THE CHRONICLES OF THE DEEP COMMUNION

As preserved in the Hall of the Listening Roots, beneath the Grotto City of Vael’nar.

PROLOGUE: THE FORGOTTEN BENEATH - year 50,000 LS

When the skies broke and the world split into three, the Goblins vanished. None mourned them. Few even noticed. The great cataclysm that birthed the planes of Athien, Mideon, and Fjellgard tore the fabric of existence apart, and in that unmaking, the smallest of the mortals simply slipped between the cracks.

While the surface tribes screamed prayers to gods who could no longer hear them, the Goblins listened instead to the tremors in the earth. They felt the heartbeat of the world stutter, then grow still. They fled downward, beyond light and memory, into the places where the soil still pulsed faintly with life. And there, in that great darkness, they found silence, and in silence, survival.

The Dwarves carved halls to defy the dark; the Goblins became part of it. They dug without pattern or pride, guided only by instinct, echo, and the gentle hum of living stone. Their eyes grew vast and black, their flesh pale and thin, their senses reshaped by the whisper of lichen and the pulse of roots. They learned that sound could replace sight, that warmth could replace sun, and that life, if respected, could endure even without light.

Thus began the Deep Communion, the bond between Goblin and the living world below. It was not magic, nor prayer, but an understanding: to survive, one must listen and learn.

I. THE DESCENT

The earliest generations spoke of The Descent not as an event, but as an act of faith, a surrender to the unknown. The world above was poisoned by light and violence. The world below, though cold and cruel, was honest.

The Goblins learned to breathe the thin air and drink the mineral taste of the deep rivers. They learned which fungi gave sustenance and which promised death. From phosphorescent moss they drew faint light, enough to mark their homes and trace their lineage upon the walls. They tamed beetles that devoured rot, and bred worms that softened the earth for cultivation.

From these beginnings rose the first goblin Grotto. A village merged with the subterranean ecosystem, its inhabitants surviving only through harmony with their environment. A single misstep could spoil an ecosystem, suffocating every living thing in their enclosed caverns. Thus was born the first law of Goblinkind:

“The breath of our tribe is the breath of the Grotto itself.” Brina Tor - First of the Wise Mothers, Deathien Grotto (deep Athien Grotto), year 50,000 LS

They had no desire to worship gods, only to live in peace with the quiet and delicate balance of the depths.

II. THE PROPHET’S MARCH - year 15,000 LS

Thousands of years after the founding of the first Grotto, a figure arose, The Prophet of the Hollow Path. Her name is lost, but her words endure:

“No longer will we be creatures of darkness! The gods have blessed me with a vision, a vision of a tunnel, a path to the other side of the world. There we will find a paradise, a bounty of peace and light.” The Profit of the Hollow Path

Under her banner, thousands followed, vanishing into caverns with thin air that smelled of death. So deep that no Goblin had ever dared to tread there before. They left behind songs of hope and maps drawn in mineral dust, promising a glorious return.

Parents waited for son's and daughters, but none came back.

For two hundred years, the Prophet’s name was spoken not with reverence, but as a warning. Mothers whispered her story to their young as lesson and lament, a tale of arrogance disguised as faith. In time her name was forgotten, although the lesson survived. 

But the Deep remembers what the living forget. Her followers did eventually reemerge, though not as they had been.

III. THE RETURN OF THE FOLLOWERS year 9,000 LS

It began with tremors, faint quakes from tunnels thought collapsed. Then came the light: an eerie red glow seeping through cracks in the stone. When the first of them emerged, the Goblins did not recognize their own.

They were vast, hulking, their skin marbled in orange and white, veins glimmering faintly with bioluminescent algae. Their eyes, once wide and curious, now burned with dull instinct. Their breath steamed like forge smoke. The Goblins fled, thinking themselves besieged by beasts from the molten deep.

But the creatures made no war cry. They simply sat, confused, trembling, humming low tones that vibrated through the stone. One of the Ma da Gudra, an elder named Veshna, approached them and saw the truth: the algae that fed the caverns had taken root within their flesh.

These were not beasts. They were the lost.

The Goblins called them Trolls, though they named themselves nothing at all. What had once been a people of vision had become a people of instinct, but not without purpose. The Trolls retained an ancient memory of protection. They stood between Goblins and danger, moved by an unspoken empathy that no language could express.

The Council of Mothers decreed:

“We shall not fear what the Deep shapes. The earth gives and takes as it wills.” Brinea Tor - First of the Wise Mothers, Deathien Grotto

Thus the Trolls were welcomed, and Goblinkind was made whole again. Changed, but whole, and stronger than ever before.

IV. THE FALL OF DRUMA - year 6,000 LS

The Deep is generous, but it is not forgiving. The Druma Grotto, one of the oldest and richest, believed they had mastered the balance. Their caverns were vast, their Great Mushroom had spread its mycorrhizae network, the basis of all life in the depths, throughout the cavern in which they built their homes. The fungal networks beneath Druma’s halls produced such abundance that their luminescent algae ponds shone brighter than any other, their oxygen creating lichen thick and sweet with growth.

The Goblins of Druma grew proud. They spent more time feasting than tending the mycorrhizal webs that sustained their plenty. Their negligence brought an unseen enemy, the albino locus grub, a pale pest that fed first upon their overgrown lichen, and then upon the roots of the Great Mushroom itself.

By the time the Druma noticed, the infestation had already hollowed the heart of their network. The Great Mushroom collapsed, and within the year, the once-mighty Grotto battled suffocation and starvation.

To this day, the Council teaches the Lesson of Druma:

“A gift expected is a gift undone.” Dral Esh, Wise Mother, Vael’nar Grotto

Their halls remain silent, a monument to indulgence and the cost of forgetting gratitude. Those who take the great mushrooms for granted can expect only death.

V. THE DISCOVERY OF THE MOLE RATS - year 5000 LS

Centuries passed. The Goblins flourished again, learning humility and patience. Yet there came another famine, a slow, creeping hunger when the redox ponds failed and the fungal harvests were meager. During these times the Naelthra Grotto faced extinction.

In desperation, they delved into unexplored tunnels and discovered a vast chamber unlike any other; warm, dry, and filled with a sweet, earthy scent. There, sleeping among the stones, was a creature of impossible size: a mole rat, pale as pearl and breathing slow as the world’s own heart.

At first, the Goblins feared it, thinking its presence an omen of death. Yet they watched as it awoke and went about its rituals, crushing a poisonous tuber against sulfur-coated stalactites before consuming it whole.

From this, the Goblins learned how to neutralize the toxins within their own failing crops. They mixed crushed sulfur into the tubers, baking them into dense, bitter cakes that would sustain them through famine. These sulfur cakes became a staple of Goblin cuisine, each Grotto developing its own flavor depending on the minerals of their caverns.

The Naelthra Grotto named the creature Muun’drath, “the Eternal Burrower.” The Goblins came to believe that each mole rat carried within it the memory of the earth itself. Virtually immortal, existing in harmony with their surroundings. Over generations, its kin became companions, guardians, and living symbols of patience and balance.

VI. THE TRIALS OF THE ORIGINATORS - year 4900 LS

As the Goblins’ understanding of the mole rats deepened, they began to see reflections of themselves within the creatures’ ways. Each colony of the mole rats lived apart, yet there existed an unspoken ritual of unity between them. In every generation, the strongest and most capable of the mole rats left their birth colony to travel to another. It was a migration of strength, a silent covenant of renewal that ensured the endurance of their kind.

From this, the Goblins conceived the first Trials—tests of might, mind, and spirit designed to emulate what they witnessed in nature. Each Grotto forged its own version of the Trials. Some demanded contests of gladiatorial combat, where only blood and strength could decide a victor. Others sought to challenge endurance, intellect, or even compassion. From the Trials, one would rise above the rest—a Goblin chosen to depart from their home, to leave their kin, their families, and their Grotto behind, and carry their strength into the wider world below.

To triumph in the Trials was both an honor and a burden. The victors were called Originators, figures of respect and reverence who were gifted wealth and esteem within their birth Grotto before being sent away to serve another. They were admired, but they would never again belong. Among their new kin they would always remain outsiders, symbols of strength, but also of sacrifice.

Once each cycle, the Originators gather before the Wise and Beloved Mothers of every Grotto. It is the Mothers who determine to which Grotto each Originator will go, their destinies chosen by the wisdom of those who speak for all the Deep. None could refuse the calling, for to do so was to deny the breath of life itself.

Through this sacred exchange, the Goblins’ society took form. The Wise and Beloved Mothers became the stewards of every Grotto, bound by shared purpose but beholden to none. Together they preserved the delicate ecosystems of the Deep, each Grotto cultivating its own traditions, rites, and wisdom. The Originators, wandering and loyal, became living bridges between these communities. Keepers of unity in a world defined by separation.

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VII. THE COMMUNION RENEWED - year 0LS / 1AD

In time, the Goblins built an empire of silence and bio-luminescence. The Trolls carved great halls, and the Mothers of each Grotto gathered to form the Council of the First Breath.

They taught that survival is not defiance but cooperation; that strength is not domination but understanding. Their children were raised to listen to the hum of air through tunnels and the breathing of the stone. To them, life is not measured in conquest, but in the continuity of ecosystems that can outlast death itself.

When the New Gods descended and Mideon once again stirred with divine conflict, the Goblins did not rush to pledge allegiance. They remembered the lessons of the Prophet and the fall of Druma. But they could feel the change in the world, the quiver of soul energy, the shift in the currents of death and rebirth. It was not curiosity that drew them upward again, but recognition: the balance was breaking.

And so they emerged from the Deep once more. Unseen and overlooked by the other tribes, they move through shadow and silence, learning, listening, and preparing to reshape the world above. Where others wield steel and faith, the Goblins wield cunning and an instinctive attunement to the ebb and flow of life. While they can be as violent or self serving as any other tribe, their time in the delicate caverns has left them with a need for balance, not out of goodness, but out of self preservation.  

In their hearts they know:

Every plane, every god, every Grotto, and every soul is part of the same breath. If one is allowed to take too deeply, all will choke on their greed. - Jannis Er, Wise Mother Naelthra Grotto

By Peter Adams