"My goblins are different!"
"My goblins are different!"
Goblins are wild Fey obsessed with fire and destruction, but perversely gifted with drive and intellect. They occasionally besiege towns with mechanical contraptions that could only be the product of a diseased intellect. They have great respect for craftsmanship, however, and a...
Share your gobbos-but-not-gobbos with me. Let's all be hacks together.
Unrelated, but its nice to see other people using kanka
It's really good. I do a lot of my actual text editing in Notion, and I tie it all together on Kanka. u/Ilestis is unfailingly pleasant and hard working.
My goblins are magic-stripped elves who were physically altered by a spell to make 'assassin' type soldiers (almost all my "humanoid" races stem from something similar actually). The goblins developed a scavenger/recycling culture after the conflict they were created for ended and they now often live just outside of settlements or monster territories. They get the majority of what they need from their neighbours scraps. Being small, fast, and blending into their environment benefits their survival significantly, hence their size and unusual coloring.
That's sick! Do they retain some elvish culture and practices? Have they mostly lost that heritage, and/or do some try to reclaim it? Or have they rejected all that in favor of a newer culture that reflects their current predicament? They're basically living in their own apocalypse setting, alongside people for whom the world hasn't ended. That sounds like fuel for a lot of angst.
Oh man, I typed a big response and lost it so this is going to be much shorter whoops.
To answer your questions: In the time immediately after the conflict there was a lot of desire to "go back to elf", but there were a few problems.
- They went through brainwashing to feel separate from elves (as they were created to kill them) and even though they managed to kind of break out of it, they still feel like they are and are not the same at the same time. They don't really "fit" anymore.
- It wasn't actually possible to undo the changes.
- Elven society made a decision to cut them and similar races off completely.
As for culture, there are virtually no similarities remaining at the main time period I'm writting in, as elven culture further developed in a magic-centric way and goblin culture developed in a very different direction. And since they weren't interacting whatsoever during that development, very different.
Of the elf-based races, goblins are probably the most content with their new way of life, and are usually the least ambitious. While others, like humans, deeply desire reclaiming magic somehow (not being an elf again, just getting their "birthright" magic back). Goblins have a bit of pride in their new lifestyle, and power like that would disrupt their way of living. They don't really teach about their origin (though they retain stories of it as needed) and they live among many also non-magic races, so there isn't a lot to be jealous of (for the time being).
There's also definitely some difference between the ones that have a symbiotic thing going with creatures in the wild vs those that are urban. The grief is mostly for the latter, who have to deal with the people who see them as "trash rummagers" and "thieves", and treat them harshly, instead of seeing them as the "recyclers" they are. They'll never acknowledge that cities with goblins living nearby are always cleaner.
My goblins were a lower caste of orcs sorted away at a young age due to their small size, they are a servent class. though orcs who are pastoralists with a high protein meat based diet are overall large enough to not produce goblins.
That's interesting, and could be a pretty direct way to deal with topics like casteism or eugenics. Do your goblins ever try to reclaim power? Have their circumstances led them to claim a new identity or belief system?
Maybe there are factional divides in goblin culture around whether to remain culturally orcish or embrace new ways. Maybe there are even rifts in orc society over how to deal with the fallout of the divisions their ancestors have sown.
Maybe they've got the same religious ideas but they've created a new way to worship, or maybe their smaller stature and decreased privilege has led to a wholly different style of cuisine.
When you're born into a world where you're not accepted or valued, you find a way to walk in your own truth even if you're not valued by the society you're in.