On Goblins

Now before I get into the stories about Mick and his Goblin-Hunting Exploits, I feel the need to detail exactly what a goblin really is.  Beyond the short stature and the range of rainbow complexions that goblins boast, there are a few biological and psychological traits that make goblins rather peculiar, even among monsters.

Goblins, like all other monsters, are creatures that thrive in magically saturated areas.  They just soak up magical radiation to grow meaner and more ugly, as far as goblin experts can tell.  Unlike most monsters which congregate toward pure, natural ambient magic, goblins are the most at home in tainted and chaotic magic, such as the sewers beneath a city, a garbage dump, or, most especially, areas of large magical catastrophes.  We think of them as the pests that hang onto civilization in the most inconvenient way.

To hunt a goblin is to make your way into the most distasteful areas of a city and root out the buggers from their filth-ridden hives, which range from abandoned magimobiles to deep and disease-ridden pipes in the furthest reaches of sanitation systems.  Both the mind and body are tested to venture through such dirty messes.

Like the places that they live, goblins are ugly and tend to stink up the place.  They live in trash and somehow multiply to huge numbers on the leavings of mankind, crowding each other to the point where they just burst loose into the cleaner areas of a city and turn it into a cesspit akin to where they came from.  If you ever smell something like a clogged up toilet or a rotting corpse, you might have an infestation of the brutes.  They slip in between walls and underneath floorboards like insects or rodents(their chief food supply), or in more extreme cases turn a garden or seldom-used shed into their abominable lair.

I need not mention the violence they cause to pets and children, the food stolen from counters and windowsills, or the general un-sanitary nature of having them nearby.  Thus, the lowest of the subjugation guild is dedicated to the eradication of such pests where they spring up.  With daggers and torches and the most potent of poisons they flush out such menaces, though rarely delving deep enough to deal with the root of the problem.  Cities have tried and failed too many times to count in a full eradication of goblins.  Like the cockroach, they just come back every time.  Goblin-proofing also falls under their purview, and is the most popular and proven method for dealing with the inconvenience.

All of this information leads to the question of where did they come from in the first place?  There are theories of magically mutated rats or bugs, but their humanoid form seems to contradict such theories (though parallel mutation theorists still insist that it is the only explanation).  Other magicians of a more reasonable nature are of the opinion that the dirty magic itself is forming the creatures like elementals, mirroring our own slovenly habits and transforming them into a sort of magical plague.  Not a bad theory, but my own personal favorite is from a story that I heard as a small boy, back when the portable crystal ball was just being popularized.

They say that once, a long, long time ago, back in the days of swords and castles, there were two young boys, twins, and they were constantly fighting.  Their father, a rather negligent wizard had left them alone one day to "play" with each other while he attended a summons from a local duke.  As soon as he left, the were arguing, and before he had straddled his magical carpet the two had begun chasing each other through the tower (because all wizards of that time had towers).  Their fight led them into their father's alchemical laboratory, and with one fateful misstep, a batch of goo splashed down, dousing them both in a stinking, sticky substance.  Their skin turned green and stretchy, but the two boys didn't notice, continuing their fight.  One of them pulled the other's ears so they were long and pointy.  The other pushed his brother away with his feet, making his own legs squat and his brother's arms lanky.  By the time their fight had ended, they had exited the tower and were only vaguely human, looking more like a tiny orc or a minuscule ogre than a human child.  They had rampaged through the fields and had set loose a flock of chickens in their drawn-out squabble.  When a farmer saw them, he was alarmed and rallied the villagers, driving the horrible creatures out of the village.  Their father returned, but was also driven out of the village as they assumed that he had let some untamed experiment free and set it loose upon the town.

Perhaps not the most likely story, but it does agree with studies that conclude that the aforementioned orcs and ogres are the result of human alchemical experimentation in the far past.  It also might explain why the vermin are drawn to human cities.  Either way, I can now start in on a few stories of Mick and his entertaining exploits of goblin-hunting.