It is a little know fact that Goblins live among us. They usually refrain from making contact with non-magical humans because our portrayal of goblins in fiction and games is inaccurate and highly offensive.
Goblins cannot be seen by humans. At times when humans are forced to interact with a goblin, they will recall a precocious child or a person of unusually short stature.
This is a world-building “prompt”. Instead of giving you a seed of an idea, we begin the world-building process that you can use as a foundation for a setting.
Goblin looks
According to Festus Briland, goblins are short – ranging in size from 45cm (2ft.) to 91cm (3ft.). They are green-skinned with a large range of body morphologies. They are often comical in proportion with wide eyes and big eyebrows. Their exact form changes as they age to reflect their personality. In other words, they come in all sorts of shapes and sizes and what you see is what you get.
Goblins are usually good-natured and fun-loving with very little apparent care for their own safety or the safety of those around them. This is because goblins are almost impossible to kill. If a goblin is injured to the point of death, its current body turns to green slime and the goblin instantly reforms in the bed it last slept in.
Giving a goblin clothes or accessories or allowing them to pick IP or make accessories or clothes will change not only how the goblin itself looks but how they act too. For goblins form dictates function. This is not to say that goblins will accept anything they are given. Give a goblin dressed as a builder a dress and he will likely wipe his nose with it rather than put it on.
For example, give a small goblin a leather jacket and a crash helmet and it will start to bulk up to fill the jacket (within the limits of goblin sizes) and set bout building a fast and loud bike. The goblin may also develop an attitude problem when it comes to accepting orders. Or it might become a protector of the weak, a damn fine machinic, or a boring goblin at parties that only talks about bikes. Regardless of gender, the goblin is also more likely to increase in attractiveness to female goblins because the stereotype fits.
Goblin personalities
For goblins form determines function. This means that what a goblin wears, thinks, or does determine personality, looks, and even skills. Likewise, goblin names tend to reinforce or tweak things.
For example, if you were to give a naked goblin a mop, a flat cap, and a janitor’s coat they would develop personality traits, interests, and work behaviours consistent with their new outfit. Any knowledge lacking for the goblin’s new role will quickly be learned.
In principle, should you give a goblin a medal that said “fastest goblin in the world”, that goblin would very soon be the fastest runner and the quickest worker. We the goblin encounters a faster goblin, they would simply become faster. If you gave out a few of these you may find that you have goblins able to move at a significant fraction of the speed of light.
Goblin work
Goblins hate to be without a task. Left without instructions for too long a goblin will fall into a hibernation state. Once hibernated a goblin needs no food, drink, or air. They can stay hibernated for tens of thousands of years.
Goblin’s work can come from a number of different sources. Instructions from a magical human to whom they have pledged loyalty, from work suggested by their form, or from behaviour designed to get something the goblin wants. As goblins occasionally fixate on all sorts of things this want could be anything from the crown jewels to a pet cat.
For example, if you gave a group of goblins some hard hats and some tools and asked for a hole, the goblin with the biggest, best, or most different looking hard hat would become the foreman. Then the rest of them would organise into a work gang with different goblins taking on different stereotypical quirks and attitudes and hole digging would commence (with a lot of smoke breaks – which for goblins means standing there smouldering and giving off smoke). Hole digging would not stop. Not until they were given a new job or the workers decided they were not getting enough worms to eat in which case they would make picket signs and go on strike.
Goblin couples starting a family will count this as work but may seek outside employment as well.
Goblin physics/magic
For goblins, the world works not on set rules of physics but on a combination of function following form and the rule of cool.
For example, goblin motorbike engines consist of a spinny-thing connected to one or both wheels. The wheel goes round because the spinny-thing moves and the spinny thing moves because the wheels are turning. Thus, for a goblin, it makes perfect sense that this bike (most often made from wood and/or junk) can go exactly as fast as it looks like it can for as long as the spinny-thing spins. Goblin bike enthusiasts (often seen wearing scraps of leather) may install a second or third spinny-thing to their bike. Despite not connecting to anything, the spinny-things spin and do seem to make the bike more powerful and faster.
Goblins have a flexible understanding of size, shape, and dimensions. Should you hire a team of goblin builders to construct a building with three floors and a room there is every chance that outside it will have three floors and a roof but inside may have ten floors and seven basement levels.
A good storyteller can literally shape the limits of what a goblin can do by spinning a story that matches the stereotypes, cliches, and form of the goblin. This is because most goblin devices, so-called goblin magic, and goblins themselves are formed and defined by narrative and imaginative ideas.
For example, a goblin that has gone to the trouble of making a set of wax crayons (out of something called goblin wax – don’t ask) they will be able to change things by drawing on them. Faced with a wall they will draw a door and walk through it. For goblins, Road Runner is a tutorial instead of a fantasy.
Goblin food
Goblins can eat pretty much anything. However, they are especially drawn to strong-smelling (and rotten) food. For this reason, goblins tend to establish themselves near humans as humans seem to throw out the best food.
However, goblins are just as capable of hunting and farming as they are of savaging. It is not unheard of for a team of goblins to round up the fattest specimens of the local rat population and farm them for food and manure.
In larger populations, some goblins may specialise in scavenging, food distribution, and farming. Thus securing for themselves work that will keep them from hibernation.
Goblin eggs
Goblin babies are born from eggs. While in eggs form, goblins are extremely vulnerable but as soon as they hatch, they have that same hard to kill condition as all goblins. Goblin parents tend to be viciously defensive of their eggs.
A goblin couple will produce an egg when they both feel safe and when neither one has seen or interacted with more than ten adult goblins in the past 48 hours. For inexperienced goblin parents, this can lead to isolation and thus very large families.
To produce an egg the two goblins will kiss and an egg the size of the female’s fist will pop into existence between them.
As the egg grows, it may split one or more times (or not). This seems to be determined wholly by whether or not the goblins caring for the egg think it should split or not. Each egg will grow as if it was an original egg with each of the hatchlings being some variant of the possible child goblins. Egg splitting is the only way to get composite goblins (a mix of each parent’s markings, clothes, and accessories).
Goblin eggs are cared for by the parents, older siblings and other goblins that are important to the core family such as uncles, aunts, family friends, and the delivery goblin.
Goblin babies
Goblins have three genders – male, female, and indifferent. Gender appears to be somewhat optional although once selected seems to be permanent. That said, goblin babies frequently look like miniature versions of their parents which tends to lock in gender (but not always).
Goblin eggs start at about the size of the mother’s fist and grow over time. The speed the egg grows is wholly determined by the amount of love and care the egg is shown.
Goblin children are born with the learned skills of both parents. This includes languages.
For example, a male goblin that speaks french (and so is likely to be a chef) and a goblin mother that speaks german have a child, that child will speak french and german. They will quite likely be inclined towards cinematography and art house films. Goblins lean very heavily on cliches and stereotypes.
Some children are born dressed like one parent or the other. Such children will be substantially similar to the parent but can change over time based on work and additional accessories collected.
Goblin children
Goblin babies that are well cared for may only remain babies for a month or two as they grow quite quickly.
Goblin children are essentially smaller and more playful versions of adult goblins. They are also substantially better at getting into trouble.
If your home has had a year where things keep going missing, things keep breaking, and the power keeps going out, etc., then the odds are there might be a goblin family raising a child in or near your home.
Most goblin children mature into their initial adult form within a year or so. Some goblins are born undifferentiated. They lack any of the markings, clothes, or accessories of the parents can take considerably longer to mature and may enter a protracted “teenage” stage.
Goblin children mature in age order. Goblin children younger than the teenage goblin will stay immature until it is their turn to grow up.
Teenage goblins will often act out, make trouble, and experiment with pretty much everything that might upset their parents. This phase can last from a year up to thirteen years. Any longer and the goblin will automatically hibernate thus clearing the way for younger siblings to mature. It ends when the goblin works out what it wants to be like and adopts the clothing, markings, form, size, shape, and accessories that define that.
Goblin Society
Goblins prefer to live in groups of between six and twelve but newly paired couples may seek to start their own home. They generally establish themselves near humans that they feel are in some way similar to them.
Goblin society does not tend to grow quickly. The only growth factor are couples looking to start a family which is only a minority of goblins. As goblin adults don’t age, they can afford to take hundreds of years to find a mate.
Although self-sustaining goblin populations exist, most concentrations establish around a magical human whom they serve. Magical humans will often seek out undifferentiated goblins (teenagers) as they can dress them for whatever tasks and roles they need.
For example, a magical human needing goblins with access to technology may decorate a goblin or two as an inventor, engineer, or scientist. This goblin will then make items that work purely by way of goblin magic.
Families and secondary services (food, junk, clothes, and accessories) tend to build up around the master human. If the operation is big enough, the goblin society can become self-sustaining.
Goblin economies
Goblins do not have economies except that they do. Goblins have heard of money but do not seem to understand how it works. When buying or selling it is not the number of coins that matters but that they have been given.
Goblin coins can be anything. Common goblin coins include slices of a tree branch with pictures on them, human coins, bottle caps, game tokens, Monopoly money, washers, colourful pebbles, pretty shells, or anything small and shiny.
If a goblin needs to buy something they will make currency in advance of the purchase.
Despite this, goblins doing labour based jobs expect to be paid. A human contracting goblins to do work should collect a large number of shiny pennies and bottle caps as happy goblins do better work.
Despite this, the goblin economy somehow works. There are rich goblins and poor goblins. Only the goblins seem to know why and they are not telling.