The Hobgoblin Slaver Hosts

Not every servant of the Chaos Dwarfs is a slave. The hobgoblins — lean, cruel, yellow-fanged cousins of the greenskin races — occupy a strange and precarious rung in the empire: too treacherous to trust, too useful to kill, and so raised up as overseers, scouts, and auxiliaries above the millions of captives who toil beneath the lash. It was a hobgoblin host, legend holds, that once saved the dawi-zharr from destruction at a desperate hour, and the Chaos Dwarfs have exploited that debt without a flicker of gratitude ever since.

The Slaver Hosts are the mailed fist of the Chaos Dwarf labour-empire. They drive the slave-columns on their long death-marches to the forges, put down rebellions in the mines with gleeful savagery, and screen the dawi-zharr battle-lines with swarms of expendable warriors the masters are happy to spend. A hobgoblin will knife a fellow slave, a rival, or an inattentive Chaos Dwarf with equal cheer, and betrayal among them is less a vice than a way of keeping score.

The dawi-zharr understand their hobgoblins perfectly, and rule them by the only law such creatures respect: fear, backed by the certainty of a terrible example. Kept hungry, frightened, and pointed at someone else, the Slaver Hosts serve well enough — and in the arithmetic of Zharr-Naggrund, a treacherous ally who costs nothing is worth any number of loyal ones who do not.