarios where they can overwhelm quickly with numbers and spears

Green Gaunts are righteously feared across the lands they border, as they are not foolish or moronic foes. They lie in wait, stage ambushes, overwhelm village defenders, and can be highly dangerous foes to weak and low level adventurers. Stories of their rapine dragonnades are frequently told and usually undersold for their actual brutality.

3. Green Gaunt Genocider 

Gaunts are generally reviled by other greenskins as well, and for good reason. When they take up the spear and howl for blood, the other orcs and goblins are just as valid targets as the colloquially known as the Regmerkie, a term roughly meaning tick, or a soft thing full of blood. This is their catchall for humans, dwarves, halflings, and other pink skinned creatures with iron based hemoglobin blood. Gaunt and greenskin blood is based copper hemocyanin instead. That detail aside, Gaunt genociders have sharpened their knives, axes, and spears on greenskin flesh and not manflesh.

Equipment - generally the same as standard but they seldom carry shields, instead having just an shocking amount of throwing knives, shivs, improvised blades, and a strong penchant for using rogue class abilities rather than fighter type abilities. The Regmerkie are worthy opponents, while the other greenskins are inferior and not deserving of stand up battle, rather more getting shanked in the kidneys in their sleep.

4. Green Gaunt Slinger 

Archery requires the crafting of bows, bow string, and arrows. This represents a level of crafting that the gaunts are not really capable of, and certainly not interested it. They also have little to no interest in using the weapons of their foes, even when proven to be effective or even better than their own. The gaunt answer to the archer is the slinger. They function as raiders and skirmishers, and as support for most any gaunt raiding force.

Equipment - Sling and pouch of bullets. These range from polished round stones, to cast iron spheres, to on the highest end, polished beast cores than are closer to grenades than slung crystals. Slingers are second line gaunt fighters and most aspire to become something better.

5. Green Gaunt Stalker 

Gaunt Stalkers are among the most dangerous of the gaunts to encounter singly. They carry a mix of knives, slings, and are adept at stealth and using poisons. Stalkers are functionally a ranger and hunter class, and in a straight one on one fight are only outclassed by the standard guant with with spear reach and shield defense. Stalkers work as scouts, assassins, and saboteurs.

Equipment - Throwing knives, sling and sharp bullets, contact poisons, cloak, soft boots.

6. Green Gaunt Arsonist

Magic and greenskins don't have the strongest historical connection, with most goblinoids having minimal or remedial levels of arcane magic. THey do tend to have shaman, witch doctors, and other more druidic, infernal, or other sources of magic. The Gaunt Arsonist is technically a warlock class, where a gaunt shaman or druid (non-combat class) manages to make a bargain with the sort of primordial spirits that will truck with low rizz mobs, In the bargain, the spirit gains a minimally useful minion, and the would be magic user gains access to 1-3 basic spells, typically in the cantrip to 2nd level range. We aren't making gaunt fireballers or Gaunt reanimators here. The most common spell platform is setting things on fire.

Equipment - body tattoos, necklace of mortal fetishes, drugs

7. Gaunt Barghest Handler

A barghest, also known as a Black Dog, Moor Hound, or Goblin Hound, is a large primitive canid with a foul disposition, thick skin, and red eyes. Gaunts keep and raise these animals are hunting and war companions, and the Barghest handler is their packmaster in battle. They are used to track targets, flank and harass mounted foes, and can quickly turn an unsuspecting camp into a massacre attacking sleeping heroes in their bedrolls. The handlers themselves seldom engage in actual combat instead guiding their hounds to track, immobilize, and kill.

Equipment - 1-6 barghests, leather bracers and greeves, a whip, long knife

8. Gaunt Gnoll Handler

Also being a type of demihuman canid, gnolls are often hunted by gaunts. When possible, the gaunts will raid gnoll tribes and packs for the purpose of kidnapping the youngest members and killing the rest. The captured gnolls are subjected to extreme abuse, training, molestation, and mutilation, then are kept as slaves and killers on chains. Much like the barghest handler, the gnoll handlers guides a pack of gnolls into combat where they are savages with claws and fangs. If given a chance, they will turn on their handler in an attempt to kill their tormentors.

Equipment - 1-3 gnolls, leather shirt and bracers, spear and whip.

9. Gaunt Skeleton

Gaunt Skeletons are undead. They are created from deceased gaunts and the spell is generally only known among the gaunt shaman caste. It is a low level spell, but requires a large amount of ritual work, common ingredients, and time, as well as access to gaunt corpses. The end result is a zombie gaunt painted with white and black pigments in a skeleton pattern. These undead are modified with animal claws on their ends of their fingers, and more giften shaman have replaced their teeth with animal teeth. The result is a horrifying zombie with enhanced claw and bite damage and bottomless hunger for fear and blood. Gaunt Skeleton warriors are bound to follow a designated gaunt leader, and the shaman gifted enough to create them are not risked in battle.

Equipment - bodypaint, animals claws and teeth, spirit charms and fetishes (ornamental).

10. Gaunt Shifter

Lycanthropy cares not for the race of the infected individual, and gaunts are known to deliberately seek out infectious were-beasts to become afflicted with their curse. These are functionally gaunt barbarians and they are few in number. Stalking lycanthropes is foolish and dangerous work, being deliberately infected is dangerous, and those that survive the stalk and the bite required seldom live long, either being overwhelmed by bloodlust and being killed by adventurers, or being overwhelmed with bloodlust and being killed by the gaunt genociders that know where they sleep off their murder orgy.

Equipment - nothing but the smeared blood of their foes

Author's Note - Zegrig and the Gaunts are written and intended to be completely irredeemable and evil creatures, there should be almost no moral quandary about destroying them. Though goblinoids, they are a recent creation of an evil dungeon, and thus far it has only created violent, aggressive, sadistic male versions of its Gaunt Template. Being incomplete, but still organic sentient beings, the gaunts are highly abusive especially towards children (they cannot procreate but have all the working equipment) and females (there are no female gaunts and this is a source of racial animus). Should Zegrig be destroyed, the next Gaunt leader created will come from a different version of the base template, such as a warlock leader, a necromancer leader, or an assassin leader.

Slaying Zegrig and the gaunts will only delay the issue, Zogrom must be found and brought to bear, or destroyed itself.