# Race: Goblin > [!info] Quick Facts > | | | > |---|---| > | **Rarity** | Common | > | **Perception in Gryth** | Very negative. Assumed to be thieves or worse before a word is spoken, and held by the Salenian Church to be an abomination rather than a people. The exceptions are a few regions of Ganath, where goblinoids have never been counted as a threat, and the Feywild, where the hatred is not contempt but revulsion. | > | **Guide Section** | Common Races | ## Overview Goblins originate in the Redlands of [[Continent - Edaria|Edaria]] and have since spread to every corner of the world. There are millions of them. They are small, scrappy, and carry a strain of the Feywild’s chaotic magic in the blood, which shows in how difficult they are to pin down, charm, or corner. Their reputation is very poor, and not entirely undeserved. Generations of raiding, scavenging and service to worse masters have given the settled peoples of Gryth a fixed opinion of them. A goblin who wants to be judged on their own conduct will have to work hard for it, and a goblin is perfectly capable of it, though the records of such cases are thin and every one of them runs against the grain of what a goblin is. ## Taken from the Young Feywild Goblins are corrupted fey. In the elder days, before any of the histories that survive, they were pulled out of a Feywild that was then still young and remade by the gods of wrath and darkness into the shape they wear now. Whatever they had been before that did not survive the process. The fey have never forgiven it. To a creature of the Feywild a goblin is a gross bastardisation of nature’s gifts, walking proof that something sacred was taken and spoiled, and the loathing is instinctive rather than reasoned. Fairies in particular despise goblins, and goblins return the feeling with enthusiasm and a long list of grievances of their own. ## The Myznix Goblins worship the Myznix, a pantheon of sniggering, chaotic gods whose number nobody outside goblin culture has established. Scholars suspect the Myznix are vestiges of Ymios, the Ever-Changing, broken off and scattered, which would explain a great deal about their character and nothing about their quantity. One scholarly excursion among the generally peaceful Goldhill Goblins of Edaria documented at least two hundred of them before the work was abandoned, and the Goldhill were clear that a great many more had not been mentioned. ## De-Ra-Zan-It and the Red Pit Above all of them sits De-Ra-Zan-It. The Redlands are the ancestral home of every goblin alive, and beneath the goblinoid city of K’rsham lies the Red Pit, a vast shaft in which something is said to dwell that has taken hold of the minds of goblinkind entire. What it is has never been established by anyone who came back. The reach of that worship is the part scholars find difficult. Small offerings and strange etchings in the same hand turn up as far away as the deserts of [[Continent - Iros|Iros]], left by goblins who have never seen the Redlands and cannot say who taught them the marks. ## The Redlands Under Crusade The Redlands are also one of the Eight Blights named by the Salenian Church, and one of only two currently under active crusade. Three crusades have been launched into that country and all three left it weaker than they found it. [[Region - High Salen|High Salen]]’s theology holds that goblins and orcs are not peoples at all but abominations made by dark gods, which makes the campaign a purification rather than a war and removes any question of terms. Given what the Church would find in the Red Pit if it ever got that far, the position is not entirely without foundation. ## The Order Beneath the Noise Goblin society looks like chaos from the outside and is nothing of the sort. The hierarchy is strict, constantly enforced, and second nature to anyone raised inside it, which is why outsiders consistently mistake a settled question for a brawl. Life is cheap in that system. The needs of the many outweigh the wants of the few as a matter of course, and a goblin who expects otherwise is a goblin who has not been paying attention. What goblins value is strength, and they are drawn to it the way moths are drawn to a lamp. Any dark power that establishes itself anywhere in the world can expect the goblinoids of the surrounding country to start arriving within a season, seeking shelter in the shadow of something greater than themselves. ## Everywhere, and Beneath Notice Outside the Redlands goblins have gone where nobody was counting. They are among the many peoples of Githwin, where a thousand kilometres of unmapped forest asks no questions about anybody’s ancestry. They work the gambling houses of [[City - Shugwood|Shugwood]] in numbers large enough that the goblin gangs are one of the things that city is known for. They crew ships throughout the [[Region - The Bleeding Isles|Bleeding Isles]], where race means nothing beside the stories a pirate can tell. One of them has gone further than any goblin in recorded history. [[NPC - Madam Mamm|Madam Mamm]], seven feet of goblin and appetite, sits among the seven Pirate Lords of the Emerald Expanse, commands the admiral ship Skrrzt, and holds her territory through a swarm of goblinoid crews known as the Green Things and a fleet assembled from everything anybody else threw away. No settled nation has acknowledged her title. Every captain in the southern ocean uses it. ## The Yellowheads Parts of [[Continent - Ganath|Ganath]] have never regarded goblinoids as enemies at all, and the clearest example lives in the Yellowmarsh of [[Region - Yusta Nava|Yusta Nava]]. The Yellowheads stand a foot high, have abandoned violence altogether, are revered locally as sages, ride tamed toads, and communicate across the whole region through a network of sentient mushrooms. They are not goblins as the Redlands would understand the word. Goblins elsewhere regard them with a mixture of bafflement and envy. > [!warning] A difficult character to play > Goblins are met with open hostility across almost all of Gryth. Expect refused service, official harassment, and violence that nobody investigates. A player choosing this race is taking on a roleplaying challenge that will shape every settlement the party enters, and should agree that with the rest of the table before session one. > [!note] Common in number, rare in company > Goblins are listed as Common because there are millions of them and they are found on every continent. That is a count of the population, not a measure of how often you will meet one over a table. Goblins are an uncommon sight inside a town, and a goblin with the manners, language, and self-possession to move through one without incident is rarer still. A player character goblin is already unusual among goblins before they are unusual among anyone else, and it is worth deciding where that came from. ## Goblin Traits **Ability Score Increase.** Your Dexterity score increases by 2, and your Constitution score increases by 1. **Age.** Goblins reach adulthood at age 8 and live up to 60 years. **Creature Type.** You are a Humanoid. You are also considered a goblinoid for any prerequisite or effect that requires you to be a goblinoid. **Size.** Your size is Small. **Speed.** Your base walking speed is 30 feet. **Darkvision.** You can see in dim light within 60 feet of you as if it were bright light, and in darkness as if it were dim light. You cannot discern colour in darkness, only shades of grey. **Fey Ancestry.** You have advantage on saving throws you make to avoid or end the charmed condition on yourself. **Fury of the Small.** When you damage a creature with an attack or a spell and the creature’s size is larger than yours, you can cause the attack or spell to deal extra damage to the creature. The extra damage equals your proficiency bonus. You can use this trait a number of times equal to your proficiency bonus, regaining all expended uses when you finish a long rest, and you can use it no more than once per turn. **Nimble Escape.** You can take the Disengage or Hide action as a bonus action on each of your turns. **Languages.** You can speak, read, and write Common and Goblin. ## Connections - [[Continent - Edaria]] — Continent of the Redlands, ancestral home of every goblin - [[Region - High Salen]] — Seat of the Salenian Church, crusading against the Redlands - [[City - Shugwood]] — Goblin gangs work its gambling houses - [[Region - The Bleeding Isles]] — Goblins crew ships throughout the isles - [[NPC - Madam Mamm]] — Goblin Pirate Lord of the Emerald Expanse - [[Continent - Ganath]] — Regions where goblinoids are not counted as a threat - [[Region - Yusta Nava]] — Home of the Yellowheads in the Yellowmarsh - [[Continent - Iros]] — Goblin offerings and etchings found in its deserts --- ## Gallery ![[Race - Goblin.jpg]] --- *See also: [[Races]]*