Goblins & Trolls

Goblins are a product of Ancient Serpentine immortality experiments, artificial bodies created via alchemy and captured starlight for the serpents to transfer their minds to when their regular bodies grew old. While the experiment was successful the serpents were dissatisfied, for they could still be killed in their artificial but weak bodies. 

So the goblin experiment was abandoned, and new avenues researched. But some still clung onto their ideas and kept iterating on the project, mass producing goblins and making them bigger, stronger, and pumping them full of regenerative blood. While this solved the mortality issue, the repeated regeneration led to so many built-up mutations that life because unbearable, and as such the researchers had to be transferred out and the project abandoned as well. 

While most of the leftover goblins were killed, many escaped and lived. They were given weak and mutated bodies but were still crafty, and those that could steal or reproduce the Serpentine alchemical vats could quickly swell their numbers and build true communities. A vast majority of the Northern goblins today are variants of a single goblin, who was gifted with a mutation that allowed them to bud, splitting into two smaller goblins and thereby reproduce. 

Some trolls are newly created, but the majority are unbearably ancient. Whether artificially create slave or serpentine master matters not much, as the weight of time and their transformation into monsters has broken the minds of all but the strongest-willed. Some have resigned themselves to being beasts while others lurk by ruins guarding what was once theirs, and others still believe that all civilization is still theirs and that the Empire never fell. These ones are often found extracting tolls under remote bridges and guarding “their” roads.

An old troll, burdened by mutations

Goblin/Troll Mechanics

Goblins are humanoid creatures the size of a halfling, with skin ranging from shades of dark yellow to green, large ears and noses, and 1-1HD. Vat-created goblins start with a random mutation, while budding-type goblins may spend a day to split, creating two goblins each with half the HD of the original. One of these copies retains the memories and consciousness of the original, while the other is a blank slate. 

A goblin can be created in an Ancient Serpentine alchemical vat by adding organic matter to it and exposing it to starlight, the more intense/close the star is the faster the process. If any non-goblin creature is placed in the vat it will gain a mutation, and if two goblins are soaked together their bodies and minds will fuse into one, a custom known to the goblins as “marriage”. If a goblin is placed in the vat for an exceptionally long time it will have soaked up enough to become a troll. 

Trolls are like tall and muscular versions of goblins, standing 9 feet tall and generally having 6HD. Young trolls have smooth and rubbery skin, while old ones are covered in mottled bumps, patches of hair, extra limbs, and other mutations. Trolls do not age and when injured, they regenerate 1hp per round (except when damaged by acid or fire, which cauterizes their wounds). When reduced to 0hp they do not die but instead stay unconscious for 2d6 rounds, after which they will wake up with 1hp and begin regenerating again. Every time they do this they gain another mutation, which tend to build up over the years.