It never fails to amaze me how many people do not realize how terribly frightening the day time is. They all speak of the night as if it's a dreadful time filled with evil and monsters, but really the night is less frightening than the day. During the night you are in control of your fate. If you have half a brain and are attentive nothing can hurt you. You'll hear them or see them before they hear or see you and you can hide and wait for them to pass. But during the day they are quiet. The enemy stalks about and can see you very clearly even before you see them and start to shoot at you. And during the day, there is no way to hide.
But I suppose elves and humans are just used to living during the day time and goblins are used to living during the night. It's interesting how much the difference between night and day can make in one's perception of another race.
There are those that suggest that goblins are of human decent. Disfigued Men who stole and raped disfigued human women and began a race of dark creatures. I don't agree. There are those who say that goblins were once elves but that somehow they were seperated from the sun and this isolation from light changed their physical beings. Their skin grew coarse and thick, inpenetrable as the toughest leather, furred like animals, their teeth grew long and fanglike, and their nails grew hard and sharp until they twisted into black claws. Eventually, their exile from the sun affected their moral purity. Of course, if you would call elves morally pure, you're probably from the human world and you've never met an elf. I disagree with that theory as well, if you can't tell. I also disagree with the idea that goblins rose from the first dragon's shit or some pool of unicorn's piss or whatever such nonsense you believe.
Goblins developed from the same ancestor as all the wights did, the same thing as the elves, the humans, the dwarves, and every other sensient being out there.
We just developed a little more sensibly aloof that's all.
As long as I'm attacking everything you believe about goblins I might as well try to change your mind about our absolute depravtiy. Not that I care what you think; I just know that it's wrong.
We are not a race of barbarians, rather we are a people that seems to me to be more advanced than other races. We have no jails, no prisons, no indentured servants, at least amoung our own people. This is not to suggest that we allow crime to go unpunished as some humans believe. This is entirely not the case. We are a very physical society. Violence is tolerated a little more than it should be probably, but that is only because strength is so heavily valued in our world. But we execute our murders when we can prove that they have murdered. And we exile rapists once they've been convicted and we banish theives as well after three convictions. It's more merciful I think than the elves habit of eye-for-eye retributive justice and more sensible than the human practice of pampering the prisoner by keeping him in a cell for the rest of his life.
Part of the reason you think goblins are all bad is because you've only met the criminals... if you've ever even met a goblin before you decided you hated them. The criminals are cast out of our society and never allowed to return. We don't even need to waste time on branding them; if a goblin is outside of a mountain alone, he is either mad or a criminal. That idea in itself is usually enough to discourage crime. Being trapped outside of the mountains is a terrifyingly lonely fate.
As chids we goblins are taught to fear the outside world. I was not taught anything different about the outside world until I joined the army. Only the warriors are allowed beyond the mountain's entrance and into the world. But it is surely certain death to leave the mountains alone, espicially in the daylight hours when elves and humans are about. I don't know any sane goblin who would venture past the entrance of the cave without his armour. The full armour is rather heavy but it acheives its effect.
Let me explain. The armour is acctually a body suit, made of a metal skin to protect our soft skin from the spears of humans and covered tightly by animal skin to add to the toughness and hide the chinks from elvin arrows. The helmets fit as closely to our skulls as possible, to protect our heads from the ax. The claws, the teeth, and the shoes that look like bare animals feet all intimidaate. Nothing is more terrible than seeing your enemy standing and looking nearly naked in the snow and never even shaking. But the most improatant thing, more crucial than any other part of the armour, the face mask. Gruseome designs are printed into a mask of tough leather, made individually for each goblin, to fit his or her face the best and most realistic.
I will tell you because you don't know me, that standing prepared for battle besides these terrible visages often frightens me, the illusion is so complete in it's awfulness.
You see we goblins use out brains. If you are able to intimidate your enemy into surrender, no one will die.
No doubt, you question everything I say. Elves and humans have been learned to hate, fear, and avoid goblins because of terrible lies told about them. That's alright; the goblins started those lies. Those prejudices protect us. I'll wager you've never heard of a goblin mountain being attacked by an army and if you have it only in a fairytale. Goblins are their own people, self reliant. If everyone would leave us alone then you might never even see a goblin army.
Of course, other wights don't leave us alone. For example, the Cold place of the North Wind. I believe you humans call is the North Poll?
The humans built a penetantiary there and kept elves and such in that place. But it belonged to the goblins. At first they were far enough away that they did not bother us but then they build a new factory, right on the land where goblins have hunted for food for centuries. Naturally, we wanted to take it back. They sent messenges and threats to the people in the agency responcible for the place but all our warnings were ignored. Then around the time I joined the army at ten, they began to plan their attack. We were to follow the traditional goblin battle plan, wit and patience.
I was amoung the elves for a year or more. Wit is not as fast as witchcraft and I needed a lot of patience. I was chosen, for my intellegence, my soft-spoken nature, my observance, but mostly for my patience. I was young, and fair, still quite small, and I passed easily as an elf.
Well, not easily... everyone in that place hated me.
Everyone, of course, except the elf who would destroy me.