Editing Goblin (section)

==Uses==
Goblins are basically attack dogs, rabid in nature, and used for chaos or destruction rather than anything else because they are so difficult to control. Some have abilities that make them more useful; others have knowledge, and parts of their bodies can be harvested and used, such as a [[Goblin Ear]].

They are not ''known'' for their intelligence but that doesn't mean they are ''not'' intelligent some just hide it better, dyscalculia does not preclude intelligence in humans for example.<ref>“Ten… nine… eight… six…”<br>[...]<br>Bubble gave him a pat on the head.  “You’re too smart, Turdy, too clever for your own good.  Gets goblins killed, if they can’t sit and be stupid.  When your brain goes too fast you get moving and it’s easy to move into trouble.”<br>[...]<br>Remember the sage?  Plastic beard? [...] Most places have one.  Usually the same sort of rule as your Carmine, Alabaster, whoever, trying to stay so you don’t have to travel more than a day to find one.  Sometimes they’re in the Warrens, sometimes up here, sometimes they’re tucked away, and sometimes they’re further because goblins are really bad at counting and keeping track.  Helps manage things, to have someone." - [https://palewebserial.wordpress.com/2021/04/17 Excerpt] from [[One After Another 10.e]]</ref>

Like many Others, goblins have an innate ability to sense and divert the attention of [[Innocent]]s.<ref>Moving around was easier than in most places.  Here, the humans were insecure. He could see it in the shifting patterns around them, where their focus was falling.  He’d seen the roving spotlights in the movies and video games.  In most places, the attention of people was like those spotlights, roaming, cast out from their eyes, a dull glow emanating as they ''listened''.  Here it was different.  The focus was largely on themselves, only periodically casting out at specific targets.<br><br>Not always, but enough.  Buttsack cloaked himself thoroughly against the insensitive, and for extra measure, he was careful to watch where they were paying attention and nudge it aside when it veered his way. <br>[...]<br>His thoughts were cut off when the door behind him opened.  He moved his hand, ready to turn the attention aside.<br><br>The bitch focused on him right away.  He moved his hand, ready to divert her attention and head in the other direction, but she didn’t budge. - [https://pactwebserial.wordpress.com/2014/07/08 Excerpt] from [[Signature 8.1]]</ref>

Most goblins can turn themselves into weapons when defeated, an old tradition going back to early goblin tribes. They can continue to inflict violence, and accrue power, in weapon form. They can guide what weapon form they take to some degree trying to be cooperative with practitioners or each other.<ref>The ‘soggy handshake’ was Toadswallow’s weapon form.  Goblins could become weapons, and his was something akin to a lone boxing glove resembling a very full diaper in consistency.  A heavy shackle locked it to the wrist, which let him mess with whoever had their hand stuck inside by having something writhe against the hand.  It also stored an improbably large number of random little goblin tricks and trinkets.  Glue bombs, screaming doll heads, capsules of suspicious looking brown paint, a Mother Tick from the warrens… distractions, easily fired off from the wrist with a slap of the free hand.<br><br>He’d worked with Bubble to match in that regard.  He was the right hand, she was the left.  Mismatched pugilist’s gloves. - [https://palewebserial.wordpress.com/2021/04/17 Excerpt] from [[One After Another 10.e]]</ref>

===Goblin Magic===
Goblins (and as a result [[Goblin Queen]]s) will often have access to an eclectic mix of minor, nasty, practical magics. Some of it is specific to goblins, but it may include other types of magic that fit with their nature.  Examples include:  

*[[Buttsack]] knew a way to merge with the wind to an extent, becoming immaterial and able to cross certain boundaries, which he had learned from a goblin named Scuzzwick.<ref>Once they were inside the building, the humans were supposed to be safe.  The doorframes, the windows, the plumbing, all were made of refined metal, ‘stainless steel’ they called it.<br>[...]<br>One piece of knowledge Buttsack had picked up had been from a scrawny little bitch of a goblin that called itself Scuzzwick.  Lick both hands, lick the back of the knees and elbows, the back of the neck.  The licking didn’t matter so much as the wet, and it was easier and more comfortable to use his own tongue than to use the snow.  He scratched his forearms deep enough to get his fingertips wet with blood.  Once the wet patches and blood were there, he could reach each arm out to either side, feel the wet patches grow cold from the force of the winter breeze.<br><br>Move with the wind, letting the arms move as the wind did.<br><br>A fatass of a man sauntered right past him.  Buttsack could feel the movement of air, clutch it with bloody fingertips, and follow it.<br><br>Catch the wind and ride it through the door the man was opening.<br><br>Drifting inside.<br><br>“Do you smell something?” a bystander asked.  The dumpy looking fuck shut one of the metal cabinets, then hooked a lock onto it.<br><br>Buttsack hurried off to take cover before he became fully material again.<br><br>This wasn’t a proper boundary, no power had sealed it, but it was still uncomfortable.  The things that gave the goblin power and energy were cut off here. - [https://pactwebserial.wordpress.com/2014/07/08 Excerpt] from [[Signature 8.1]]</ref> He knew a "working" to make fear he inflicted stick with the victim.<ref>This one wore hose, which he could scratch, or he could dig in his pockets for something to drop inside.  He kept a lot of things.  A live roach, two centipedes, a bundle of flea-infested hair, fresh shit in plastic wrap-<br><br>He’d decide depending on what she looked like.  Maybe do all of them.  Then he’d make a marking so the fear would stay, the bad feelings, but the ''impressions'' would linger, staying with her. -  [https://pactwebserial.wordpress.com/2014/07/08 Excerpt] from [[Signature 8.1]]</ref> He also knew a [[curse]] that made the target see all food as rotten.<ref>The goblin she’d interrogated, Buttsack, had confessed to systematic attacks on more or less random targets.  There was a lot of little hurt here and there.  Some big hurt.  Buttsack had used a curse on a girl to make her envision everything edible as rotten and disgusting.  Every plate of salad practically compost, meat appeared and tasted rancid, festooned with maggots.  She’d been hospitalized a month ago, on the belief that she had an eating disorder.<br><br>Buttsack was upset because he wanted the curse ''back,'' so he could use it again.  Maggie managed to twist his arm until he shared the way to break the curse.  - [https://pactwebserial.wordpress.com/2014/07/12 Excerpt] from [[Signature 8.2]]</ref>  
*A goblin made a deal with [[Maggie Holt]] for her ability to swear, enhancing its own swearing to dangerous levels.<ref name="LAsh" />
*[[Sir Toadswallow]] knew how to use the [[Rule of Three]] to inflict minor curses through repeated insults. He also had a lockpick that permanently breaks the lock it's used on.
*Goblins can deliberately slaughter groups of people in an attempt to form a [[Dog Meat]].<ref>“I’ll get you a gift soon,” Munch said.  “Been thinking, but I don’t have much.  Got a thing with some goblins this summer.  Guy and his gun nut buddies are getting spare animals from shelters, using them as moving targets for practice.  It’s like the Bedsurf camera couple.  Universe doesn’t like it if you invite someone or something into your home and mess with them.  We were going to try to make some Dog Meat.”<br><br>“Dog Meat like…”<br><br>“Like we get enough of them together, they invite their friends in from the States, including some who can maybe make some fostering and adoption paperwork disappear for kids.  Then we see if we can’t kill enough of them in a messy enough way that there’s a Dog at the end.”<br><br>“Like Stiles, but not,” Gash clarified, a smile creeping out around the sides of his face.  “Different breed.”<br><br>“Want to borrow it if it works?” Munch asked.  “Could be my gift. [...] a feral, crazy murder beast with some really cool scars.  Won’t die easy, and they can turn up with powers, I’ve seen one that could climb walls as fast as you or me could run, and another that could immobilize people with deafening screams, for as long as she could scream." - [https://palewebserial.wordpress.com/2020/06/30 Excerpt] from [[Stolen Away 2.7]]</ref>
*A "thorn in the flesh" is an anti-Practice tool sometimes crafted by goblins by sneaking a spike into someone's guts and letting it stew i their bile before removing it.<ref>It was a cone-shaped thing that could have been a thorn or the end of a very black nail.  Surprisingly heavy, despite being a half-inch long and relatively thin. [...] “That there’s a thorn in the flesh.  Buried in some loser’s guts.  Best if it’s kidney or spleen.  It healed over, left to stew in bile, picked out again after a few years, leaving some of the organ around the outside.  Dried it in the sun, and with a hair dryer.” - [https://palewebserial.wordpress.com/2020/06/30 Excerpt] from [[Stolen Away 2.7]]</ref> It can be embedded in a magical effect to interfere with it and eventually harm the Practitioner responsible.<ref>“Push it into a practice.  Summoning, diagram, object, whatever.  Poisons it.  Makes it uglier, a little weaker, and harder for its maker to break.  If there’s someone connected to the practice, they’ll get sicker and sicker as long as the connection’s there.  They’ll know it’s something like the thorn, so if you don’t want to lose it and get it used against you, you’ll want to pick it back out before they show up.  Otherwise, they gotta end things from a distance, which can hurt if the thorn’s stuck in it, or come and pull the thorn out themselves.” - [https://palewebserial.wordpress.com/2020/06/30 Excerpt] from [[Stolen Away 2.7]]</ref> The longer it festers, the more powerful it grows; a weak one is capable of inflicting a bad cold. <ref>“How sick?” Verona asked.<br><br>“After a week to a month, depending on how strong they are, their karma, crap like that?  Bad cold sick.”<br><br>“And after that?” Verona asked.<br><br>“Bad cold sick.  That’s it.  If we left it buried for longer, it’d be better, but the twit was going to go see a doctor.” - [https://palewebserial.wordpress.com/2020/06/30 Excerpt] from [[Stolen Away 2.7]]</ref>
*[[Bluntmunch]] knew how to make [[glamour]]-breaking stinkbombs.
*Bluntmunch, as a goblin with "clout", is able to reach into the [[Warrens]] and pull out goblin minions<ref>“I can call friends,” Bluntmunch said.<br><br>“He’s good at that.  Having dregs he can call,” Gashwad said.  “Not good at much else though, are yeh?”<br>[...]<br>Bluntmunch prowled across the area, found a tree with a decent sized hole in it, and spat in his hand.  He drew in the spit, then shoved his hand into the hole.He brought out a goblin, kicking, scrabbling and making sounds of protest, then held a calloused mitt to their mouth.<br>[...]<br>“These three are some regulars from my crew, when it’s not the Kennet goblins.  You’ll see them around some.”- [https://palewebserial.wordpress.com/2020/08/01 Excerpt] from [[Out on a Limb 3.6]]</ref> and to bully minor goblins sent against him into switching sides.<ref>Bluntmunch picked up two of the gremlins that had overwhelmed his minions, then hollered in their faces.<br><br>He dropped them, and they scampered back.<br><br>He pointed, and they obeyed.<br><br>That was part of his deal.  Bossing goblins around.  Having that clout.<br><br>“Well, we gave them more troops,” Verona observed. - [https://palewebserial.wordpress.com/2020/08/08 excerpt] from [[Out on a Limb 3.8]]</ref>
*Some goblins make "goblin wards", small animals inflated with their own farts which detonate as an alarm when magic is present.<ref>“It seems they’ve done away with some of the spirits we set up, and are finding their way in.  A somewhat innocent dame can go where a practitioner or errant Other might make a ward fart or a traps go off.”<br><br>“Fart?” Avery asked.<br><br>“A goblin ward.  You start with a good round animal, like a hedgehog or owl, a bit of wire to tie it down, some soda, cabbage, or other gassy food, gotta treat it to make it more gassy, then a bit of gum, to plug up its-”<br><br>“Okay, okay, I think I can see where that goes,” Avery told him.<br><br>“They go off violently enough you can hear the detonations from miles away, sometimes,” Bluntmunch said.  “Especially if you have an ear for it.  They stopped before setting off one, and Cherry didn’t spot ’em.” - [https://palewebserial.wordpress.com/2020/08/01 Excerpt] from [[Out on a Limb 3.6]]</ref>
*They can craft 'Hobb's that mark out territory, for intimidation and similar.<ref>She turned around, approaching the end of the elementary school where people were alternately clustering and herding children away.<br><br>It was an art piece.  Grotesque, vile, violent.  At first glance, she saw it was a fat man, adult and naked, leaning against the fence, ass on the ground, legs crossed.  Torn to pieces, rigged up with chains, boards and nails, mouth yawning open as though his jaw were broken or something huge had been rammed through his mouth and throat to open it wide.  He smelled like shit and blood that had been sitting in the sun for ten minutes at a minimum, maybe as much as an hour.<br><br>At second glance, she could see it wasn’t ''really'' a man.  Meat, bone and other bits had been fixed together in a crude semblance of a person.  Nails, wire, and other boards held bits in places, and strips of meat had been wrapped to bind other strips in place.  A haphazard grid of wires and woven strips of meat held the intestines in place, where they had been balled up and left at the midsection.  Bits of the organs bulged through the gaps.<br><br>At ''third'' glance, she saw the maggots that were already starting to festoon the thing.  Whoever had worked on it had done so without the benefit of refrigeration.<br><br>She turned away, her stomach twisting.<br><br>''It’s only art.  Just something for show'', she told herself. <br>[...]<br>Maggie looked, and she could see the mock thing moving, the chest moving in, out, side to side.  Flies took flight from it as it jerked.<br><br>It was making noises.  High pitched squeals, more like those of a baby than a person.  Maggie’s hand flew to her mouth, clamped down over it in case she puked.<br>[...]<br>The location had to have been strategically chosen.  Out of sight of any of the windows, but in plain sight once the school had finished for the day.  That was all it was.  Art, aimed at scaring the most vulnerable people the sickos could find. - [https://pactwebserial.wordpress.com/2014/02/11 Excerpt] from [[Interlude 2.y]]</ref><ref>The body was arranged in the tree, more akin to an octopus than a human being, if it had even been human to begin with.  Every limb was broken in multiple places, joints popped out of sockets, skin a bruised purple-black where it had been stretched, wrapped around the thorny tree branches.  Fingers and feet had been broken and bent backward, wrapped around and nailed in place, not with any precision, but more ‘nail until it stays where it is’.  Branches behind the body had been broken off, the points of wood penetrating back and buttocks to hold up the corpse.<br><br>The least broken arm had come free, and dangled at the side, long since frozen.  Bits of bark and splinters under the nails marked where the dying individual had tried to claw free.  Fresher than the blood under the nails, marking it as one of the last things the individual had attempted.<br><br>Maybe it was better that Evan hadn’t looked long enough to see the smaller details.<br><br>“They didn’t even eat him,” Green Eyes said.<br><br>“Wasn’t the point,” I replied.<br><br>“What was the point?”<br><br>“I guess they wanted people to stumble onto it,” I said.  “Sunrise is soon, and goblins can be stupid.  Maybe their desire to horrify and alarm overrode their desire to avoid karmic backlash.”<br><br>“Hm.  It’s more than that, isn’t it?” Green Eyes asked.<br><br>I glanced at her.<br><br>“If they were that stupid, they wouldn’t have lasted this long.” - [https://pactwebserial.wordpress.com/2014/12/02 Excerpt] from [[Sine Die 14.1]]</ref><ref>
:''“What’s a hobb?”''

:“A signpost, except it’s not a sign made of wood.”

:“Obviously not made of wood.”

:“It’s meant to inspire fear, sow confusion, and intimidate. They make them look like children, or like dead bodies, or animals injured by the roadside, to get people to draw close, but they’re rigged to move, because there’s stuff inside them.  It’s meant to gross out or scare the person that stumbles on it.  Different areas and groups have different hobbs they like to use.  It’s territorial.”

:“He’s marking his territory?”

:“No.  No, not like that.  He’s marking territory he wants, I think.  Hobbs like this are like a big ‘we are coming’ sign.”'' - [https://palewebserial.wordpress.com/2020/12/05 Excerpt] from [[Gone Ahead 7.2]]''</ref>
*Some goblins, such as [[Gashwad]], are highly aware of the entrances and exits to the Warrens and can use them to "teleport" ahead of their targets or otherwise shorten journeys.<ref>Gashwad kept skipping ahead.  He was lying in wait now.<br><br>“How’s he moving like that!?” Lucy called out.<br><br>“There’s little paths and tunnels, if you’re tuned into the Warrens,” Avery said.  “The place goblins come from.  Snowdrop showed me some.  Gash- gash seems to know most of them!” - '''[https://palewebserial.wordpress.com/2020/08/08 Excerpt]''' from [[Out on a Limb 3.8]]</ref>
*Gashwad had something that turned a patch of grass into a bubbling tar pit on contact.<ref>Gashwad leaped down from the fence, into their way.  Lucy reached into her pocket, where she had the last of her glamour.<br><br>He threw something down into their way.  Grass blackened and died.  Then the blackness bubbled. Like tar. - [https://palewebserial.wordpress.com/2020/08/08 Excerpt] from [[Out on a Limb 3.8]]</ref> He can apparently make a [[Magic Item]] that does this.<ref>John pulled out what looked like a can of beans or fruit with the label ripped off.  Rusty blisters covered it.<br>[...]<br>John took a knife to the can, as the three girls covered their noses.<br><br>The smell wafted past them, making Verona’s eyes sting.  Snowdrop, who hadn’t covered her nose, doubled over.<br><br>Even the boys on the edge of the water a hundred feet away recoiled.<br><br>Lucy couldn’t take the can, because her hand was occupied, so Verona did, turning her face away and holding it at arm’s length, downwind.  It didn’t help much.<br><br>She poured it into the mud by the water, where it bubbled noxiously.<br><br>They’d done a few trial runs of this in the weeks before leaving, but it hadn’t been this gross.<br><br>She plunged her hand into the muck.  There was no resistance.<br>[...]<br>Verona stood up, gave a wide berth to the goblin hole she’d just made, now a fresh entrance to the Warrens - [https://palewebserial.wordpress.com/2020/12/01 Excerpt] from [[Gone Ahead 7.1]]</ref>
*Goblins will sometimes steal glamour and use it, often polluting it with trash, dirt, and body fluids to make it tolerable. Toadswallow uses this "goblin glamour" or "visceral glamour" to make disguises that are easily broken but layered and full of traps between each layer.<ref>[[Crossed with Silver 19.2]]</ref>