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Leather in the Kingdoms

In the Last Goblin Queen stories, all five Lineages — Goblin, Human, Ogre, Elf, and Naga — are almost entirely vegetarian peoples, with the occasional fish eaten in some of the more coastal communities. So when the stories describe something as made of 'leather,' where does it come from?

In the context of the Kingdoms, 'leather' is a class of fabrics — not a single material.

The most common variety, particularly in the Human and Ogre Kingdoms, is a thick barkcloth derived from pounding fibrous tree bark into flat sheets, soaking it in plant resins and tannins, and finishing it with ash. For applications like armor or scabbards, barkcloth leather is often layered into multiple sheets and coated with lacquer.

The Goblins make sporehide: a tough, somewhat spongy fabric cultivated by growing sheets of specialized fungi on trays of sawdust. The result is durable and leathery, but needs to be rubbed with oil occasionally to keep from cracking. Sporehide almost always comes in shades of brown — from deep mahogany to golden tan — and its characteristics can be carefully controlled through the choice of sawdust, fungal inocula, and growth conditions, ranging from soft and supple to thick and armor-like.

The Naga make riverhide by boiling plant resins down to a thick, tarry substance, then pouring it into sheets or using it to coat heavy canvas. The resin is cured slowly over low heat for several days, resulting in a glossy, tough, waterproof material with richly marbled patterns in greens, browns, or ambers.

The Elves work with chitin leather, made from the shed carapaces of giant domesticated spiders. Chitin is not particularly flexible even when treated, so it is typically stitched together from smaller plates in a scale-like pattern. It retains the colors of the spiders it came from — frequently glossy blacks, opalescent greys, rich browns, or orange-gold.

And if the title of this entry led you to expect something more salacious — sorry to disappoint ;)

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