Goblin

Goblins in Tanaria are small but formidable, hardened by generations of survival against a world that despises them. Standing just under four feet tall, they are wiry and scarred, with sickly green or grey-tinged skin and fierce, burning eyes. Every inch of their body speaks of endurance — lean muscle, quick reflexes, and the restless energy of creatures that know no safety, only opportunity.
Known for their scavenging instincts and brutal cunning, goblins thrive in the forgotten corners of civilization: ruined towns, abandoned mines, deep forests, and shattered battlefields. They salvage armor, weapons, and supplies from the dead and the discarded, cobbling together their lives from the remnants of others. Their patchwork appearance belies their effectiveness — goblin gear may look crude, but it is deadly in their hands.
Feared and mistrusted by nearly all other races, goblins are seen as vermin, a problem to be purged rather than reasoned with. Yet beneath their savage reputation lies a tenacity few can match. Goblins are fiercely loyal to their kin, clever in ways that civilized folk often overlook, and utterly unwilling to die quietly.
Though most cling to clan life and raiding bands, a rare few break away, carving out their own place in the wider world as mercenaries, scouts, thieves, or survivors — often finding that even among adventurers, trust is harder to earn than gold.

Basic Information

Anatomy

Tanarian goblins are small, wiry humanoids built for survival in the harshest conditions. Standing between 3.5 to 4 feet tall and weighing little more than 40 to 55 pounds, their bodies are deceptively strong, with dense, flexible muscle built for bursts of speed and sudden violence. Their skin ranges from sickly green to bruised brown-grey, thick and rough enough to resist minor injuries and the elements. Broad foreheads, flat noses, jagged teeth, and glowing

amber or green eyes mark their sharp, animalistic faces, while elongated, expressive ears constantly twitch and pivot to track sounds. Their hands and feet are calloused, durable, and nearly prehensile, allowing them to scramble over terrain most species would consider impassable. Internally, goblins possess highly adaptable digestive systems capable of processing spoiled or toxic food, rapid healing for minor wounds, and a natural resistance to disease. Every part of a Tanarian goblin is designed not for beauty or strength, but for ruthless efficiency — to scavenge, to endure, and to outlast.

Genetics and Reproduction

Tanarian goblins possess one of the most unsettling reproductive strategies among sentient species. Goblins are overwhelmingly male, with female goblins born at an exceptionally rare rate — estimated at one in several thousand births. Their survival as a species is sustained through parasitic reproduction: goblins implant their offspring into the females of other humanoid species, using hosts to carry and birth goblin young.
The process is biologically aggressive but not inherently lethal. Goblin seed overwhelms the host’s reproductive system, rapidly accelerating gestation to a mere 30 to 45 days. During this time, the host carries a pure-blooded goblin — no hybridization occurs. The newborn goblin is fully goblin in body and mind, regardless of the host’s race. Hosts typically survive, though repeated use can lead to severe physical and psychological deterioration. It is not uncommon for host females to be kept alive and used multiple times before being discarded or dying from cumulative trauma.
Goblin genetics are astonishingly resilient. Mutations, disease, and cross-species incompatibilities that would cripple other lineages are shrugged off, making them nearly impossible to eradicate through natural means. Attempts at magical sterilization or curse-based suppression often fail, as goblin fertility seems partially resistant to both divine and arcane interference.
When a true goblin female is born, she is seen as a prize beyond measure. Goblin clans may worship her as a queen, protect her with fanatical devotion, or tear each other apart to claim her. True goblin queens are larger, more intelligent, and capable of stabilizing and even expanding a clan’s numbers without reliance on host reproduction — though even they often struggle with fertility compared to other species.

Growth Rate & Stages

Tanarian goblins develop at a staggering pace compared to most humanoid species. Following a short gestation period of roughly 30 to 45 days within the host, goblin infants are born physically weak but highly aggressive, displaying instinctive survival behaviors within hours of birth.
Within two weeks, goblin young are mobile, able to walk, climb, and feed themselves if given access to basic resources. By three months, a goblin is considered weaned and independent enough to function alongside the clan in minor roles such as scavenging, spying, or assisting in raids.
Goblins reach full physical and cognitive maturity between 3 to 4 years of age. By this time, they are fully capable of fighting, breeding, and participating in all aspects of goblin society. Mentorship beyond this point is minimal; goblin culture prizes immediate utility over prolonged nurturing. Weakness is rarely tolerated, and young goblins who cannot keep pace with clan expectations are often abandoned or killed.
Their natural lifespan, barring violence or accident, can extend up to 40–50 years. However, few goblins survive past 20 due to the brutality of their environments, inter-clan warfare, and the high-risk nature of goblin existence. Elders are rare and usually serve as advisors, shamans, or cunning war-leaders if they live long enough to earn such roles.

Ecology and Habitats

Tanarian goblins are opportunistic colonizers, thriving in the broken, forgotten, and dangerous places other species abandon. They favor environments where law and order have collapsed — ruins, abandoned mines, scorched villages, deep caves, and the shattered fringes of once-civilized lands. Wherever decay, war, or natural disaster leaves a scar on the world, goblins inevitably follow.
Adaptable to nearly any climate short of extreme cold or barren desert, goblins modify their lairs to suit whatever environment they infest. In forests, they build hidden burrows and tree-hollow camps. In ruins, they carve out warren-like tunnels through collapsed structures. In mountains or hills, they inhabit caves, abandoned forts, or carve crude nests into cliff faces. Their homes are always defended with brutal cunning: traps, ambush points, alarm systems, and hidden escape tunnels are common features.
Goblins are ecosystem disruptors by nature. Their relentless scavenging strips environments of usable resources, while their reproduction puts strain on local populations of humanoids and animals alike. They raid, hunt, and scavenge with equal ruthlessness, often causing surrounding settlements to collapse or migrate simply by existing nearby.
Despite their disruptive presence, goblins themselves maintain a balance within their lairs. They are careful not to over-hunt their immediate surroundings, preferring to raid outward in expanding rings. Some larger goblin clans even practice crude rotational raiding, giving depleted areas time to recover before returning — a rare sign of long-term planning among their otherwise short-sighted kind.

Behaviour

Tanarian goblins are driven by three fundamental instincts: survival, acquisition, and expansion. Every aspect of their behavior can be traced back to these primal imperatives. They are not needlessly cruel or sadistic by nature — violence, theft, and deception are simply tools to ensure the survival and success of themselves and their clan.
Socially, goblins are tribal to the extreme. Loyalty is to the clan first, individuals second. Kinship bonds are strong among goblins, but respect is earned through cunning, strength, and the ability to provide for the group. Cowardice is not viewed as a flaw if it serves survival — a goblin that retreats to fight another day is often respected more than a fool who dies needlessly. However, betraying the clan for personal gain is punishable by death.
Psychologically, goblins are highly reactive creatures. They are quick to sense opportunity, threat, or weakness, and they respond with immediate, decisive action. Fear governs much of their behavior — fear of hunger, fear of annihilation, fear of being dominated by stronger forces — but this fear manifests as aggression, cunning, and relentless opportunism.
While often viewed by outsiders as chaotic and unpredictable, goblins operate under a distinct internal logic. They respect strength, cleverness, and resourcefulness, and disdain those who fail to protect or provide for themselves. Deception, ambush, and trickery are seen as legitimate — even admirable — tactics in goblin culture, and outsmarting an enemy is considered a purer form of victory than brute force alone.
Emotionally, goblins experience loyalty, pride, anger, grief, and even affection within their own narrow bands, but their worldview is so shaped by hardship and exploitation that they rarely extend trust or empathy beyond their immediate group. Mercy is a foreign concept to most goblins — not because they are incapable of it, but because they see it as a dangerous weakness.

Additional Information

Social Structure

Tanarian goblin society is clan-based, with each clan operating as an independent, self-sufficient unit. Goblin clans are built on survival first, loyalty second, and strength third. Leadership is typically claimed by the strongest, cleverest, or most ruthless individual, known as a Chief or Mother depending on the clan’s structure. Authority is maintained through a balance of fear, success, and brutal efficiency — a chief who fails to protect or provide for their clan is swiftly overthrown or killed.
Two dominant mindsets shape goblin clans around reproduction and survival:

Captors ("Fangbrood" Clans)

These clans view non-goblin females purely as resources. Fangbrood clans raid settlements, caravans, and isolated homesteads to capture hosts, maintaining them as living breeding stock. Host females are treated no differently than livestock — used, managed, and replaced as needed. Fangbrood clans are heavily militant, organized around warbands, slave-tenders, and breeders. Brutality and efficiency are seen as sacred virtues, and compassion is viewed as fatal weakness.

Reverers ("Queensworn" Clans)

In contrast, Queensworn clans venerate the act of reproduction itself, treating non-goblin females as sacred vessels or chosen avatars. Some Queensworn go so far as to build entire pseudo-religions around fertility, queenship, and divine rebirth. Willing hosts, sometimes lured by promises of power, protection, or elevation, are worshiped and guarded fanatically. True goblin females born into Queensworn clans are exalted as living goddesses, and entire hierarchies of priests, and honor-guard develop around them.
While less overtly brutal than Fangbrood, Queensworn societies can be just as dangerous beneath the surface, hiding manipulation, indoctrination, and ritualized exploitation under a veneer of reverence.
Despite these differences, all goblin clans share certain constants: loyalty to the clan is absolute, weakness is purged or exploited, and survival of the group outweighs all other concerns. Clans often fracture, merge, or go to war over queens, resources, or territory. Alliances are rare, unstable, and almost always temporary.

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Life Inside a Fangbrood Clan

Life inside a Fangbrood clan is brutal, bloody, and short. Goblins wake each day knowing their worth is measured by what they can steal, kill, or capture. Failure is met with savage beatings or public executions meant to harden the survivors. Raiding parties are sent out constantly, and captured hosts are herded like cattle under the watchful eyes of Broodkeepers. Status comes from bringing back bodies or goods — anything that feeds the war machine.
There are no songs, no festivals, no true moments of peace — only the endless grind of survival through conquest. Even among comrades, treachery simmers just beneath the surface, and power is seized the moment weakness is shown. Respect is earned through scars, trophies, and obedience to the strongest. A goblin’s worth is simple: fight, breed, or die.

Life Inside a Queensworn Clan

Within a Queensworn clan, life is no less harsh, but it wears the mask of devotion. Goblins rise and kneel before their Queen or Matrons, offering prayers, offerings, and whispered songs in their honor. Every action — from tending crops to sharpening weapons — is framed as service to fertility and survival. Hosts are treated with reverence, but it is a reverence built on obsession and ownership, not true respect.
Disobedience or perceived disrespect toward the Queen is met with ritual punishment — public shaming, mutilation, or execution dressed up as "holy rites." The strongest warriors become Honor Guards, the most cunning become Priests, and the young are drilled from birth to worship the vessels that sustain their bloodlines. In a Queensworn clan, faith and fanaticism are the weapons of control, and survival comes not through strength alone, but through utter loyalty to the divine flesh.

Average Intelligence

Tanarian goblins possess moderate to high practical intelligence, particularly in areas related to survival, tactics, and opportunism.
Most goblins are clever, fast thinkers who can quickly assess threats, opportunities, and weaknesses in their surroundings, but lack broader strategic patience or interest in complex philosophies. A goblin will often outwit a poorly prepared foe, but rarely build a kingdom of their own without outside influence or an exceptional leader.

Perception and Sensory Capabilities

Tanarian goblins possess heightened senses finely tuned for survival, ambush, and evasion. Their vision is exceptionally sharp in low-light environments, allowing them to navigate caves, ruins, and nighttime landscapes with minimal difficulty. Though not true darkvision, goblin eyes amplify available light, giving them a predator’s gleam and the ability to distinguish movement and shape far beyond human capacity in dim conditions.
Their sense of hearing is equally advanced. Long, flexible ears can rotate independently, allowing goblins to detect faint noises — footsteps, whispered conversations, or the creak of an opening door — from surprising distances. Sound serves as an early warning system for goblin bands, with subtle signals like clicks, hisses, or taps used to communicate without drawing attention.
Goblin olfaction, though less developed than their sight and hearing, remains notably sharper than human average. They can detect strong scents such as blood, decay, smoke, and certain pheromones that might signal fear or aggression, making them dangerous trackers in wild or urban settings.
While goblins lack formal magical senses or supernatural extrasensory abilities, their sheer instinct often appears uncanny to outsiders. They are deeply attuned to subtle environmental changes — shifts in temperature, unnatural silences, or the faint smell of magic residue — allowing particularly experienced goblins to anticipate danger before it fully manifests.

Civilization and Culture

History

The true origin of goblins has been lost to time, and to the goblins themselves, who keep no written records and pass knowledge through story, superstition, and blood. What is known is this: goblins have always emerged in the wake of ruin.
Old ruins, long-buried battlefields, plague-touched cities, where the earth is broken and forgotten, goblins crawl out of the cracks. Some scholars believe they were twisted descendants of an older humanoid race, corrupted by chaos, dark magic, or gods long dead. Others claim they are not evolved at all, but spawned , a species made not by nature, but by the world’s suffering.
In the early eras of Tanaria, goblins were pests. Scattered, hunted, and burned out of every corner they were found. But as civilization expanded, so did the wreckage it left behind , and with it, goblins multiplied. Their reproductive methods, at first dismissed as crude myth, became horrifyingly real during the War of Ashen Teeth, when entire towns collapsed under repeated raids not for conquest, but for breeding stock.
As the centuries passed, two distinct paths emerged among goblinkind. Some embraced their role as predators — raiders, slavers, parasites feeding off the ruins of others. These became the Fangbrood. Others turned inward, building twisted cultures around worship of rare goblin queens or willing vessels — elevating reproduction into a divine act. These became the Queensworn. The two factions warred as often with each other as they did with the world outside, shaping goblin society into a fractured, volatile mess of competing dogmas and brutal necessity.
Despite efforts to purge them entirely, goblins endure. Not because of strength. Not because of unity. But because the world keeps breaking — and goblins were made to thrive in the cracks.

Scientific Name

Gobelini tanaricus

Lifespan

15–20 years (Natural lifespan: 40–50 years)

Conservation Status

Invasive

Average Height

Males: 3'6" to 4'0" (106–122 cm)
Females (rare Queens): 4'0" to 4'6" (122–137 cm)

Average Weight

Males: 40–55 pounds (18–25 kg)
Females (Queens): 55–70 pounds (25–32 kg)

Related Organizations

• Wombtooth Clan

You think they want to kill you? No. Killing you would be mercy. They don't want your coin, your land, or your blood. They want your body. They want your womb.

I ran until my lungs bled, until my legs gave out, and still I could hear them — laughing, chattering like rats, chasing me like hounds after a crippled deer. If the guards hadn't found me... gods, I don't know what I'd be now. Not dead. Something worse. Something alive and hollow. When people talk about goblins like they're just pests — like they're just thieves and raiders — I want to rip their tongues out. They aren't pests. They're a plague. And if you ever see them coming, you run. You run until there's nothing left of you but a shadow on the road.

— Marien Vestra, sole survivor of the Duskvale Raid