RPG Superstar Season 9 Top 16, RPG Superstar 2015 Top 32
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Its been a long time! Good to be back.
I am currently running Rise of the Runelords as an introduction to the world for my current group and plan on running other AP for them once we finish. One of the things I have been doing with this run through is reworking goblins and challenging the lore of the world about them. In fact, I've been taking all sorts of monsters from the world and applying a different lens than is normally used.
What if the information available about intelligent "monsters" is actually propaganda that has been filtered through a lens of colonialism and bigotry?
I'll get into goblins in a moment, but as an example from my game, the ogres that are the adversaries of Book 3 in Rise of the Runelords were pushed out of their hunting grounds when humans settled the area and have been fighting for survival since. Their actions were not motivated by evil intentions (at least on their part) but out of a struggle to live and a bad-faith actor taking advantage of their resentment. I kept some of the brutality they showed to the rangers, but it was less about finding pleasure in torture and more trying to exact revenge for similar brutalities they faced when driven out of ancestral areas. This has worked out really well in terms of storytelling because I have a paladin that worked to try and create friends out of enemies and a group that is strongly into social and restorative justice.
As for goblinkind, I'm working on something pretty extensive. I can go into details about my campaign's specific tie-ins for this in a comment, but here is the start of what will be canon for my games. Its a rough draft, but won't change much.
By: Minnki Hopple (gnome scholar of anthropology and linguistics)
“Driven ahead of that Prime Devil,
Their pain fueling their fury,
Screams ahead, silence behind,
Creation’s first slaughter,
Blood dripped down from the muzzle,
And the first goblin was born when it hit the ground.”
“The First Hunt” from the Goblin First Songs
There have been many things written about goblins in Golarian, and it is my sober duty to inform everyone that I can how wrong we have been about them. Modern society views them as little more than barbaric monsters that are little more intelligent than the mute apes but just as driven by animalistic instinct. Their culture is seen as crude, their language an assault on the ears, and their way of life fit for only the simple idiot. Few laws provide them rights and protections, and many encourage the extermination of whole populations, right down to the youngest babe.
I will not be popular for saying so, but the Goblinblood Wars was not to protect humankind and their allies from goblins. They were a genocide fueled by xenophobia, colonial ambitions, and a shared hatred so hot that traditional enemies rode together through goblin villages to slaughter and burn populations that had committed no crime other than being goblins.
And yet, the history of the goblins is filled with abuse and death perpetrated against them. To endure and rebuild is nothing new to them, and their own songs teach of cycles of growth, abundance, decline, and decay. What we currently see with goblins is just the bottom of that cycle, a state of decay that provides the best ground for abuse against them. However, its also possible that we shall see them start their growth again soon.
This record is to encourage all who can read it to reconsider goblinkind. We need to change our mindset, and we certainly need to change our laws. Welcoming goblins into society at large, as we have done with many other races, will only benefit everyone.
Part 1: The First Songs and Origins
To start to understand goblin history you have to understand goblin language. There are no official written records, only oral traditions, but what survives across the disparate populations is unusually consistent and unified.
The language is difficult to master for non-goblins due to a few differences in biology. Goblins do not have lips like other humaniods, and they often have teeth that can get in the way of forming a few syllables. For example, b sounds, m sounds, and long o sounds are harder for their mouths. To make up for this they use their throats, sinuses, and top pallet more, and have incorporated clicks, tongue knocks, and even teeth taps into the sounds that make up the language’s syllables.
The other difference in biology is that goblinkind doesn’t hear sound the same as humankind does. While I lack the ability to test out the exact range of sound, I believe there are higher pitches and lower tones they may be making and hearing in their communication to other goblins. The discovery at this came when a goblin mocked my speech as monotone and lacking syllables I was unable to hear and reproduce. After this discovery, the goblins I was spending time with would occasionally use the tones outside my hearing range to privately communicate!
However, as exciting as these observations were nothing prepared me for the shock that came when I realized goblinkind has two languages we have been confusing as one.
Goblins love to sing. To human ears it is discordant, pitchy, and sometimes rough to the mind, but to goblins this is actually a higher language. To sing is to express emotion, intent, feeling, and belief. It elevates the goblin language to something more, and we scholars have failed to understand it.
The tone, pitch, and note of a word can greatly change the meaning of a word. For example, the word for goblin used outside of singing generally has only two meanings. Either an individual that is viewed as being goblin or a group that is viewed as being goblin in nature. It becomes confusing to non-natives when this word is applied to non-goblins or a group of non-goblins, however a native speaker would understand the context and see that its application is being informed by song. It’s made more difficult for non-native speakers because there is a special click in a sinus to denote a change in meaning due to shared understanding of context. That click is hard to detect for non-goblins, as are several other sounds that can change how words are used.
The higher language complicates this even more. When the word for goblin is sung one way it transforms into a complex concept that I can best translate as, “One who is friend, welcomed, and invited to sit with the singers.” When it is sung another way it means, “One who has suffered like we have and knows what it means.” The songs that a community knows informs how they understand the word, and when two distant communities meet they always try to find time to share songs so their meanings can be understood.
No set of songs are as important as The First Songs. If you understand what I call High Goblin, you come away understanding a great deal about goblins when you hear The First Songs. There are variations across the different communities and populations of this world, but the bones of the oldest songs are still there. The first songs a goblin child learns are The First Songs. Unfortunately, the Goblinblood Wars cut off many populations from elders who would be able to teach the song properly and I have come across small pockets of goblin populations that sung corrupted versions. I also believe there have been corruptions from bad faith actors, though I’ll get more into why later. These corruptions lacked important lessons, encouraged harmful taboos, and built into those micro-cultures dangerous dogmas.
The First Songs are the start of goblin history. I have done my best to record and compile the many versions I heard, and with some help I believe I have pieced together one of the oldest versions of them. However, I have come across a remarkable goblin, Zordini, who claims to know the original composition. I was present when he and group of elderly goblins performed it for a gathering of goblins in Varisia. I will talk more about the Goblin Meet later, but the rendition was so strikingly different from my work that I am unsure which to trust. Yet, the power felt in the song, the secrets it revealed, and reaction from the goblins has made me wonder if Zordini tells the truth.
The first songs traditionally begin after The Age of Creation, after humankind has been created but before they lived in cities. The first verses open with Asmodeus leading the four goblin creator-gods on leashes on a hunt. Hadregash, Venkelvore, Zarongel, and Zogmugot are all collared and leashed, driven before Asmodeus towards a camp of humans. No one is spared, all are killed, but when blood from the mouth of these barghest-gods falls to the ground it turns into the first goblins.
Asmodeus dismisses these new creations, rejects them, and orders them eaten. Hadregash, Venkelvore, Zarongel, and Zogmugot all refuse, but in the common versions it's unclear why this is allowed and the goblins are left alive. The barghest -gods do their best to set the goblins up with the tools they need for survival, but are eventually dragged back to their cages in Asmodeus’s realm.
We are then treated to the song of the first thoughts. This is a trio of songs that provides us with the point-of-view of the very first goblin, whose name is Goblin [The First One]. The First One has three thoughts, each with its own song. It’s hear that we really need to understand the subtle nature of the high language and how it changes meaning.
If we only translate to the lower language we get the following:
“Goblin am Goblin.
Goblin see all.
Goblin feel all.
Goblin have first thought.
What mean to be Goblin?
What mean to be Goblin?
What mean to be Goblin?
When we work to attempt a translation to the higher language we get the following:
“I, myself whole and complete, know I am The First One.
I, The First One, looks about the world to see creation in full.
I, The First One, senses in all ways the creation in full.
I, The First One, is struck with curiosity and thought
What is the significance of being The First One?
What does being a Goblin mean?
What does being a living, thinking thing mean?
You see, this song when taken to mean just the spoken word comes across as simple and childlike. It may be seen as holding a bit of philosophical musing but the nuance of the moment is lost if you can’t comprehend the additional meaning added by the tone, pitch, and notes of the high language.
In this moment we have what is known as the first thought of the goblins. A deep observation of creation and an immediate question of philosophical significance. While broken into three parts, the question begs the listener to ask one of the most challenging questions of thinking people: What does it mean to be?
The questions don’t stop there, as there is a second and a third question. Both are as deep as the first.
I, The First One, explore what was before me.
I, The First One, find burned camps now cold.
I, The First One, find the blood on the rock and soil of creation.
I, myself whole and complete, know I came from blood on the rock and soil of creation.
Why did I, The First One, come from death of an innocent being?
Why did Goblinkind, whole and complete, start life as the blood of the dead?
How should we celebrate life in the face of our beginning?
That last part is often sung a little differently to suggest the goblins should celebrate the slaughter that gave them life, and I have to admit that I often believed that was what was meant until I learned to understand the high language.
But here is the second question. If we understand what it means to be, we must also find a way to understand where we came from. If our origin is from the pain, suffering, and death of another, do we feel guilt? Do we honor who came before? If life is to be celebrated, why did ours need the death of another to start it?
And finally, the third question.
I, The First One, have the tools the Goblin Creator Gods have given me.
I, The First One, live a life filled with all I need.
Creation whole and complete, gives me food when I am hungry.
Creation whole and complete, gives me water when I am thirsty,
Why does Creation whole and complete give to me so freely?
What do I, The First One owe Creation whole and complete for this bounty?
What should I give freely and abundantly to be like Creation whole and complete?
The third question places the goblin mindset into the natural world. There are few settlements made by goblinkind that we might classify as a city. All other populations I have been able to visit live in structures easily created with the natural world around them and populations tend to split apart when numbers become unsustainable with the local ecosystem, one population leaving and seeking out a new sustainable location. This does not discount city dwelling goblin populations, as they treat urban environments like natural ones. That is, they take what they need and try to give back in ways that keeps their livelihood sustainable.
The question is my best guess at why goblinkind seeks more communal living. It may be why they do not have a cultural understanding of borders or personal property. Those living in urban environments have adopted a philosophy that allows for the respect of those two concepts, but even in cities goblin communities exist nearly identically to those in wild areas. They ask themselves what the natural world has to teach and give to them, and nature does not educate them on ideas like commerce, capital, or property rights.
Thus to a goblin, the third question is how a person should live. Take what is needed when it is provided, give back what you can, be a good steward, and follow the example of the natural world. That may mean you give your life so something else can live, or it may mean you need to let someone else use a tool you have maintained.
In Magnimar, I saw this followed in an astonishing way. The city’s founding included an impressive public work of a sewer system that brought fresh, clean water directly into buildings and a waste management system that pulled waste water safely out to the sea. According to the goblins living in the sewers, a tribe that has a name I can only hazard to translate as The Waste Managers, when they first settled into the sewers the many, many subterranean layers the sewers were a part of had been abandoned by any public works employee of the city and taken over by slimes, otgyhs, criminals, and cultists. The goblins had a rough start, but have managed to carve out and manage an ecosystem that has greatly benefited the city without anyone outside of their tribe barely knowing what is happening.
While more can be written about what is involved, I have to summerize here. They manage the ecosystem of slime and waste happy monsters to break down waste, filter out valuable material, and safely process the byproducts into alchemical chemicals and gases they use to trade with a few trusted allies. They are currently one of the larger tribes I’ve been able to spend time with, with about 200 members consisting mostly of goblins, but also includes a few hobgoblin families that have immigrated and a small number of bugbears that provide security in isolated checkpoints. The current leader, Inkolar (though oddly their name comes with a tooth click that denotes them as the second one to hold this name), calls themselves “Guild Master” instead of chief, and is oddly sociable for a bugbear.
To ask the three first questions, then, is possibly the most goblin thing a person can do. To understand what you are, where you came from, and how to live in harmony with your world is deeply important to goblins. This is highlighted by the phrase, “You don’t have the first thought in your head!” To outsiders this is an insult suggesting simple mindedness. For a goblin, this is a claim that someone doesn’t know who and what they are, but also an accusation that someone doesn't ask important questions.
The rest of The First Songs vary by tribe, region, and sometimes even family. They almost always have The Song of Lamashtu next. In this song the demon goddess of Lamashtu takes the realm of Basalfeyst from Hell into the Outer Rifts near her own domain. The details depend on how dedicated the goblins are to Lamashtu and their worship of her. In the most dedicated tribes, her heist is given lots of details that praise her cunning. In these songs the barghest-gods are more beast than persons, tamed by Asmodeus but freed of a prison by the Mother of Beasts. In the songs from tribes that are only loosely favorable for Lamashtu, the story has her lying her way into Basalfeyst and bribing the barghest-gods to change their allegiance to her. They are uncertain at first but agree after she practically begs and makes outlandish promises. Some of the promises are kept, but the songs don’t say if she ever broke a promise.
The remaining songs are in various orders depending on the tribe. They generally cover The Discovery of Fire, The Words That Steal Thoughts, How Goblins Learned To Sing, and The Anvil and Forge. A few may also have To Eat A Slug, Dogslicer and Horsechopper, The Misbehaving Ratdog, To Be A Goblin Hero, and Why Are We Falling? Hobgoblins also include their own origin story, though it may be argued that the songs they include are more of a prelude into the larger epic about their history.
Before I move on, I must share with you the joy of To Eat A Slug.
Hopnop had a growling stomach
They did not want a pickle
The batch was far too sour
They did not want the shroom
Its top was far too purple
They craved a slimy, moving thing
A green and fat big slug
They found one under the rotten log
It had a yellow stripe
They gluped and chewed, and gnashed away
The slime was sickly sweet
They fell down dead upon the rotten log
The slugs now had a feast
So young goblins learn this fast
Eat what you are given
Hopnop was a picky eater
But slugs and worms are not
This is one of the few children songs that get included with The First Songs, especially if they will be performed for younger goblins. They almost always are placed at a point where young goblins struggle to pay attention, and the singer or singers are far more animated in the singing. On top of that, it's a moral tale that focuses on a problem goblin caregivers frequently have to deal with. When performed the children always laugh and those who have heard the song do call backs. In a couple performances a few of the older children even acted out Hopnop and fell down to pretend to be dead at the end.
*A translation note: While the songs often rhyme in Goblin, I have not forced them to do so here in the translations. I have chosen to try and keep the meaning over finding a rhyme.
Let me know if you want a part 2!