Space Goblins

I've veered somewhat heavily into sci-fi/science-fantasy territory in my setting design, with Egradus existing against a backdrop of a galactic war and in sort of post-post-apocalyptic state. Not Fallout or Mad Max levels of post apocalypse, but far enough along that the planet and the things on it have largely recovered from whatever ravages have wracked it.

This has led me to cast my eye over stock fantasy races and think about how they fit into this world. I've settled on plenty of them being genetically and/or magically engineered in one way or another by long-dead progenitor species, or mutated through exposure to magical fallout, actual fallout and other environmental contaminants. As such I've decided to take a slightly different tack with goblins, with some liberal inspiration from Warhammer 40,000.

Credit, Pedro Kruger Garcia

Everyone in Egradus knows about goblins. They harass your livestock, sour your milk, make off with your children and burn your barn down. Goblins are, in fact, responsible for all of these things, but rarely consistently and never all at the same time.

Goblins are different all over the world - a goblin in Yoon-Suin might possess long limbs and a prehensile tail for use in the jungles; a goblin in the Ugishi riverlands might have webbed extremities and gills; an Arkonosian goblin may have silvered skin and a heightened resistance to magic, and so on. They are nothing if not adaptable, and it takes only a few spawnings before a new population of goblins is adapted to its environment. The common denominator among goblins is adaptability, small stature, extreme omnivorism and an attitude that oscillates between maniacally mischievous and psychotically deranged.

Goblins aren't actually from Egradus (not that that's anything special in this setting) but in fact come from... somewhere else in space... They don't know where from and certainly no-one else does. They arrived a long time ago on the back of a large meteorite - the terrible conditions of cosmic radiation and hard vacuum had reduced them to little more than small, spore-like blobs. The impact obliterated most of them, along with everything else in a 20 mile radius, but enough of the spores survived to move on to the next stage of the goblinoid life cycle - the spawning pool.

Like this, but greener and with more shit

These spawning pools are created when several goblins migrate away from their current grounds (read: the other ones throw things at or stab them until they leave) and find a suitable site for a new brood. The goblins gather biomass from the local area and gorge on it until they are little more than bloated, distended bellies. Then they explode. The goopy, acidic mess that remains pools in a divot and soon new goblins start to crawl from it. They start out very small, but grow swiftly and rapidly become only quite small. The new goblins scrounge organic matter (read: leaves, shit, bones, twigs and children) from their surrounding environment and cast it into the spawning pool. This agglomeration of local organic matter influences the genes of the next generation of goblins, allowing them to absorb features of the local organisms and adapt to the new environment. They also throw any other bits of old shit in there so goblins often come out wrong with spoons stuck in their heads, or a boot where their hand should be.

Widely regarded as stupid, goblin minds are, like their bodies, highly adaptable. This feature doesn’t get exercised much of its own accord but a goblin can be trained to perform a wide array of tasks to an excellent level, and it only takes years of work and the survival of several dozen murder and arson attempts. Trained goblin savants are hugely expensive, and hugely rare; luckily they don’t seem to die of old age. Some noble families have had entire generations worth of wealth overseen by a wizened goblin savant accountant, with only the occasional devouring of a servant.

I feel this gives them a good range of use in your game - they can still fill the traditional role of chaotic and aggressive annoyances to a low level party but with an enduring threat that the more they interact with the party and the environment around them, the more well suited to the place they become. You could also include them as NPCs with varying degrees of intelligence and loyalty, and even make them treasure in their own right if a particular goblin finishing school has need of new stock.

I'll be writing up some mechanical rules for them in the next few posts, but hopefully this post has made my overall aims and intentions clear!