Orkoid Goblins

Race Background:

Orkoid Goblins, like other greenskins, are a symbiosis of humanoid and algal tissue at the cellular level. While generally Goblins are regarded as an intermediate and incomplete stage in the orkoid ecological cycle, some strains have existed at the top of their local food chain for long enough to take on stable characteristics and, occasionally, even what passes for a culture. Since normally the only advantages of a Goblin over an Ork are speed and adaptability, "arrested lifecycle" goblin cultures tend to become estabilished in rapidly changing environments. Goblins that develop past the feral stage generally live fast, short lives; the rapid rate of expansion that even a modicum of civilization allows for orkoids, combined with the generally quick life cycle of goblins, would mean exponential growth for these population if not for the fact that goblin settlements tend to succumb to infighting during the space of a few generations. There are, of course, a few exceptions.

Goblins begin life from spores in the algal/fungal mass that constitutes the sessile part of the life cycle for all orkoids; infant goblins generally feed upon the fungal mass that generated them until they're able to begin exploring their environment. In the "civilized" strains, the racial memory common to all orkoid races begins to appear later than in wild strains, at around 18 months of age; at this point, the juvenile goblin is able to leave the spawning grounds and make its way to the orkoid settlement closest to them. The fate of an individual goblin depends greatly upon the result of this journey: most goblins end up eaten by something bigger than them, or fit as slaves in the larger orkoid life cycle. In situations where goblins are the highest orkoid stage in the area, juvenile goblins generally join adults and learn, chiefly by observation, what local customs weren't imprinted in their racial memory. At this tage, they're generally not verbal, and it's extremely hard to tell apart wild, semi-developed and developed goblins. Juvenile goblins are generally cared for, in what little care they need, by those adults that display parental-care behavior; interestingly, this care may be the reason why infant goblins have about the same regenerative ability as trolls, since most goblins will occasionally put their tinkering mindset to use even during this activity -- if juvenile individuals weren't very resilient, there would be no goblin race at all.

At the age of five to seven, a goblin can be considered adolescent; its "puberty" is extremely brief and lasts about a year. During this time, the goblin develops sexual characteristics (which are purely vestigial and, generally, not at all functional -- it's not at all rare for goblins to develop mixed sexual characteristics, or for a goblin's puberty to "change its mind" halfway through; goblin culture doesn't have much use for gender differences) and the ability to fully access its racial memory; during puberty, goblins also lose most of their regenerative ability. This is also when it becomes possible to differentiate between civilized and wild goblins; in general, most breeding grounds spawn the second type almost exclusively. Wild goblins tend to be tougher and faster, develop a 30 to 100 word vocabulary, can use simple tools but not independently produce or mantain them, and have more acute senses of smell and hearing; civilized goblins develop mental capabilities that are on average slightly lesser than that of a human, and are more oriented towards sight and taste. The stereotype of the "stupid but clever" goblin is due to the fact that the average civilized goblin, while not being given to the same depths of thought that a human can develop, thinks faster than a human and thus is quicker on the uptake.

Civilized goblins retain the short attention span and occasional maniacal episodes that they share with their wild brethren. A settlement of civilized goblins will usually have a 40%-60% split population, with wild goblins being in the majority; this, combined with an innate submissive streak in the wild individuals, generates a sort of loosely enforced natural caste system in which wild goblins listen to their weaker cousins, and put up with the occasional bout of repetitive work, in order to have access to better tools and cooked food. Interestingly, a common cause of disgregation for a goblin settlement is the unfortunate goblin individual who, due to incomplete or delayed development, has intelligence but is relegated to the lower status -- these individuals often lead what amount to workers' rebellions and, in most cases, find themselves as leaders of a somewhat better-than-average equipped feral goblin pack when the smoke clears.

Goblins are known for being tinkerers, probably due to a quirk in their racial memory (one theory states that goblins developed from gnomes as orks developed from humans, but there isn't currently a way to tell); while goblin craftsmanship is generally shoddy and piecemeal, their ability to quickly think up a solution to a problem makes for effective, if rickety, technology. Interestingly, goblins are generally able to quickly repair manufacts by other cultures, and do a decent job at it, although any lessons learned are likely to be forgotten or "improved upon" beyond recognition by the next time the goblin has a chance to apply any of them. Goblins greatly prize tools that are too complicated or precisefor them to develop; for example, a dwarven hammer will be kept in repair and treasured for generations until, by means of repeated maintenance, it has acquired a more local look.

A wild goblin is fully grown at seven; a civilized goblin, at ten. Generally, goblins begin to be interested in sexual activity at this age; while it has no impact on reproduction, it does serve a bonding purpose similar to that seen in apes. Civilized goblins generally do not form stable relationship and will stay together for six months to two years, although they do tend to pair off -- in a settlement, about one in five civilized goblins will be in a relationship; these tend to form what have been called mock family units and look after a juvenile until it's grown; civilized goblins will occasionally engage in group sexual activity after an event which is important to the community, much like bonobos. Wild goblins have a more violent approach to copulation, using it to strengthen dominance hierarchies, and thus tend to mimic chimpanzees in their behavior -- this rougher approach is the most likely reason why matings between wild and civilized goblins only occur in the context of rape, usually during riots. Adult goblins are seldom taller than 130cm and tend to have a similar build to elves, in proportion -- a goblin will generally weigh half as much as a dwarf of the same height. Wild goblins tend to have darker, tougher skin and more muscles, as well as shorter and thicker tails and fangs -- a quick way to tell a civilized goblin is by the more humanoid appearance of the face, although generally the preference in clothing is enough to mark a difference; a wild goblin tends to look like a shrunk, lithe ork and will usually use the barest minimum of clothing to cover itself from the elements, while a civilized goblin will generally want simple clothing first and the possibility to stick as much shiny junk on them as possible second. Wild goblins have a theoretical lifespan of about thirty years,although this has never been observed in the wild due to their fairly carefree approach to danger; the oldest civilized goblin on record died at age sixty-two, regretting that its personal specialty (cosmetics) prevented it from "going with a bang".

Past the larval/infant stage, goblins do not share the regenerative abilities of trolls, but share the Orkoid ability to survive brutal trauma; due to their relative gracility, this essentially puts them on an equal footing with other humanoids. In addition, since all the goblins of a strain are very closely related, goblin medicine is greatly simplified -- for example, a goblin can receive a blood transfusion by any tribe member, often by the simple means of pumping it directly into a wound. Rumors of limb and organ transplants are unsubstantiated, but leading experts believe that while no goblin would have the perseverance to accomplish such a feat, a master surgeon from a superior race could theoretically perform such a deed. Goblins are famous for their interest in chemistry, possibly due to their great sense of taste and general toughness to natural poisons -- it is speculated that their racial memory allows them to avoid the worst, most obvious mistakes.

Goblins that are about to die, either by old age or other factors (debilitation or sickness) develop 'tumors' which are in fact parasite fungal masses, starting from the skin and gradually digging their way in; eventually, these stop the normal vital processes. The deceased goblin is then carried to the spawning ground, and absorbed by it very rapidly (sometimes within a matter of hours), thus completing the life cycle. The fungal masses appear as either brown or white spots on the goblin's body, and expand very quickly when allowed to trigger by illness or trauma; interestingly, the powerful antibiotics they secrete contribute to fighting off any infections even as the body fails -- a goblin corpse is extremely clean, and these fungi can, if properly scraped off, boiled and dried, be used as emergency disinfectant the 80% of times they aren't highly toxic themselves. A sickly goblin will often develop early stages of fungal infestation before fighting those off as the last stage in their recovery. The innate awareness that an individual returns its experiences to the racial memory has given the goblin race a fairly cavalier attitude towards it.

Wild goblins far from spawning grounds are known to engage in cannibalism; civilized goblins generally claim to avoid the practice, mainly because it tends to cause bad relations with other races. Relations between goblins that are from two different spawning grounds tend to be fairly cold, but this hasn't prevented the occasional exchange of individual between two groups; it is thought that these exchanges help communication between spawning grounds' racial memories, and keep the race unified. Packs of wild goblins that engage other creatures in fights tend to eat their enemies, but generally spare the bodies of other goblins, instead dragging them to their spawning grounds -- it has happened on occasion that the killing of a group civilized goblins by a wild pack resulted in that spawning ground beginning to generate civilized individuals. Due to the nature of the algal/fungal mass that makes up a spawning ground, the best way for a stable mass to be formed is from a group of goblins that die not too close together and not too far apart. In ideal conditions, and given enough time undisturbed, a new mass can be formed from a single dead goblin -- some civilized goblins, perhaps mildly aware of it, decide to end their lives by ritually blowing themselves up in dark moist places.

Goblins have a very developed sense of taste and, surprisingly, can be fairly sophisticated in culinary matters, at least in terms of consumption (goblin cuisine is as experimental as just about everything else in their culture, and while a few tasty and nonpoisonous recipes have made their way into this or that strain's racial memory, most actual results are to say the least highly variable); almost without exception, goblins love rich food and can generally keep up with halflings in eating contests. A goblin's fast pace of life generally means that they will burn off the extra energy very quickly; a fat or even pudgy goblin is a very rare sight. Wild goblins generally lack the patience to produce fire and eat most of their food raw, although some goblin packs have been known to be able to preserve a fire they capture or steal for long periods of time.

The relative lack of size difference between any two individual goblins prevents the creation of a hierarchical society common in other orkoids; while packs of wild goblins generally have a defined leader, it is not necessarily the strongest. Civilized goblins generally exist in a state of cooperative near-anarchy, but tend to be somewhat subservient to the richest members of a community (primarily because they can afford the best food and the shiniest clothing). A quirk of the goblin mind is that while the average goblin understands and generally respects direct authority (a foster parent to a child, a craftsman to an apprentice, a warchief to a raiding party) the concept of chain of command is usually lost to the healthy goblin mind -- when a chain of command appears in a goblin settlement, it is usually at the beginning of an aberrant stage (see below). Anyone who isn't "the boss" will be instinctively seen by a goblin as a challenger for dominance and a threat to said "boss", and thus reacted to in a hostile manner -- even if that person happens to technically be the boss' boss. This makes goblins (even more) unpredictable within larger, multispecies societies.

Stable civilized goblin settlements tend to go through a cultural cycle in which more and more emphasis is put on pomp on articulation, as the local strain of intelligent goblins refine, until they develop sommething close to what other humanoids would call a bureaucratic system. Within one or two generations, the internal rules become so byzantine that the settlement ceases to function effectively and falls to a revolt by the wild individuals, usually due to food shortage; the less stable settlements revert to a feral or semi-feral state, while the more stable are in general able to rebuild in one or two generations, literally appearing to climb the ladder of civilization at breakneck speed at first until they return to a state similar to the one they had reached before the crisis.

It has been speculated by one of the few published goblin scholars that, if these crises were somehow to be averted, the goblin race would eventually be able to experience a cultural and technological singularity -- this is made unlikely by the race's aversion to central authority and short attention span, as evidenced by the next paragraph in that treatise, which concerned itself with the culinary applications of bombardier beetles. As exemplified here, goblin philosophy tends to be much more direct than that of other races; a solution to a problem has to work now and, if it won't tomorrow, something else will be figured out tomorrow. Goblins tend to be excellent instinctive short-term planners, but only civilized goblins can even conceive a long term and even then they tend to hardly ever be preoccupied by it -- this is another reason why generally, goblin settlements that become too large succumb to poor resource management (the few goblin settlements that manage to avoid the legalistic stage and subsequent purge usually expand enough that they end up consuming all local resources and starving their breeding fungal/algal mass).

Goblins generally have very little to say about religion. Packs of wild goblins occasionally dress up their burial procedure in rituals, usually distorted versions of what they have observed from others. Generally, a pack of wild goblins that is observed to do this is considered to be close to taking the evolutionary step into producing civilized individuals. In settlements, civilized goblins are occasionally aware enough of how their racial memory works to believe in reincarnation, with the individual mind spending some time in a dreamlike state while it's processed by the spawning ground. Civilized goblins whose racial memory doesn't include self-awareness tend to show a mild interest in the religious practices of those who surround them and will occasionally adopt a simplified version of the one they like best -- this simplification, united with the notion that goblins as a whole are an inferior race, is generally perceived as a mockery and causes friction more often than not. In general, goblins respect direct authority but have problems with a command structure: this is reflected in the religious habits they pick up in that they are more likely to concern themselves, for what little they do take concern, in local spirits or saints or demigods rather than the supreme beings of any religion.

Goblins tend to be very gregarious; wild goblins live in packs of 20~100 individuals that roam for half a year and return to their spawning ground during the warm months, and will generally be led by a particularly cunning specimen of their irk, a civilized goblin who has gone feral, or a larger greenskin. Civilized goblins tend to form settlements of 80~200 individuals. In addition, goblins are usually found performing menial tasks in communities of larger orkoids (orks and trolls); in those conditions, even civilized goblins are barely verbal. While a single goblin is generally a pushover, a group of them can be a consistent danger to small towns and caravans. Due to their innate loyalty, in the right setting wild goblins can be easily persuaded to carry out suicide missions -- this is taken advantage of perhaps a little too often.