Name: Goblins, Gobblers, Sand People, Trayiis
Location: Trayig's Soul
Purpose: Survival
Description:
There are two varieties of goblin, though most people would have no way to know this, since one type of them is nearly never seen.
First, the common goblins that everyone knows and loves. These creatures are three to four feet tall lizard-like people with large snake-like heads and great ears (at least on the males) that can extend up to 1.5 feet.
The only hair on their scaly bodies tends to be around the jawline, though it is not unheard of to find goblins with a full head of hair and some, for the sake of needing distinguishing features to be recognized by other races, style their beards and hair into ornate braided masterpieces.
As far as colors go, most goblins are muted earth colors. A golden sand-like tone is most common, though only because the clan that is colored in such a way is the most populous and most likely to be seen mingling with other sentient species. However, when startled or threatened or in battle, goblin skin takes on startlingly-vivid colors which seems to be unrelated to clan. Purples, blues, reds, greens (very few yellows, though) make goblin battles colorful spectacles to behold.
Goblins can operate either quadruped or bipedal. Their long (3-4 feet) tails provide them excellent balance in bipedal form, though they look a bit awkward with their long feet, raptor-like inner toes, and reverse ankles. These feet give them excellent purchase on loose material (such as sand), though, so they are not often hampered by the environment and can even run across water for short distances.
But those are just the little guys. For every few dozen thousand of them, there's what they like to call "Trayiis Dragons"; not dragons in the literal sense, but huge fearsome creatures full of powerful magicks that can lay as much devastation as their more-proper (and better-known) brethren.
Descriptions of these huge beasts live on in song and a few written historical records, but most who get the wonderful joy of seeing them don't live to confirm the stories. Unlike the smaller of their species, these creatures are expansive: their length can reach 120 feet, and their heads become cavernous maws 20 feet wide when opened. Their limbs are vestigial, and they move instead by writhing their huge masses through the ground like snakes. Their powers, due to the scarcity of sightings, aren't well-known, though songs tell of swallowing caravans whole, battering walls down with their huge skulls, and popping out of the ground with seismic force that knocks down whole armies.
Due to the fact that they're rarely seen even when one visits a goblin clan, they are suspected (correctly) to live underground in vast networks of tunnels that they've burrowed.
Magic:
Such a division between the strong and the common goblins is due to an interesting system that they've been practicing for centuries. The size and magical capabilities of the larger goblins make no sense otherwise: how can a species with hundreds of thousands of individuals still have such concentrated magic? The answer lies in their particular handling of death.
Goblins, for as long as they can remember, have had a ceremony for the dead. It's very simple, though most other cultures find it repugnant. Namely, they eat their dead. Well, not the population at large; they feed their recently deceased to their large brethren.
This has led to a large binary in magical power. Common goblins have next to no magic (due to the magic not re-entering the system to be passed on to the newborn young) and the goblin dragons have all the magic of 36,000 living things.
This has led to some problems for common goblins. They have to live in places with large saturations of life-giving magic, or else they perish. Their bodies don't hold enough magic for them to survive alone. They can survive even in inhospitable areas if they have enough living things to eat or a heavily-magical being that they can use to sustain themselves.
Before dying, a common goblin will eat as many magical/living things as possible, which eventually led to them being called "gobblers", which in turn became "goblins". It does this so that its body may be as saturated with magic as possible for when it is integrated into a goblin dragon. Though they only manage to absorb a very small amount of the magic of things that they eat, common goblins can extend their lives by doing this, and eventually (having consumed enough) may be able to attain a self-sustainable magical balance. There's no recorded history of such a thing happening.
The closest thing to magic that common goblins have is a very basic emotion-based telepathy. Common goblins will know if another goblin is nearby, or if a nearby goblin is frightened, in pain, or dead. This makes goblins especially difficult pests to eradicate, since no one wants to deal with the swarms of goblins that will come to claim the dead body (and possibly get revenge).
Racial Benefits:
Common goblins are affected by magic a little less than creatures with normal magic balance. They are immune to many spells, untargetable for most homing spells (which home on the magical signature of the target), and invisible to magical sight (which makes them slightly difficult to see for magical races, which often subconsciously see in the magic realm).
Common goblins are generally left alone. Killing a goblin is more trouble than it's worth, goblins are somewhat difficult to see for magically-attuned people, and they're a bit dangerous when cornered.
Common goblins are sneaky. They tend to be difficult to detect with situational awareness (you'll never "feel" them watching you, or "feel" them sneaking up on you (both premonitions provided by subconscious magical sense). Their large feet also make their walking quiet, and their short stature makes them easy to overlook.
As a race, goblins get along very well with the classical "evil" races. Whether this is due to some long-past evil alignment the goblins held, their mild telepathy, or just the fact that it's better to be nice to them than not, no one can quite remember. It's not unusual to see goblins riding semi-sentient "evil" races as mounts or conversing casually with orcs.
Common goblins are very good in mounted combat (atop their worg steads, most commonly).
Goblins have enhanced senses due to their very large ears and eyes.
Racial Demerits:
Common goblins will die if there is no magical field around them to sustain them. No goblins live on the Black Mountains, they generally can't live alone (unless the area has large potential magic or a great deal of forestation), and yet at the same time they're not great to have around. Living alone with a goblin has been shown to seriously decrease life expectancy in non-planar-connected people (and this is without taking into account that the goblin will try to eat whatever is nearby if it runs out of magic).
Common goblins cannot use magic.
Goblins have reduced senses of touch.
Goblins almost lack the ability to thermoregulate. They are technically cold-blooded creatures, though in a large enough magical field goblins innately stabilize their body heat with that magic. A goblin in extreme cold/heat will die of magical starvation much faster than one in a normal environment.
Common goblins are not particularly strong on their own, due to their small stature and relatively-weak body strength.
Life expectancy:
Common: 20 years in a goblin clan, vastly-varying lengths among other species (goblins attached to powerful sorcerers tend to live until their master dies).
Dragon: 500-1200 years, depending on the size of the attending goblin clan.
History:
Goblins have been a part of the ecology of Neyav as long as anyone can remember. The oldest dragons can recall seeing goblins in their youth, and might, if their memories still serve them well at this point, recall the horrible wars that constantly waged over the then-potent Sands as goblin kind fought to maintain their control over their sacred lands. But that was indeed very long ago, and since then much of the world has changed. No longer are crusades to the Sands thought of, no longer do people remember the strange wyrm-like monstrosities that came out of the war. But all the same, the goblins have been left mostly to their own devices, to roam the Sands and hunt and mind their own business.
Once trading evolved from the primitive survivalist cultures of the dominant races, goblins once more came to the public conscience. Slowly they filtered into society, claiming their places as thieves, guides, familiars, glassblowers, and all sorts of other positions. Though some would see them as pests or as an inferior race to subjugate as slaves, the sheer numbers of the goblins who steadily infiltrated their cities and towns at least made action on these opinions inadvisable.
Culture:
Goblins have the highest respect for magic. For them, there's no more-worthy calling in life than to serve a great magical being well, eat it upon its death, and return to their home clan to integrate this magic into their own kind.
The central unit of a goblin clan is a goblin dragon. In the case that a common goblin strays far from its home, though, any other very-powerful magical being will do. Such masters provide them the magic they need to survive and protection from what might otherwise easily kill them. In return, a goblin will do its best to assist this great being: they are skilled hunters, quiet assassins, magic-resistant body guards.
Goblin clans often integrate mount animals into their community. They have a special affinity for worg, it would seem; it is not unusual to find a large pack of these over-sized ferocious wolves mingling symbiotically with a goblin clan.
As familiars:
Having a goblin familiar is a great testament to the power of a mage. Though not as exotic as most familiars (goblins themselves are common, certainly more-so than pixies, phoenixes, and miniature dragons), they are well-known in magic circles as the most-picky. Only very strong wizards have access to enough magic to enamor and feed a goblin.
Goblins also make very competent familiars: though not a magical race themselves (unlike almost all other types of familiar), their magic resistance makes them survive the ordeals that would kill most other non-magical familiar-wannabes. Combined with their intelligence, fierce loyalty, long lifespans around mages, and all-around handiness, they are some of the most enviable creatures a mage can claim (right under miniature dragons, because hey, dragons).
Of course, there is the little bothersome fact that they will try to eat you when you die, but this too is a great honor (though most don't appreciate it). Understand that if you take a goblin familiar, your family and friends will not have anything more than sucked-dry crushed-up bones to bury.
