A brief history of the Goblin Tribes on the mortal plane of Athien during the Nescienwyn Period
As preserved in the Hall of the Listening Roots, beneath the Grotto City of Vael’nar.
When the skies broke and the world split into three, the Goblins vanished. None mourned them. Few even noticed their absence. 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 mortal tribes simply slipped between the cracks.
While the tribes who remained on the surface screamed prayers to gods who could no longer hear them, the Goblins listened to the tremors in the earth. They felt the heartbeat of the world stutter violently, then grow calm. They fled downward, beyond the light of the known world. In the depths they found that the soil still pulsed faintly with life. There, in that great darkness, they found silence and shelter from the chaos above. In the depths they found their salvation.
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 earth. Their eyes grew vast and black, their flesh pale and thin, and their senses were reshaped to hear the whisper of lichen and the pulse of roots. They learned that sound was just as important as sight, that subterranean warmth was as comforting as the heat of the sun, and that life could thrive even in the most unexpected of places.
Thus began the Deep Communion, the bond between the Goblin tribe and the living world below. It was not magic, nor prayers to uncaring gods that saved them. Instead their salvation was built on understanding the delicate balance that life in the depths required. Their survival was manifested through their own inquisitive minds, and diligent hands.
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 chaos and violence. The tribes struggled to survive, often turning on one another, desperate for resources that had become scarce in the face of cataclysm. The world below, though cold and unforgiving, was honest.
The Goblins learned to breathe the thin air and savor the bitter mineral taste of the deep rivers. They learned which fungi gave sustenance and which promised death. From phosphorescent mushrooms and lichen they drew faint light, enough to feed the algae ponds that become their primary source of food. They tamed beetles that devoured rot, and bred worms that softened the earth for cultivation of larger and and brighter mushrooms.
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 poison their waters or their air, 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 that never answered, or to fight pointless wars for supremacy. Such things had no place in the depths. Instead they learned to live in a delicate harmony with their surroundings. Over generations their attunement to this balance would become a sixth sense.
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. Their pilgrimage took them into caverns so deep that the thin air that smelled of death. No Goblin had ever dared to tread there before, sensing that nothing good could come from such a journey. They left behind songs of hope and maps drawn in mineral dust, promising a glorious return.
Parents waited years for sons and daughters, but none came back. A generation passed, sisters and brothers growing old, still hoping for the return that the Prophet had promised. But her promise proved false.
For two hundred years after, the Prophet’s name was spoken only as a warning. Mothers whispered her story to their young as lesson and lament, a tale of the arrogance of faith. In time her name was forgotten, although the lesson survived. To this day Goblins are slow to trust in gods or divinations, preferring to place their faith in the traditions that preserved them in the depths.
But the deep earth is not without mercy, and it remembers what the living forget. Her followers did eventually reemerge, returned back to the tribe that they had abandoned in their hubris. But while the earth was not without mercy, it was also not without justice, and those that returned were not as they once had been.
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, and hulking, their skin in tones of orange and white. Patches of their bodies glimmering faintly with bioluminescent algae. Their eyes, once wide and curious, were now the opposite. Small, virtually in the darkness blind, and burning with dull instinct. Their breath steamed like forge smoke, and the only speech they possessed was grunts and growls. The Goblins fled, thinking themselves besieged by beasts from the molten core of the world.
But the creatures made no war cry. They simply sat, confused, trembling, growling 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 of the tribes had taken root within their flesh. Flesh that was very similar to their own. As Veshna studied the brutes she began to recognize that they had some features almost familiar to her, but distorted and twisted. She realized the truth as she inspected the primitive garments that they were wearing.
These were not beasts. They were the lost. The Goblins who had followed the Prophet to their doom. The deep earth had changed them nearly beyond recognition.
The Goblins called their lost kin Trolls, though they named themselves nothing at all. Where there had once been keen minds, and a vision for the future, the trolls had become a people only of instinct. They moved without a plan, but not without a purpose. The Trolls retained an ancient memory of kinship and protection for their brethren. They would stand between the Goblins and danger, moved by an unspoken empathy and connection 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. The earth had forgiven their trespasses and left them stronger than ever before.
The Deep can be generous if treated with respect, but it is not often forgiving of those who take it for granted. The Druma Grotto, one of the oldest and richest of all the Goblin Grotto's, believed they had mastered the balance. Their caverns were vast, their Great Mushroom had spread its mycorrhizae network, the basis of all life for the Goblin Tribes, all throughout their Grotto. It's growth unrestricted and unexpectedly abundant. The fungal networks beneath Druma’s halls produced such abundance that their luminescence shone nearly as bright as the moon in the above world. Algae ponds bloomed with incredible abundance, providing rich clean air, and more food than the Grotto could ever want for.
The Goblins of Druma grew proud. They spent more time feasting than tending the mycorrhizal webs that sustained their plenty. But 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. Word spread of the infestation, and the Grotto was quarantined. A limb severed to protect the rest of the Goblin Grottos from contamination.
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 to harvest death.
In desperation, they delved into unexplored tunnels. Caution was not put aside, but tempered to allow for innovation and discovery. They uncovered 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 giant 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 their curious nature compelled them, and they watched as it awoke and went about its daily routine. With almost ritual care the mole rat crushed a poisonous tuber against sulfur-coated stalactites before consuming it whole. The tubers were plentiful, seeming to become even more common when the conditions in the cavern reduced the mushroom and algae harvests.
From this, the Goblins learned how to neutralize the toxins within the tubers. Like the mole rat, they mixed crushed sulfur into the tubers, and then baked 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 exact minerals available within caverns.
The Naelthra Grotto named the mole rat Muun’drath, “the Eternal Burrower.” The Goblins came to believe that each mole rat carried within it the limitless knowledge of the earth itself. Virtually immortal, existing in harmony with their surroundings, the Goblins had nothing but admiration for the great beast. Over generations the goblins sought out the mole rats, and they would become companions, guardians, and living symbols of the balance that the Goblins revered.
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 the wisdom of the mole rats. Each Grotto forged its own version of the Trials. Some demanded contests of gladiatorial combat, where blood and strength would decide a victor. Others sought to challenge endurance, intellect, or even compassion. From the Trials, one amongst them would rise above the rest. This Goblin was chosen to depart from their home. To leave their kin, their families, and their Grotto behind — carrying their strength to another Grotto.
To triumph in the Trials was both an honor and a burden. The victors were called Originators, figures of respect and reverence. They were gifted wealth and esteem from their birth Grotto before being sent away to serve another. They were admired by all, but they would never again belong. In the new Grotto they would always remain outsiders, symbols of strength but also of sacrifice for the greater good.
Once each cycle, the Originators selected from the Trial will 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 wisdom of the Muun'drath. The great mole rats, who had lived in harmony with the earth since the beginning of time.
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, giving up their homes, became living bridges between these communities. Devotees of unity, in a world defined by separation.
In time, the Goblins built a great empire so deep in the earth that no other tribe knew of it. A delicate world sustained by bio-luminescence. Where once there had only been natural caverns, the Goblins utilized their Troll brethren to carve great halls, and networks of underground tunnels. Carefully, but not without ambition they constructed cities, aquifers, and roads to unify their civilization.
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. The children of the Goblin tribes were raised to listen to the hum of air through tunnels and feel the life in the earth and stone that surrounded them. In their world life is not measured in conquest, but in the continuity of the delicate ecosystems that sustain them all.
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. They had not forgotten the false promises of gods and paradises. But they could also feel the change in the world. The quiver of untamed soul energy, the shift in the currents of death and rebirth. It was not curiosity that drew them upward again, but a recognition: the balance was breaking.
And so they emerged from the Deep once more. Unseen and overlooked by the other tribes, they moved in shadow and silence. Learning, listening, planning, and preparing to reshape the world above. Where other tribes wield steel and faith with brutish violence, the Goblins combine cunning with and an instinctive attunement to the ebb and flow of life. While at times they can be as violent or self serving as any other tribe, their life in the delicate caverns of the depths have left them with a need for balance over conquest. It is not out of goodness, but out of an instinctual 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
And so the Goblins rise. They make their presence known in the world, and to the gods. They will not allow for the balance to be broken, or for gods to run rampant. They will not allow the horrors of the past to be repeated, or for the surface tribes to lead the world once again to devastation.