I know not from whence we came, nor where we truly belong. Perhaps we sprang from the earth itself, twisted by some ancient, forgotten magic, born from the very rock and shadow of the world's deep places. Perhaps we are the discarded remnants of a forgotten race, warped and diminished by time and hardship, our forms contorted by generations of living in darkness. Or perhaps, as some whispered in the deepest caverns, we are the shadows of men, given form and driven by their darkest desires, the embodiment of their greed and envy. All I know is this: we are goblins.
In the stygian depths beneath the world, a labyrinth of twisting tunnels and echoing caverns, we carved our existence. Not a life of joy or beauty, but a brutal struggle for survival, ruled by a cruel and unusual hierarchy. It was a system built on the very vice that defined us: greed. Those at the top, the so-called "kings," were not rulers in the traditional sense, wearing crowns or holding courts. They were merely the current holders of the most wealth, the goblins whose hoards were temporarily the largest. This precarious position was solely to be bled dry by those below. The flow of stolen goods moved constantly downwards, a relentless tide of pilfered trinkets, hoarded scraps of food, and scavenged tools, until the "king" was stripped bare, reduced to the same squalor as the rest, and the mantle of leadership, or rather, the burden of being the next target, passed to whoever had amassed the largest collection of stolen goods. This cycle of acquisition and dispossession repeated endlessly, a chaotic dance of avarice.
In this dark, subterranean realm, we knew no peace. Gold glittered in our hoards, reflecting the flickering torchlight in a mockery of sunlight, yet food was scarce, often consisting of cave fungi, blind fish, and the occasional unfortunate insect and in many occasions ourselves and the corpses of anything, mostly humans. It was a paradox that gnawed at me even as a child. Greedy, ugly, ravenous creatures, we were called, and not without reason. To survive, I had to steal from the one who claimed to be my mother. A strange, twisted form of care existed between us, for though she would fight me tooth and nail for every scrap of food or shiny trinket, she would also defend me fiercely against the other goblins, hersing and clawing to protect her own, a contradiction I couldn't understand until I, myself, became an owner, a possessor of property, burdened with the obligation to protect what was mine.
Perhaps it was a vestige of a human mindset, a trait I might have inherited from the woman I believed was my true mother, the one from whom I was stolen. For the goblins had a dark practice: women, both goblin and human, were often captured during raids on the surface world, subjected to rape and forced impregnation. Female goblins, driven by a twisted form of greed – a desire to possess the offspring without the burden of the parent – would kidnap the resulting children, or worse, kill the mothers outright, leaving their bodies to rot in the tunnels. This practice left a bitter stain on the image of goblin women, creating a deep-seated mistrust and resentment, especially on any child born of a non-goblin mother. I was both wanted and hated, a paradox in myself, a constant reminder of the goblins' brutal nature.
Goblins never forget, they say. I wondered if we were truly related to humans. Why did we not resemble them? Perhaps it was because we embraced our basest nature, the greed and envy that consumed us, allowing it to warp our bodies and minds. We accepted it, reveling in the acquisition of wealth, no matter how small or insignificant, and envying those who possessed more.
Then, the world changed. The king from the world above, a human, discovered our labyrinth. He was not unlike us in his greed, but he possessed a cunning we lacked, a capacity for long-term planning and organization. We became slaves. Thousands of us were dragged to the surface, blinking in the unfamiliar sunlight, forced to work in the human king's mines and fields. Any goblin who dared to run or defile a human was put to death, often in gruesome public displays designed to instill fear and obedience. I felt no anger, no hatred, only a dull numbness as I dragged carts laden with ore, tilled fields under the scorching sun, and endured the lash of the human overseers. We were treated like cattle, our lives reduced to mere labor. Ironically, the human prisoners, both men and women, often the ugliest and those deemed worthy of punishment by their own society, were given to goblins for breeding, a twisted attempt to bolster our numbers and create more workers. Our numbers swelled to tens of thousands, yet not a single goblin outsmarted a human. Their stupendous greed blinded them to long-term strategy; they were short-sighted, both literally and metaphorically, focusing only on immediate gain.
I eventually took a wife, a crippled, blind woman, perhaps beautiful once, now marked by leprosy, her skin scarred and her fingers gnarled. I felt no love for her, only that same sense of ownership, a desire to possess something in this bleak existence. But from her, I learned. She possessed a quiet wisdom, a deep understanding of the world that transcended her physical limitations. The more I learned from her, the more I felt a change within me, a shift towards something… human. I began to withhold my base instincts, to observe the humans and their ways, to think strategically. My sons, born of this union, did not resemble their mother. They were goblins, through and through, inheriting the worst of our traits.
And so, I gathered them, my sons, and they, in turn, gathered wealth. Slowly, painstakingly, over decades, we accumulated enough stolen trinkets, bartered goods, and hoarded scraps to buy back a sliver of our freedom. Four hundred goblins were granted a measure of autonomy, placed in charge of the rest, overseeing the human king's vast estates. It was a cruel jest; the cave we inhabited, a damp, cavernous space near the surface, leaked noxious gases from the earth, and only those closest to the human overseers, the new "goblin kings," had access to breathable air, further perpetuating the cycle of greed and exploitation.
But I had changed. Eighty years of slavery had honed my instincts, sharpened my mind. I was no longer a mere goblin, driven by base desires. I was something more. I was taller, stronger, more… human, both in mind and body. I led a revolt. Not out of admiration for humanity, not out of hatred for the humans or even the goblins, but out of that same sense of ownership that had defined my relationships with my mother and my wife, now expanded to encompass my entire race.
We slaughtered every living human in that kingdom. The land became a lake of blood, the rivers choked with corpses. And as I reached for the crown, a symbol of the very power I had overthrown, a goblin, one of my own kind, driven by the same insatiable greed that had defined our race, stabbed me in the back, nearly ending my life. It was then that I truly understood. They were animals. Incapable of reason, of long-term thought. They didn't deserve to live. If no god would ordain it, then I would. In a surge of pure rage, fueled by betrayal and the wasted years, I unleashed my manifesto – a power that enforced a mindset, making it absolute reality, a curse that solidified my own logic and erased the possibility of contradiction or irrationality. I became a being incapable of illogic. And in that night, I massacred my entire race – over forty thousand goblins. I hated them all. I am the last goblin, my bloodline dies with me, even so I truely am the first goblin lord