Goblins
Nine races of Goblins are commonly recognized, though the Kingdom's scholars rarely bother to distinguish them, lumping them together as "goblinkind". The word began as an insult. It is now worn deliberately, and the Goblin King has made a banner of it.
Goblins are as magical and as immortal as any Faerie, and they metamorphose in the same way. What they lack is wings. A few races manage a clumsy hop-and-glide; sustained flight belongs to the Faeries alone, and the Kingdom has made a great deal of this, treating a wingless back as proof of a lower nature. Their glamour is likewise weaker and cruder, tending toward frights and false faces rather than beauty.
| Race | Element | Homeland | Seat |
|---|---|---|---|
| Boggart | Blight | The Hollow Marches | none |
| Bugbear | Nightmare | The Nightwood | none |
| Gremlin | Entropy | The Rustlands | The Sump |
| Grindyloc | Deep water | The Black Meres | none |
| Hobgoblin | Hearth | The Waking World | none |
| Jack-o-Lantern | Foolsfire | The Corpselight Fens | none |
| Kobold | Metal | The Deepworks | tunnel-cities |
| Pukwudgie | Thorn | The Briar Barrens | The Quill |
| Redcap | Iron | The Bloodmoors | The Iron Barrow |
The Question of Ugliness
The Kingdom's account is simple: goblins are ugly, ugliness reflects a lower spiritual state, and a lower spiritual state justifies exclusion. Its own doctrine of metamorphosis makes this incoherent — if form is a station one advances through by right action, then no form can be permanent and no exclusion can be permanent either — but the incoherence has never cost the doctrine any support, least of all among the lesser Faeries who benefit least from it.
Goblins are not a bloc. Pukwudgies have never sworn to the Goblin King, Kobolds trade with the Kingdom through intermediaries who pretend not to know them, and Hobgoblins mostly live in another world entirely. What unites them is the epithet, and the fact that it was applied from outside.