Goblin

Goblins are the smallest of the Vale's peoples: wiry, green-skinned, with long ears swept back and a wide mouth crowded with pointed teeth. The grin is what people expect; the hands are what matter — quick, precise, and rarely still.

Most goblins cannot hold an unfamiliar object without starting, half-consciously, to take it apart. The hands go looking for seams and fastenings while the goblin talks about something else. What is taken apart is put back together, usually working, and often improved in some small, surprising way.

Goblins say they were made last, out of what was left over when the other peoples were finished. They offer this as the reason nothing in the world quite fits them — tools too heavy, doors too tall, chairs too high — and the reason they have been adjusting the world ever since. Whether a given goblin believes it or not, they all act on it.

There are not many goblins in the Vale, but there are goblins everywhere. No place is unappealing to a goblin provided there is something in it to fiddle with, so they turn up in every quarter of the Vale and settle wherever the work is thickest — workshops, market lanes, tinker yards, docks. Few towns hold more than a handful, and almost no town is without one.

Their reputation runs ahead of them. Some call them problem-solvers who notice what everyone else overlooks; others call them meddlers who explore private spaces, appropriate unattended items, and provoke small disorders out of pure interest. Goblins treat both accounts as familiar and contest neither, because they describe the same habit from its two ends: the goblin who took your gate latch apart uninvited is the reason it never sticks again. They are rarely malicious. The world is a set of practical problems, each open to adjustment, and a small disruption is an acceptable price of finding out.

Goblin society is a dense network of family, associates, and adopted kin, and loyalty inside the circle is worked at, not assumed. Skill and usefulness outrank birth and formal standing, and reputation travels fast and lasts.

If something breaks in a goblin neighbourhood, it is fixed before dawn. If something has gone missing, it is worth waiting until morning before making accusations — things in goblin quarters have a way of coming back improved.