ON GOBLINS

Goblins in General

The Goblins of the Würstreich have been around for as long as anyone can remember. Their malodorous, pulsating, writhing, sweaty, disgusting origins are covered in a pungent muck & shrouded in a choking, sulphurous smoke & totally unknown to the pen of any historian or scientist, but they have been man’s constant companion throughout the ages. 

Goblins are a quasi-daemonic race of nasty, filthy, sadistic creatures that have been the focus of folk tales, children’s rhymes & the curses of old women & irresponsible men as long as anyone can remember. Countless numbers of both minor & major irritations have been attributed to the fiddly destructiveness of the Goblins - but how many of these are actually true? As the Würstreich has taken a turn for the Wurst - Goblins have become an increasingly real & dangerous threat to the natural order. Also known as Schmutz Maden (Muck Maggots) - mature Goblins are about half the size of an adult human although they vary tremendously in size & proportion. They are physically related to humans or apes but they also tend towards insect, rodent, canine & poultry forms & nightmarish mixtures thereof. As quasi-daemons - Goblins do not always relate to the earthly laws of nature, they change shape & form & appear out of nowhere.

Goblins are grotesque & malicious caricatures with beady eyes, bat wing-like ears, big feet that slap on the ground, enormous noses that they use to root around in the soil, hunched backs, ape-like arms, short, twisted legs, red, loose, pocked, chicken-like skin, horribly sharp teeth & infectious fingernails. Goblins are rumored to pulsate & squirm out of damp places that haven’t been cleaned properly - arriving as writhing maggot Grublins in the backs of filthy, unkempt chicken coops, the forgotten uncleaned cabinets in the shadows of barns where animal filth hadn’t been cleaned, underneath sinks with the damp mouse feces & mushrooms, behind uncleaned latrines, in the city sewers, under barrels that haven’t been moved in months & the like. If the Grublins aren’t discovered by humans & crushed under boot heel or whisked away by their brethren to their terrible Nests - they mature into small Goblins & immediately begin causing trouble. Goblin trouble starts small - breaking pots, pulling nails halfway out of boards, pissing in the sink, farting & belching in public, leaving odd stains on clothing, souring milk, littering, writing rude words on walls, blowing out candles, pscratching animals & children with their unclean nails, stealing small, shiny objects & pulling up flowers.

As the Goblins grow & gain in number - they start stealing larger things like horses, carts & barrels, breaking windows, scratching the mortar away between stones until walls mysteriously fall apart, rotting wooden beams, spoiling grain & defecating everywhere. If the unclean reign of Goblins is not met with sanitation, order & death - they start building their terrible Schmutz Nests where the sun doesn’t shine - Goblin Hives made from excrement, mud, straw & dead leaves. In the perverted parody of nature that Goblins infest - there are entire orders of Goblins that build the filthy, stinky, sagging spires of Goblin excrement - stealing loaves of bread or just foraging for anything edible to be made into manure mortar. As Goblin society grows - the varieties of Goblins grow with it & they begin to take many different forms from enormous Gobflys, Goblin Dogs or their final Daemonic form Bilezogbug - the terrible Goblin Fly Lord. Bilezogbug lives deep in hidden caves under the surface of Bodengard where she is fed human bones & other long-dead things.

Uncle Goblin Stories

Uncle Goblin is a folk hero that tells strange, comedic stories of the Goblins to the human children of the world who will listen. He is imagined to live in a little, ramshackle shed away from any human settlement with his big old threadbare, patched, chair, a cauldron of a mysterious liquid always cooking away over a fire, his scraggly, deranged chicken friends loudly carrying on & he tells stories that focus on Goblins as protagonists, yet also provide some semblance of a moral for humans.  

The Goblin Fortress
The Goblin Fortress was once the bustling, prosperous human city of Brötkorburg before it fell to the Goblins. Brotkorburg used to be the biggest city to the east of Brüttelburg. Brötkorburg was built up from the riches of what used to be the center of the breadbasket of the Würstreich, The whole area was rent asunder by insane Wizards tampering with the fabric of reality. Now the Goblins control the ruins as much as they can control anything, but they allow other beings to exist there because they don’t care. Rivers of warm filth stream from the walls of the city. When its debased structure doesn’t allow enough space for the hordes of Goblins, they fashion new partitions from their own refuse & dig tunnels further underground. The lands surrounding the Goblin Fortress have long-since been stripped of anything edible or stealable & all the Goblin urine has poisoned the earth of any possible plant growth adding a sickly glaze on top of the toxic geothermal activity. Goblin trash litters the surrounding area of the Goblin Fortress, forming little mounds here & there that eventually get covered in the dust & sand from the barren badlands. Black, harried, crow-like birds hop around these wastes scavenging bits of dead things here & there & just living on the periphery of the Goblin lands.

Pekel 

The Goblin homeland is a place called Pekel. It is unclear if Pekel is imaginary or real, but it is reported to be located to the north of the Goblin Fortress. Goblins don’t farm or make anything of their own. They have an almost purely parasitic relationship with humanity, instead they live on the fringes of human society so the idea of a Goblin homeland is sort of contradictory. It is because of this that the human scholars view Pekel as imaginary. Goblins say that Pekel is a wide-open plain, surrounded by mountains. It is in this plain that there are many cracks in the earth, Goblins live in these cracks & come streaming out.