Moluk

Moluk is an officer of the Yellow Eye (Sarıgöz) goblin tribe in the Sürgün Günlükleri ("Exile Chronicles") campaign. He rides a white worg and carries a mace. The notes of Pish, the goblin who spied on Osterhn from its abandoned tax office, showed that Pish watched the town and Jasper's soldiers and reported to Moluk.¹²³

Pish's diary told that he hated the other goblins; he had once kept three rats, and after another goblin killed one of them he dreamed of rising in rank and taking his revenge.⁴

Diştepe

Goblins leaving a meeting at a watchtower were overheard saying that Moluk was waiting for them that night at Diştepe, where they would talk the matter over. Exalon described Diştepe as a small, open hill, not high, with a stream below it and no room for a large camp. The companions found four tents around a fire there, with worgs lying inside, their eyes covered with blinkers, three goblins of the envoy and an armoured officer. After the fight they took the officer alive and withdrew to the woods; looking back, Ephorus saw four or five worg riders on the hill, and among them Moluk on his white worg.⁵⁶⁷⁸³

The captured officer was not Moluk but one of the patrol officers under him. Questioning him in the goblin tongue, Exalon learned where Moluk's den lay, that strange goblins came and went there, and that Moluk would be an important commander in the coming attack on the town. Because of the worgs' mating season, Exalon said, Moluk would keep apart from the other worgs for a few days with only his own white one.⁹¹⁰¹¹

The den

Moluk's den is a cave in the countryside, hours from the town; on the way the companions passed a crossing that the goblins had crudely labelled Goblin Bridge. At the den, trees had been cut before it, sharpened stakes leaned toward the entrance among the rocks, and a closed wooden door had a spyhole. Posing as slavers bringing captives for sale, Ephorus led Kemp Corvus and Sarah Lia Galanodel in, and two big guards with clubs brought them to the chamber where Moluk sat. He likened them to the attackers of Diştepe and, while asking their price, warned that they would not leave alive.^12131415

When the fight broke out, Moluk grew tense as his white worg was wounded. Sarah put the worg to sleep, but the guards beat the companions down one by one; Ephorus threw a burning oil barrel, then, seeing goblins at the exit and behind, laid down his weapon. They were bound and kept alive like a valuable parcel, to be taken before the tribe's chief, Borgar.^16171819

Captor and captive

Moluk bound Kemp's wounds and kept him alive. Borgar praised him for the capture and promised him ten more soldiers, and when Borgar's men cut out Kemp's left eye, it was Moluk who stopped the bleeding.²⁰²¹²²

Later Moluk was himself a prisoner in Jasper's hands. At the exchange that freed Kemp and Sarah, Jasper handed over Moluk and several other bound goblins with two mules laden with weapons, and as he left Moluk swore he would kill Kemp.²³²⁴

Spoiler: After the ambushRevealSpoils: Sürgün Günlükleri #8; Sürgün Günlükleri #9 · Say what you have read

After the companions ambushed the hobgoblin envoys, horns and worg howls sounded nearby, and Moluk appeared on a hillock on his white worg, still wounded. He said he knew their scent now and ordered them killed. He closed in from the northern rise while two other riders came from other hills. Sarah's whispered magic hurt and frightened him and he turned his mount back, and the witch hunter Gordon shot him in the head from afar; he fell dead from the worg, which fought on in rage.²⁵²⁶²⁷

On his body they found a fine but ordinary scimitar and a leaf of hide written in the goblin tongue. Read by Sarah's magic, it was Borgar's firm order that Moluk not hunt down the captives taken before over a personal grudge, warning that if things went badly every gain would be lost and Karkat would not be pleased.²⁸²⁹