Goblins
The first of my promised more detailed entries on the various factions of Sleepless Empire. This is kinda stream of conciousness as I havent actually written most of these ideas down yet, thats the idea behind this whole blog thing afterall.
Goblins. non-PC race
Mutated species that live entirely belowground. These are where most of the fantasy creatures come from. Most of the various species from many fantasy genres are in fact just a mutated goblin in Sleepless Empire. Minotaurs, Ogres, Kobolds, what have you, there all realy just goblins.
They live below the city making everything run, its a little distressing exactly how much of the citys vital services exist mainly below the surface. Electricity, steam and heating pipes, transportation via subway, even water, they all primarily exist underground. And the goblins control it all. But why? why do they do it? well, noone really knows for certain, maybe the PC’s should make a real effort at finding out? Mostly the goblins ignore us and we ignore them, a large and vocal minority even insist there are no such things, although the more than occasional sighting while riding the subway puts these people firmly in the crackpot category. There are rumours of goblins occasionally going “renegade” and attacking those from the surface, but that is surprisingly rare. There are of course rumours of people dissapearing forever when they have delved to far into there depths.
Those who have had the chance to study them, notice the large variety of subspecies, the goblins themselves seem to pay little attention to the fact that some are 6 feet tall and have horns and others are 3 feet tall and are sightless monstrosities. It seems that in there “society” if you can call it that, all are equal. It seems the vast majority of there time is spent repairing and maintaining all the equipment that exists below the city. They seem to have there own gibberish language that no surface dwellers can (or have bothered?) to learn. Many seem to have extraordinary abilities, chiefly a seemingly extrasensory understanding of any sort of machinery, there does not seem to be any training system involved at all in there knowledge of machinery, they simply “know” how it works and how to fix it when its broken. There are also reports of other abilities, healing powers, sorcerer like abilities, inhuman strength. None of these things have been proven conclusively.
The latest news and rumours surround a man calling himself, of all the silly things. The Goblin King. Oddly enough, he is human, but supposedly he is slowly working the goblins into a frenzy , convincing them that they should demand “equal rights” and “fair pay” for all the work they do under the city, after all, without them the city would be crippled? right? It is unclear wether this “goblin king” even exists, or wether he is just another of those odd rumours that occasionally pop up.