Goblins are wild Fey obsessed with fire and destruction, but perversely gifted with drive and intellect. They occasionally besiege towns with mechanical contraptions that could only be the product of a diseased intellect. They have great respect for craftsmanship, however, and a...
Share your gobbos-but-not-gobbos with me. Let’s all be hacks together.
Backing up for a second: One of the functions of the setting is that wild magic naturally ebbs and flows through the world. Where it gathers and wells up, this is called a Nexus. A Nexus can produce spontaneous magical affects, including the creation of living beings.
Goblins are one such example. Really it’s a catch-all term for a number of creatures that are “distorted echos” of humanity, miraekind, or other races made animate by magical surges. Unlike other periodic surges which have warped living populations, goblins seem to emerge directly from the land itself. They carry twisted elements of others’ societies, seemingly rearranged at random by the magic which conceived them.
Unfortunately, once they emerge into existence, crawling from trees, fens, and the earth, they’re also cunning enough to hang on in the long term. While Goblins can reproduce the good ol’ fashioned way (and do so, frequently), without more emerging from nexuses they are not likely intelligent enough to hang on in the long term.
I like that. It captures what makes them goblins, to my thinking. “A distorted echo of humanity” is a wonderful and incisive way to put it. They’re a dark mirror for humans, but a funhouse dark mirror. They’re an inherently unsustainable, malefic society of gross little fuckers. A bit like us, just moreso. A whole society of the kind of imp that usually sits on the shoulder of a villain, whispering madness and glee in their ears.
Backing up for a second: One of the functions of the setting is that wild magic naturally ebbs and flows through the world. Where it gathers and wells up, this is called a Nexus. A Nexus can produce spontaneous magical affects, including the creation of living beings.
Goblins are one such example. Really it’s a catch-all term for a number of creatures that are “distorted echos” of humanity, miraekind, or other races made animate by magical surges. Unlike other periodic surges which have warped living populations, goblins seem to emerge directly from the land itself. They carry twisted elements of others’ societies, seemingly rearranged at random by the magic which conceived them.
Unfortunately, once they emerge into existence, crawling from trees, fens, and the earth, they’re also cunning enough to hang on in the long term. While Goblins can reproduce the good ol’ fashioned way (and do so, frequently), without more emerging from nexuses they are not likely intelligent enough to hang on in the long term.
I like that. It captures what makes them goblins, to my thinking. “A distorted echo of humanity” is a wonderful and incisive way to put it. They’re a dark mirror for humans, but a funhouse dark mirror. They’re an inherently unsustainable, malefic society of gross little fuckers. A bit like us, just moreso. A whole society of the kind of imp that usually sits on the shoulder of a villain, whispering madness and glee in their ears.