Gerhild

<infobox layout="stacked">

 <title source="Name">
   <default>Gerhild</default>
 </title>
 <image source="Image">
 </image>
 
 <title source="title">
 </title>
 
   <label>Alias</label>
 
 
 
 
   <label>Age</label>
 
 
   <label>Gender</label>
 
 
   <label>Status</label>
 
 
   <label>Type</label>
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
   <label>Classification</label>
 
 
 
 
 
 
   <label>Affiliation</label>
 
 
 
 
 
 
   <label>Family</label>
 
 
 
 
 
 
   <label>Occupation</label>
 
 
 
 
 
 
   <label>First Appearance</label>
 

</infobox>

Gerhild is a Goblin Queen Practitioner-turned-Goblin and Maggie Holt's nemesis.

Personality

She sadistically preferred to kill whichever of Maggie's family would inflict the most loss on the survivor.<ref>“Which one?”

“No,” Maggie said.  “All of us.  Let all of us go.”

“If I were to let two of you go, which two?”
[...]
The bloody-haired woman approached, placing her hand on the cheek of Maggie’s father.  “You argue best.  I believe you, when you say you’d sacrifice yourself for them.  You love them that much.”

He shuddered, bowing his head, unable to maintain eye contact.

“You, I’ll let live, then.  You’ll feel the lost most.”
[...]
“No!”  Maggie shrieked.  “No!  All of us live!  All of us!”

“Her first.  So the adults can watch.” - Excerpt from Interlude 2.x</ref>

Relationships

She's notable for having three extremely powerful Greater Goblin minions, who guard the outskirts of town while she's ravaging them and generally protect her person.<ref name=":2"/>

She destroyed Maggie Holt's hometown, and has a bargain with Maggie that helps keep her in the world (and dooms Maggie to face repeated disasters) in exchange for sparing her and her family.<ref name=":0">Maggie had to raise her voice to be heard over her fathers.  Her voice was so loud and high it was ragged.  “I’ll do anything!  Just let us go!”
br>“Anything?”

“Just- just let us go.”

“Agree…  Let me think.  You’ll experience what you experienced here, twice more.  The rule of three, to make this stronger.  Perhaps it will be me again.  Perhaps no.  But you will experience blood and darkness and fire, like you experienced it here.  If you agree, it will be so.”
[...]
“Fool,” he muttered, through the pain.  “Fool.  She was to rest.  She had to agree, or she had to finish here, and once she rested for three days, three nights, she would have to sleep centuries before acting again.  Now she can keep going, come back with your oath. [...] No.  Walk blindly, pay no attention to this, forget.  It’ll make things easier, when the blood and darkness come, next time.  Your power is the oath’s power.” - Excerpt from Interlude 2.x</ref>

Appearance

Her hair is dripping red with blood, held back with a headband. Her face is obviously inhuman, with sharp teeth, a "too-pugnacious" nose; eyes, ears and general skeletal structure all obviously wrong. Her body is is buxom, long-fingered, with feet like a lizard.<ref>The woman’s teeth had been filed down to points.  She wore contact lenses that reflected funny in the light.  Her entire facial structure… implants?  The shape of her ears?  The too-pugnacious nose  Surgery?

Maggie couldn’t come up with excuses as fast as she noticed all the things that didn’t fit.  Too much, all together, that made the buxom woman look wrong in a way that simple makeup and cosmetics couldn’t manage.

Her feet were a big part of that.  More like a lizard’s.  The fingers on her hands were too long.  But the most noticeable thing was her hair.  It was wet, soaked crimson, and only a blood-soaked headband kept it out of her face. - Excerpt from Interlude 2.x</ref>

Abilities and Art

She has the abilities of both a powerful goblin and a mortal Practitioner, without most of the weaknesses of either.<ref name=":1">“Gerhild.  Redcap Queen,” Deedee said.  “Hit your town, wiped it off the map.  Hit Port Hope, they had to rewrite memories and call it a contamination issue.  Hit three other places, a bit more backwater.  Small towns and shit.  Used to be a goblin queen, just like you, but she stopped being so human and started being more goblin a bit ago.  Enjoys being both practitioner and goblin at the same time.  Benefits of both, not so many weaknesses.  She isn’t bothered by the usual stuff that slows goblins down, and she lets goblins who follow her avoid some of that usual stuff too.  Power lines, plumbing.” - Excerpt from Poke 3</ref> She's considered one of the most powerful Goblin Queens.<ref name=":2">“Just telling you what I pieced together for ya.  But ten years later she’s a goblin queen, with a small herd of redcaps, and she’s got three of the big ones with her.  And from there, she does her thing.  By the time she gets to your town, she’s a redcap queen, and she’s that half-and-half that’s more than the sum of its parts.  Thing is the big goblins tend to stay out of the attacks on the towns.  They guard the perimeters, and they’re the ones you gotta get past if you want to get at her.  I hear she gives them some prize for keeping trouble off her back while she and her swarm have fun.”

“Define ‘big’ for me,” Mags said.  “What tier of goblin?”

“I have no idea what the fuck a tier is supposed to mean here,” Deedee said.

“Do you know the Hyena?  From Toronto?  [...] it was described to me as being middle tier,” Mags said.  “Was that off base, or-”

“Middle tier’s right,” the nameless goblin said.  “An’ these ones, the three, they’re bigger, better, meaner, fuckier.  So I guess they’re upper tier.”

“Well fff...” Mags started.  She sat back.  “...ffiddlesticks.”

“There’s gotta be some new info in there,” Deedee said.  “Big lesson being that you do not want to fight her, if you’ve got a decent brain in your head.  I was talking about the killers and fuckers, before?  She’s not a full goblin but she’s working her way up that ladder of Goblins.  She’s definitely close to the top, as Goblin Queens go.  You probably don’t even want to cross the three big ones she’s got as lieutenants.  Yeah?” - excerpt from Poke 3</ref>

She has a Practitioner's ability to See Connections, which can border on mild telepathy.<ref>“You had a tie,” the woman said.  “To him.  You know the one I’m talking about.”

Maggie thought of the man.

“Yes.  Him,” the woman said.  “You met recently, he confided in you, you know what he looks like.  That is enough points of reference.” - Excerpt from Interlude 2.x</ref> She was able to strike an oath with the unAwakened Maggie that would fate her to endure "blood and darkness" three times over, drawing on whatever power Maggie acquired, and empower herself to help bring the prophecy about.<ref name=":0" />

Her redcap hair has been bathed in the blood of many Others and Practitioners, giving her a portion of their power and strength.<ref name=":0" />

She developed a way to cross the natural boundaries modern plumbing forms against goblins on "bridges of bones", allowing her to lead her goblin army into Maggie Holt's hometown and destroy it.<ref name=":3">“He’s slippery one,” the woman said.  “He’s lurking, trying to spoil our fun.  Hunting me.  Because I found a way to cross through your cities.  Bridges of bones.”

“I don’t understand,” Maggie said.

A man’s voice cut in.  “Her kind can’t walk easily inside modern cities.  She found a way, and she’s been waiting for a chance to use it.” - Excerpt from Interlude 2.x</ref> She's generally known among goblins for having ways of protecting her servants against the usual goblin weaknesses.<ref name=":1" />

Weaknesses

If she had been forced into dormancy for three days and three nights by an oath, or fought against it, she would normally have been so weakened that she would have slept for centuries. However her bargain with Maggie will allow her to come back early.<ref>“I’ve tried.  And now I’m hoping you’ll let this family go, and promise to stop for three days and three nights.”

“You’re worth so little now.  Luckless, feckless, sad little wretch.”

“Blood is power, and I do have some power.  You’ll bathe in it, you’ll make some of that power yours, as you have with Faerie and Hags and all manner of other things, and you’ll be even more fearsome, when next you attack.” - Excerpt from Interlude 2.x</ref>

History

She was born Gabrielle in one of the worst neighbourhoods of Detroit, USA, in extreme poverty. She was attacked by goblins as a young girl, but ended up defeating them and making some kind of contact with extremely powerful goblin leadership of the area.<ref>“Yeh.  So here’s what’s what.  Bitch’s original name is Gabrielle.  From the asshole of Detroit, so poor you’d have more chance finding cash stuck to the shit on a hobo’s bootheel than going through her family’s wallets, y’know? [...] She grew up hard, not in the fun way, but in the other way that matters.  No friends, no help, no nothing, pretty much.  Her ma’s struggling just like she is, but her ma can at least fuck some shitbag to not be totally alone… [...] Goblins can go after people if they’re sure they can clean up the evidence, or leave it messy enough people can’t make heads or tails of it.  They went after her.  Pair of the little ones, like our nameless twist here.  She out-scrapped ‘em, and she wasn’t even old enough to have tits yet.  [...] So goblins in charge of the little shitters have to clean up the mess, or there’s gonna be some fuckin’ issues, yeah? [...] Scrap lasts a while, I hear, but it drags out long enough she manages to get the goblin boss in a compromising spot.  Surrounded by elemental metal by accident. But she can’t go and it can’t escape, so she’s there, while it talks at her, tries to break her with words.  But she’s been called all sorts of things and told all sorts of things, and she toughs it out. [...] And eventually she lets the boss goblin go, and the boss goblin goes to its boss, and she follows it.  And the goblin in charge of that part of Detroit… hooo." - Excerpt from Poke 3</ref>

Within ten years she was a powerful Goblin Queen, leading a small horde of Redcaps and with three high-tier goblin lieutenants. From there she only grew more powerful and less human.<ref name=":2" />

She destroyed Maggie Holt's hometown as a first test of her "bridges of bones" concept,<ref name=":3" /> wiping it off the map, followed by serious attacks on Port Hope and three smaller towns.<ref name=":1" />

A powerful Goblin Queen who is likely Gerhild has been recruiting "every goblin over a certain size" in some of the Ontario area, driving some goblins such as Bluntmunch underground.<ref>“A goblin queen, one of your types, that works mostly with goblins, she was getting started out, recruiting every goblin over a certain size.  I ran.  She’s only gotten bigger since.  If I get seen by her or her soldiers, they’d make me enlist or kill me.  Here, it’s close enough I still know my way around the local Warrens, but far enough away I’m not in her way.  I keep in touch with goblins from the Warrens who know enough to keep their mouths shut.”

“Do we need to worry about her?” Verona asked.  “One of the outside practitioners?”

Munch shook his head.  “If there was a chance, I’d be told and I’d be gone.” - Excerpt from Stolen Away 2.7</ref>

References

<references/>