A rogue thought hit me … how many of our Goblins are from Undermine, or have been there before? Most of the Goblins from Kezan were dirt poor and thus were unlikely to have migrated, but it does strike me as odd that Undermine is connected to the outside world via rocket-drill-train machines, and we never saw anything similar on Kezan back in Cataclysm.
If we take this as the usual ‘It was always there’ attitude from Blizzard, does that mean Kezan was actively cut off from Undermine because of Gallywix and his excessive greed, even by Goblin standards? Or was there a transport tube, and it under tight control by Gallywix, and then destroyed by the volcano at the back-side of Kezan exploding, flooding the tube with lava and rubble?
It would explain how Mogul Razdunk, a powerful Goblin but not a Trade Prince despite his ruthlessness, cruelty and avarice, was able to fill the island with minions without anyone noticing until he’d established a fortified position on the island. And Undermine is supposedly under Kezan, hence the name, originally serving as the place where the Goblins were re-exposed to Kajamite under the whips of the Zandalari Empire, and only earned their freedom from the Trolls a little over a century before the opening of the Dark Portal.
Most lore-sources point to the Zandalari only enslaving the Goblins after finding such a massive deposit of Kajamite that they needed a ludicrous amount of labour to unearth it, break it up and ship it back to Zandalar for their rituals and offerings. Meaning that Undermine isn’t only a very recent city … but it likely is what remains of this gargantuan deposit of Kajamite.
Kajamite was discovered by the Keeper Mimiron, and supposedly Goblins had a thriving society of their own back before the Sundering, before the events of the Kaldorei and their Queen recklessly drawing upon the Well of Eternity and then making bargains with the Burning Legion cut the Goblins off from their supply of the ore.
The only known colony of Goblins to have survived the Sundering were trapped on the isle of Kezan and, without exposure to the Kajamite ore, began to lose their intellect over successive generations until they reverted to their proto-pygmy-like state. If other Goblin colonies exist, they are either deep underground, following the veins of Kajamite, or they became the Pygmies we’ve met in the Lost Isles and Uldum.
But it does make question of point of origin for Playable Goblins a lot more interesting. Did they grow up in Undermine and risk it all heading up to work for Gallywix, just to see the sun and smell the fresh(?) air, rather than live in the incredibly hostile environment that Undermine was, both in terms of ecology and the constant fighting between the Cartels, both in the back-alleys and in more mercantile fashion? Or were they born on the surface and only heard of Undermine as this place where only ‘the winners’ made it and everybody else got chewed to pieces? Or were they born in those rare Goblin enclaves in the Eastern Kingdom pre-Orc Wars, suffering under the punitive measures of the victorious Alliance that sought vengeance for the Steamwheedle Cartel’s support of the Dark Horde, and didn’t care to tell the different Cartels apart for the sake of their ire and their contempt.
The Goblin Way, narrated by Nobbel, paints a very pivotal moment between two powerful Goblins, and how everyday life for the average Goblin works out on the surface, away from the Undermine.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ydzSrpUc0Uo&ab_channel=Nobbel87
The Tipping Point is the origin story of Renzik, and is a very grim and brutal insight into how life within the Undermine worked before Gallywix took over and the Cartels all returned and found common cause in trying to retake the Undermine from beneath Jastor’s greasy gubbins.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o3TxCfhfYTY&t=470s&ab_channel=WorldofWarcraft
Add to the fact that, somehow, despite being cut off from the coffers of the Horde and the influence of the Bilgewater Cartel, was able to assemble two very skilled and well-equipped forces, the Opportunity Acquisitions Company, which appears to be his more mercantile and labour-intensive forces, to ‘acquire’ Earthen tech, resources and, of course, the Black Blood endemic to the caverns of Dornogal, and the Darkfuse Enforcement, a private army built in similar theme to the Gob-Squad that serves the Bilgewater Cartel, that is well equipped, trained and now given access to unstable and highly effective Black Blood-infused weapons and technology to enforce the would-be the whims of ‘Overlord’ of Undermine on all of Goblinity.
For my Goblins, they’ve never been there, having been born on the surface in Booty Bay shortly after the Steamwheedle Cartel learned the harsh lesson of remaining neutral in such large-scale conflicts, and the prospect of heading into Undermine, as infamous as it is, fills them with both excitement and dread, and a curious sense of anticipation, to see if the storied homeland of their people and the birthplace of their society really is what their parents and grandparents whisper of, or if it is just another run-down slum filled with the desperate, the reckless and the brutal, all under the thumb of some would-be Trade Prince or Baron.