Borgar

Borgar is the chief of the Yellow Eye (Sarıgöz) goblin tribe in the Sürgün Günlükleri ("Exile Chronicles") campaign, the enemy of the town of Osterhn. The goblin notes found in Osterhn's abandoned tax office were reports passed on to an important goblin of the Yellow Eye.¹

A letter in Jasper's name, taken from the goblins' camp at Diştepe, cursed the Yellow Eye's leader, addressed as Borgar, for breaking their agreement: until then Jasper had tolerated the goblins on condition that no one from the town died, and gave them word of strangers in return for their leaving alone the people who came and went. The letter demanded that he come in person the next week to apologise, or the agreement was over.²³

The war camp

When Moluk captured Kemp Corvus, Sarah Lia Galanodel and Ephorus, they were bound and taken before Borgar. They were carried on worgs for about a day, without water or food, to an open-air war camp where weapons were being mended, and kept in a cage of wood or bamboo poles. Nearby rose hills, trees and a great cave with an entrance some fifteen feet high; at first they saw no women or children, then goblin workers without armour around the cave.⁴⁵⁶⁷

Borgar received them under a great awning that kept off the sun: a big goblin with truly yellow eyes, in rough chain mail, on a stone seat covered with furs. He praised Moluk for the capture. When Kemp answered him with insults, his men held Kemp down and cut out his left eye with a knife. Borgar then demanded that Kemp show his commanders how humans attack, defend, use the sword and keep formation; in return he would not cut Sarah's throat and would feed them all, but if his commanders came to lasting harm, so would she.⁸⁹¹⁰¹¹

Sarah was caged with other human captives, who dwindled until only old Thomas remained, forced to mine the cave by day and teaching her a great deal in the evenings. Kemp trained the goblins daily, giving away as little as he could, and Ephorus was shut in a tiny iron-bound cell. The captivity lasted fifty-five days.¹²¹³¹⁴

At the end of it Borgar told Kemp and Sarah that he had agreed to hand them over to Jasper and had already taken half the payment. As a parting gift he wanted fingers from both; in the end the ring finger of one left hand was cut off. Kemp later said that he had lost his eye and a finger to the Yellow Eye chief after insulting him while a prisoner.¹⁵¹⁶¹⁷

A leather letter later taken from Moluk's body carried Borgar's firm order not to hunt down the former captives over a personal grudge, warning that if things went badly every gain would be lost and Karkat would not be pleased.¹⁸

Spoiler: During the captivityGösterAçık ettiği: Sürgün Günlükleri #7 · Ne okuduğunuzu söyleyin

During the captivity Sarah saw the doctor of Osterhn, Benedict Von Barrington, drive into the camp and be welcomed as a friend. He bought glowing green powder from Borgar and left him three creatures stitched together from many bodies, with many arms and a glowing fluid in their veins, which obeyed Borgar without question; Borgar meant to keep them as his guard and use them for the final blow against Jasper.¹⁹²⁰

Spoiler: The assault on OsterhnGösterAçık ettiği: Sürgün Günlükleri #12; Sürgün Günlükleri #13 · Ne okuduğunuzu söyleyin

During the goblin assault on Osterhn, a captured goblin, threatened with Borgar's name, pointed on a map to a stone farmhouse in the northern fields, ten or fifteen minutes away, where the chief had his post. The companions and the witch hunter Gordon went there and fought two of the doctor's creatures and other guards before Borgar came out, in plated metal armour, with a great sword sharp and serrated on one edge, and recognised the one-eyed Kemp.²¹²²²³

His armour, prized in his clan and said to be of human-made quality, was his undoing: Sarah heated the metal, which he could not take off, and the pain spoiled his blows while Ephorus's arrows and the swords of Gordon and Kemp wore him down. An approaching worg crippled itself in one of Pitt's spiked pits. Sarah taunted the goblin who had put out her cousin's eye, and Kemp, showing him the side of his blind eye and telling him he had been brave only while Kemp's hands were tied, drove his sword home and killed him. Signal fires answered from the watchtowers, and the lookouts reported the goblins in flight.^24252627

Borgar's head was cut off and set on a spear, and Kemp carried it back into the town while Sarah played a victory tune, to announce that the goblin chief was dead. Jasper had it taken and set up where all could see.²⁸²⁹