Jean Rabe - Goblin Nation

Maybe that was good, Direfang thought. The wizard had given so much of himself.

The hobgoblin had not been able to find Mudwort or Thya, the greatest of his band’s stonetellers. But Draath had survived, and the Skinweaver had vowed to teach promising younglings the art of working magic through the earth. Graytoes said she would help too. Jando-Jando stood behind her.

Direfang silently regarded the yellow-skinned goblin. Umay was tucked in a pack on her back, wrapped in a faded cloth with metallic threads in it. Graytoes leaned on a spear she said she’d found in the forest the night of the fire. It was a crooked wooden thing that was charred in places and from which dangled a couple of yellow and green feathers that appeared as if they’d just been plucked from a bird. When the light hit the spear just right-or when Direfang looked at it from an odd angle-the spear looked different, singular, dotted with gems and seeming to be straight and perfect and smooth. But that might be his mind teasing him, so he dismissed it from his thoughts. He had more important things to worry about than Graytoes’s spear.

The surviving goblin horde had decided to follow the river east, to where the forest met the base of the dwarf mountains.

They would build their new goblin city there, fashioning earth bowls like Mudwort had taught them and cutting down trees that Orvago would mark as best for building. Some would make their homes in nearby caves-those goblins who preferred the earth all around them. And if no caves could be found, Draath and the other stonetellers would fashion some. He hoped the dwarves would not take exception to the goblins’ presence.

More goblins would come, called through the earth. Graytoes said she intended to continue the calling. She also claimed that she would teach Umay how to stonetell, and that one day she would pass the old, crooked spear along to her dwarf daughter.

It would take a very long time, Direfang knew, to establish a firm foundation for the goblin nation. He would grow old and die before it was strong and a force to be feared and respected.

But it would happen; he was never sure before, but he knew in his heart that the goblin nation would be forged. “Finally free,” he said.

Goblin Rituals Regarding the Hereafter

They burn their dead fellows, the goblins and hobgoblins of Neraka and the ogre mountains.

Burn them until the air is filled with a thick, hot stench that settles firmly in your mouth and permeates every thread of your body.

Burn them until nothing is left of the corpses but bits of bones, and those they scatter so nothing touches. The ashes are left to the wind.

I am Horace, a loyal priest of Zeboim, the Sea Mother, who joined a band of escaped goblin and hobgoblin slaves fleeing from the Dark Knight mining camp called Steel Town. A human, the goblins were loathe to accept me, and I did not mind that they kept their distance. I needed only their safety in numbers while we passed through the mountains and to better land. In exchange, I offered my healing skills.

I found the goblins’ funerary practices odd, so I studied them to discover what was behind the bizarre rituals. I am ever curious, and at the time, there was little other than goblins and their handling of the dead to occupy my attention. As their pyres burned, turning to ashes the corpses of those goblins and hobgoblins who died to old age, disease, and grievous injury from beasts they’d fought, I’d listen to the survivors elaborate on the dead.

“Lurker is remembered,” I recall a burly hobgoblin saying. “Lurker was kind, eating only roots and berries and not eating the meat of beasts. Lurker loved to watch the rabbits and ground squirrels, and wanted to save them rather than kill them. Lurker is remembered.”

“Calor is remembered,” another said. “Calor liked the darkness best. Calor thought the light showed too many ugly things. Calor slept when the sun was high so the ugliness was hidden. Calor is remembered.”

“Ren is remembered. Ren pulled the wings from butterflies and ate the tiny legs. Ren worked hard in the mines. Ren is remembered.”

“Stump-Arm is remembered. Stump-Arm was the strongest of the Marsh clan, able to drag two sacks of ore in one hand. Stump-Arm once wrestled a pig, but that was in the Before Time, when Stump-Arm was free. Stump-Arm will return to a good body now, one with two hands, and one that will grow to be even stronger. Stump-Arm is remembered.”

The goblins conduct the “memory” ceremony to let the spirits of the dead know they are revered and missed and that they are welcome to return to the earth. As long as someone is “remembered,” they are tied to their kin, one goblin explained. Those who are forgotten are more likely to drift.

My people bury their dead, under the earth or more often at sea so Zeboim can better embrace them. The Dark Knights in the mining camp put our brothers in polished armor and placed their swords atop their chests, fingers folded across the pommels. The dead are then ready to properly enter the world beyond.

My people believe there is a place where spirits dwell beyond this harsh, blood-soaked land, a place where they may meet the gods. But I discovered the goblins and hobgoblins of Neraka share no such belief. They claim to revere no gods, saying that Chislev and Zeboim and Reorx and the others did nothing to help the goblins and instead turned blind eyes to the injuries the goblins suffered in slavery.

They claim to need no higher beings. And they say they have no desire to mingle with them after death.

“The gods ignored goblins; let goblins ignore the gods,” the saying goes.

And yet they believe that their spirits persist when their bodies die. They believe their spirits return to the earth.

That is the reason behind the burning, I’ve learned. If a goblin corpse is burned and the bones separated, there is nothing the spirit can return to. The spirit must find another host-this being a child coming new into the world. A goblin or hobgoblin child to be specific, as they believe the spirits must return to a familiar form.

How they’ve come by this belief is a mystery. The goblins I’ve talked to have no explanation for it beyond saying it was passed down from fathers and grandfathers and the ancestors before that. There is no swaying them in this belief.

And against everything I have learned in my religious teaching, their arguments have some merit.

“How is it that goblins know instinctively which roots are tasty and not harmful?” Bent-Ear said to me. “Why do goblins know what mushrooms to eat without older goblins telling them? Why do goblins sleep with their backs to the rising sun?”

“How can hobgoblins tell if water is good or bad just by looking?” Direfang said. “It is because the old soul that lived in another body learned to tell the taint. The old soul in the new body remembers the look of the water.”

“How can goblins see through the earth? Call through the ground to kin?” the goblin shaman Mudwort argued. “No mentor taught such skills. Such goblins do not need schools and books and the trappings of Dark Knight wizards to hone their magic. Goblins need only to remember what the old soul inside them learned. The spirit does not forget, no matter the body the spirit has chosen to dwell inside. Instinct? There is no such thing, Horace of Zeboim, the Worthless God. It is the spirit’s past life coming to the fore. Goblin spirits return.”

I tried to give up on arguing and keep listening. I am a priest of Zeboim and do not want to be swayed away from my cherished god. But I could not yield my curiosity.

And if the bodies are not burned? I asked.