Buggane

Bugganes are a blind subterranean race able to tunnel through—or even ignore—stone and metal.  The Bestiary 4 lists them as “distantly related to ogres,” but the illustrator took that description (“tusks,” “mole-like eyes”) and ran with it, depicting bugganes as naked mole rats crossed with the Incredible Hulk.  I think you’re free to go either way (the original Manx legends are unclear on the matter anyway).  If you want a more Tolkien-esque, brutish, subterranean variety of ogre, give your bugganes a more humanoid aspect; if you like a more anthropomorphic monster in the vein of some of Brian Froud or Hellboy’s fey or the Savage Coast’s many humanoids, go with the mole rat.  Either way: BUGGANE SMASH (and bash).

Attempts to carry a treaty to a svirfneblin nation have met with repeated failure.  The deep gnomes trust no one but the rock gnome envoy with whom they originally negotiated…only he was felled by a crossbow bolt two weeks ago, so it’s up to a ragtag band of adventurers.  After several frustrating encounters (including an entire svirfneblin “village” that turned out to be stage props and illusions), the party realizes only the head of the gnomes’ ancestral enemy, one of the tunneling buggane, will secure their aid.

Adventuring in the fey realms, a party realizes they are being maneuvered around a giant chessboard.  They can continue to play the game as pawns…or change the stakes.  Traversing the caverns under the game board means fighting a clan of bugganes.  Claiming the bugganes’ treasure will also be difficult, as the greedy mole-giants use their earth-distorting talents to hide their gold behind solid rock.

Adventurers travel with a Tokari noble through the Undermount Pass, a road that punches through an alpine range.  Every family in the Tokari retinue has at least one ogre slave—a common custom in a land where eldritch pylons power house-magic that keeps slaves in line.  But deep inside the Pass, the slave collars’ connection to the pylons is less certain.  Meanwhile the ogres have started muttering: “The brothers are coming.  The burrowing brothers are coming.”

—Pathfinder Bestiary 4 26

B4 also says, “Bugganes pursue and slay those who trespass into their well-marked territories.”  I want to know what those markings look like.  At least players can’t complain their characters weren’t warned…  *wicked grin*

Fans of gnomes, especially those who remember the classic D&D 1e and 2e gnomish deities: Bugganes are perfect as worshippers/servants of Urdlen the Crawler Below.

Also, a land where humans use ogres as slaves?  Another idea shamelessly pilfered from Ghostwalk.