This is a people of small dwarf-like people, completely unknown to all other peoples. The reason for this is its hidden life under bushes and in the undergrowth of the forests. The size of Gorbian communities never goes beyond 12 and one may wonder how the many small Gorb clans scattered all over Tirakan maintain contact with each other. The difference between Gorbs and Dwarves is that the former are still far smaller and hairier.
The height of a fully grown male Gorb is at most one foot, female Gorb usually grow even a few fingers taller. However, the strong woolly body hair of the men and their beards, which are not infrequently many times their body size, suggest that they are closely related to the Dwarves. Although the Gorb do not form a civilisation, they have their own language and the alphabet of the Humans. Thanks to their observation of Humans, many Gorb also have a command of their language, although no serious use is ever made of it. Farming and animal husbandry are also known to them, but are not practised.
The way of life of a male Gorb is as follows: As soon as he has found his partner, this takes place at the age of 7 at the earliest, he leaves his maternal home and looks for a dwelling to start a family. This new home, a larger cavity under a dense tangle of branches, is usually at least 10 miles away from the parental home. Next, the furnishing of the new house begins with moss and bark, later supplemented by self-made wooden furniture. Often the natural ceiling is also supplemented with clay. Food is formed by what is found on the once daily excursion that lasts several hours. This can be berries, mushrooms, nuts or grass seeds, which are ground and made into bread. Gorbs living close to human settlements live on food scraps produced there. These Gorbs also form the largest communities and tend to be more nest-like than those living in the forest.
Despite their proximity to Humans, the Gorbs are not noticed by them. The sharp hearing, the ability to sense the finest vibrations and its nimbleness allow a Gorb to elude human perception in any situation. Normally, a Gorb would never show itself to an adult human. It is different with human infants. An older Gorb often chooses a little boy or girl of no more than 6 years old to talk to when he or she is alone, play tag, go for a walk in the forest or tell stories in bed at night. Caring human mothers are surprised that their little child disappears without a trace for hours from time to time and suddenly appears in the evening with an ever-new story about a little dwarf. As soon as the child is older, however, he never sees the Gorb again. Thus the Gorb remains a faint childhood memory of an adult, which he attributes to the imagination that sparkled abundantly in childhood.
The War of the Gorbs: In secret, hidden from the perception of other peoples, the Gorbs, living close to the human settlements, wage a fierce struggle for existence and war against the rats. In order to protect themselves from them, communities of more than 5 people have been formed, and larger and larger ones are needed to protect themselves against the rapidly multiplying, bloodthirsty carcass rats. Gorbs living near human battlefields have to face hard trials and losses of loved ones. Often enough, entire clans are killed by the starving rats. Thus, the Gorb's constructions to cope with such situations increasingly take on the character of defensive structures.
The year 500. the now increasingly common battlefields of Humans at war against the dark forces, with not infrequently more than 1000 killed, brings forth a new wave of cadaver rat populations, unprecedented on this scale. Now even the woodland gorb settlements have a size of several dozen members. In the immediate vicinity of the corpse fields, there are often as many as several hundred Gorb banded together, who have to beat back ever larger rat inrushes to the burrow every day. The life of the Gorb is changing. More and more what could be called a Gorb civilisation is emerging. City-like settlements, division of labour, agriculture and completely different social interaction. Even things that are actually absurd, such as the emergence of a hierarchical system that demands a leader personality and the consumption of meat, especially of killed rats, are becoming more and more common among the Gorb, who normally eat a vegetarian diet. Now the Gorbs are no longer able to hide from Humans either, they are being sighted more and more frequently. Nefarious people begin to capture the Gorbs and enslave them for domestic work. Soon people also notice the suitability of a Gorb for fine artistic work. Helplessness in the face of this new threat from slave drivers leads to the Gorbs beginning to migrate north en masse in search of a new home.