it is GOBLIN WEEK 2018, DAY SIXas a special goblin week treat, i am going to detail the goblin life
it is GOBLIN WEEK 2018, DAY SIXas a special goblin week treat, i am going to detail the goblin life cycle and the peculiar way it interacts with the human one.clockwise from upper left: troll, goblin, elf, human and ettinOur general term for a person of any intelligent species as a wight. These we distinguish between seelie and unseelie. Seelie wights live in societies with each other, while unseelie wights live mostly solitary existences and seek each other out only for specific purposes.The umbral species is made up of two very different alternating generations. Large, deliberate trolls meet and mate and lay huge clutches of eggs, from which hatch many small, energetic goblins. Goblins are sexless, but those who manage to live and thrive for long enough (and most do not) die when they begin to germinate into an infant troll.Though trolls grow to be massive and can have a great variety of adult shapes (and some are have even been known to change their shape), goblins are short, lithe bipeds with little hair or cartilage but many sharp teeth. Their complexions range from tallow yellow to sea-green and are often mottled or speckled with other hues. The complex mismatch between generations of the umbral species means that trolls are uniquely ill-suited to caring for their goblin children, and goblins ill-equipped to the task of raising the occasional infant troll. The peculiar demands of umbral reproductive labor is responsible for the existence of the Penumbral Exchange.The terms of the penumbral exchange require that an infant troll be given in exchange for an infant of another species. The exchange itself is an ancient piece of blood magic that causes these changelings, called ettins (or occaisionally giants, on account of their somewhat-above-average size) to take after their adoptive parents. After the first few weeks are past, they look for all the world like rough-cut versions their adoptive species. Ettins are still biologically trolls, however; they are unusually long-lived, cannot reproduce with their adoptive species and have troll internal anatomy.Although stories abound of children stolen from their cradles and replaced by unscrupulous goblins or elves, the blood magic that enables changelings to survive the exchange requires the human parents (if living) to knowingly accept the bargain.The penumbral exchange is an exchange; the seelie infant taken is raised by trolls on drops of their blood and undergoes goblinization. Humans, as seelie wights, often take part in the penumbral exchange; a goblinized human is called an elf. The child of two elves will be an elf, and so they are able to populate their own communities, only occasionally bringing in fresh blood in the form of changeling-elves. Most elves are brought to live among their own kind in remote places. The most important duty of these elfin communities is to tend the warrens where goblin eggs incubate and to retrieve and care for any germinating trolls. -- source link
#writing#goblinweek#trolls#ettins