Arthur E Daigle, click
here to update your pages on AuthorsDen.
Blogs by Arthur E Daigle
warrior goblins 4/10/2014 5:00:39 AM
The goblins of Other Place are a diverse and obnoxious lot, coming in a variety of annoying forms. Finding a goblin is easy enough (just follow the sounds of chaos and needless property damage), but once you have the little bugger in your sights it’s important to find out what kind of goblin you have. Goblins vary widely in physical appearance, but you may be able to tell which guild they’re from based on their behavior and possessions. That will tell you whether to expect pit traps in your bathroom, explosives rigged to your sock drawer or that your front door may now be bricked over.
Warrior Goblins
Warriors are dedicated to fighting, and generally losing, the battles that goblins are constantly involved in. They are at the front lines of every goblin conflict, be it against humans, dwarfs, elves or most often other goblins. The reason for the conflict is generally unimportant, and they will forget the cause they’re fighting for unless the threat is truly severe.
Warrior goblins are among the most numerous in the world and potentially the easiest to identify. Many warriors wear miniature versions of German WW1 infantry uniforms, complete with spiked helmet. It’s not clear how this custom began since goblins have never been to Earth (we hope). Equally confusing is how goblins could make such faithful replicas of the uniforms with the few resources available to them and their limited skills. But make them they do, and nearly half the warriors wear them. The expressed reason is that the spiked helmet is so ridiculous that they have to wear it. A nearly equal number of warriors refuse to have anything to do with the uniforms, claiming that everything goblins do is ridiculous.
A normal army would have officers and generals, but no one has ever called goblins normal. While some warriors are more intelligent or skilled than others, there are no real leaders among them. Warriors follow any goblin that has come up with a plan that will generate the most chaos and amusement. If another goblin comes up with a better idea later on, the group will abandon the original plan and head off on the new one. It’s not uncommon for a band of warriors to change leaders and plans five times inside of a week. The most extreme example of this is when eighty warrior goblins started out on a mission to steal cheese, only to end up a month later stuffing a notorious evil wizard into a barrel of pickled herring and leaving him outside a castle gate.
The average warrior goblin is no larger or stronger than his counterparts in other guilds. This is something of a problem, as an enthusiastic toddler can give most goblins a run for their money, while an adult human can fight up to ten goblins with a reasonable chance of winning, and competent soldiers can handle up to twenty goblins at once. It’s little wonder why goblins lose so often. It doesn’t help matters at all that warriors are disorganized and suffer from poor morale, and like all goblins are as dumb as rocks (and not the good kind of rocks, either).
Warriors have a variety of ways to cope with these disadvantages. The first is through overwhelming numbers. Goblins fight only when they can smother their enemies with waves of goblins. Ten to one is the lowest odds a goblin will take, while thirty-to-one is considered a safe bet. The largest odds yet known in a goblin conflict was 918 to 1, which convinced Ted Salik to abandon his efforts at door-to-door insurance sales.
Their second advantage is in equipment. Goblins generally have poor quality weapons, favoring clubs and wood shields that are easy to replace when their owner uses them for firewood or gets hungry and eats them. But some goblins have developed light siege weapons that can be surprisingly effective. The most common are catapults that fire goblins. The goblin catapult ammunition wears small hand gliders that allow them to move very fast over the battlefield. More than one battle plan has been ruined by twenty goblins sailing out of the sky to land flat on the enemy general’s head.
Warrior goblins also favor large slingshots. The ammunition of choice in this case is rickety buckets of goblin stew. Goblins love goblin stew, but every other life form on their world finds this nasty concoction a crime against nature. Hurled buckets break on impact and spread the stew wide to splatter enemy forces with the noxious stuff, making them violently ill and producing astonishingly high laundry bills.
The last way they even the odds is through traps. Goblins of every guild love traps and set them constantly, but warriors use these traps to their advantage in battle. Given enough time they can create trap fields, regions filled with cleverly disguised traps that can disable dozens or even hundreds of men. Most of the victims recover quickly, only to take two steps and set off another trap. Warriors use these traps to weaken enemies and incapacitate portions of the enemy force, allowing them to take on the few foes still standing at better odds.
