Current Goron-Hyrule Relations

By this age, there had already been a long and turbulent history between the Gorons and Hyrule. Especially when it comes to land, resources and trade. In 865, the Goron nation was annexed by Hyrule, and Hyrule drove them from their home on Death Mountain, claiming ownership of the mountain they renamed Mt Crenel, and its mines. In 1009, a new Death Mountain erupted, the one the Gorons live on now. That time, Hyrule’s siege on the mountain was unsuccessful and the Gorons won sovereignty over their new mountain and mines.

It did not come without consequences, however. After the heavy losses the Gorons sustained during the nearly decade-long siege, they also suffered another near-decade of brutal sanctions from Hyrule. The ruling kingdom they were unfortunately still part of abused the fact that they still had total control of all the lands and roads surrounding death mountain, meaning that while they couldn’t remove the Gorons from their mountain again, they could prevent them from leaving it, and completely cut off the Gorons from the rest of the world, so as to force them to comply with their demands.

Which leads us now to the current state of affairs between the Gorons and Hyrule. According to the treaty signed in 1027, which is still in active legislation, Hyrule has full control of all trade coming from and going to Death Mountain. The Gorons receive what Hyrule dictates they may receive and what it will cost, and exports from Death Mountain also have their destination and cost decided by Hyrule, as well as who receives what portions of the profits. In addition, Gorons do not have the right to free mobility, and require permission from Hyrule in order to travel anywhere away from Death Mountain. Depending on the individual character of the current ruling monarch, the strictness of these laws has fluctuated over the years, sometimes being more favourable towards the gorons and sometimes less.

For a few decades prior to 1135, it was relatively easy for gorons to leave the mountain, and visas were granted fairly liberally even just for casual travel. When the civil war broke out in Hyrule between the Queen and King and the Duke and Duchess of Snowpeak, the Gorons were conscripted to aid in the fight against the insurrectionists as soldiers, as well as provide the central Hyrulean forces with more metal for their troops. Among these Gorons was the esteemed Cor Darunia, already a respected leader of the Gorons of Hyrule. He was given a command position and served closely on the battlefield with the king of Hyrule. Though the king expressed that he and Darunia were brothers in arms, Darunia sensed that the king’s camaraderie with him was conditional and ungenuine, and though he showed the necessary outer respect for the royal so as to not be charged with treason, he held no affection or true inner loyalty to him, or the crown.

After the civil war, suspicion began to brew in the court that the Gorons had secretly aided the Duke and Duchess’ attempted coup, despite there being little evidence to suggest this and no real proof. But the high queen of Hyrule and her king were paranoid, distrustful people by nature, and their retribution against the Gorons’ imagined crimes was brutal. Trade and travel on Death Mountain was restricted to the extreme, and no Goron was permitted to leave the mountain or even correspond with anyone on the outside without explicit permission from the crown personally, and the same permission was required for anyone of any nationality or race to enter the borders of Death Mountain. Gates were placed on the one viable road up the mountain, which were guarded by Hyrulean soldiers who questioned, searched, and verified the permissions of anyone attempting to ascend the road.

This caused the Gorons to once again be completely at Hyrule’s mercy, and could do little to exert their sovereignty over their mines or control their own resources when any decision made that went against Hyrule’s orders would be punished by severe trade embargoes.

By 1146, Hyrule had taken so many of Death Mountain’s bomb flowers that when the volcano was wracked by ominous tremors and several of their mines collapsed, including the ones from which they farmed their bomb flowers as well as the essential ones from which they farmed the specific minerals and ores that were their food, they did not have enough reserves of bomb flowers remaining to clear the blockages, resulting in not only halts on all mining operations, but also a famine on the mountain. When Darunia personally wrote to the Queen and King of Hyrule for aid, even invoking the ‘brothers in arms’ bond that the king had claimed they shared, they received no response at all, and neither their requests for Hyrule to return some of their bomb flowers or to provide relief for the Gorons’ starvation were fulfilled.

This was one of the major historical incidents that would be remembered bitterly by the current and future generations of Gorons, which would eventually lead to an attempted Goron uprising against Hyrule, led by Darunia himself, though that would not be for many years still.