Goblin Nation

AFTERWORD

Goblin Rituals Regarding the Hereafter

They burn their dead fellows, the goblins and hobgoblins of Neraka and the ogre mountains.

Burn them until the air is filled with a thick, hot stench that settles firmly in your mouth and permeates every thread of your body.

Burn them until nothing is left of the corpses but bits of bones, and those they scatter so nothing touches. The ashes are left to the wind.

I am Horace, a loyal priest of Zeboim, the Sea Mother, who joined a band of escaped goblin and hobgoblin slaves fleeing from the Dark Knight mining camp called Steel Town. A human, the goblins were loathe to accept me, and I did not mind that they kept their distance. I needed only their safety in numbers while we passed through the mountains and to better land. In exchange, I offered my healing skills.

I found the goblins’ funerary practices odd, so I studied them to discover what was behind the bizarre rituals. I am ever curious, and at the time, there was little other than goblins and their handling of the dead to occupy my attention. As their pyres burned, turning to ashes the corpses of those goblins and hobgoblins who died to old age, disease, and grievous injury from beasts they’d fought, I’d listen to the survivors elaborate on the dead.

“Lurker is remembered,” I recall a burly hobgoblin saying. “Lurker was kind, eating only roots and berries and not eating the meat of beasts. Lurker loved to watch the rabbits and ground squirrels, and wanted to save them rather than kill them. Lurker is remembered.”

“Calor is remembered,” another said. “Calor liked the darkness best. Calor thought the light showed too many ugly things. Calor slept when the sun was high so the ugliness was hidden. Calor is remembered.”

“Ren is remembered. Ren pulled the wings from butterflies and ate the tiny legs. Ren worked hard in the mines. Ren is remembered.”

“Stump-Arm is remembered. Stump-Arm was the strongest of the Marsh clan, able to drag two sacks of ore in one hand. Stump-Arm once wrestled a pig, but that was in the Before Time, when Stump-Arm was free. Stump-Arm will return to a good body now, one with two hands, and one that will grow to be even stronger. Stump-Arm is remembered.”

The goblins conduct the “memory” ceremony to let the spirits of the dead know they are revered and missed and that they are welcome to return to the earth. As long as someone is “remembered,” they are tied to their kin, one goblin explained. Those who are forgotten are more likely to drift.

My people bury their dead, under the earth or more often at sea so Zeboim can better embrace them. The Dark Knights in the mining camp put our brothers in polished armor and placed their swords atop their chests, fingers folded across the pommels. The dead are then ready to properly enter the world beyond.

My people believe there is a place where spirits dwell beyond this harsh, blood-soaked land, a place where they may meet the gods. But I discovered the goblins and hobgoblins of Neraka share no such belief. They claim to revere no gods, saying that Chislev and Zeboim and Reorx and the others did nothing to help the goblins and instead turned blind eyes to the injuries the goblins suffered in slavery.

They claim to need no higher beings. And they say they have no desire to mingle with them after death.

“The gods ignored goblins; let goblins ignore the gods,” the saying goes.

And yet they believe that their spirits persist when their bodies die. They believe their spirits return to the earth.

That is the reason behind the burning, I’ve learned. If a goblin corpse is burned and the bones separated, there is nothing the spirit can return to. The spirit must find another host-this being a child coming new into the world. A goblin or hobgoblin child to be specific, as they believe the spirits must return to a familiar form.

How they’ve come by this belief is a mystery. The goblins I’ve talked to have no explanation for it beyond saying it was passed down from fathers and grandfathers and the ancestors before that. There is no swaying them in this belief.

And against everything I have learned in my religious teaching, their arguments have some merit.

“How is it that goblins know instinctively which roots are tasty and not harmful?” Bent-Ear said to me. “Why do goblins know what mushrooms to eat without older goblins telling them? Why do goblins sleep with their backs to the rising sun?”

“How can hobgoblins tell if water is good or bad just by looking?” Direfang said. “It is because the old soul that lived in another body learned to tell the taint. The old soul in the new body remembers the look of the water.”

“How can goblins see through the earth? Call through the ground to kin?” the goblin shaman Mudwort argued. “No mentor taught such skills. Such goblins do not need schools and books and the trappings of Dark Knight wizards to hone their magic. Goblins need only to remember what the old soul inside them learned. The spirit does not forget, no matter the body the spirit has chosen to dwell inside. Instinct? There is no such thing, Horace of Zeboim, the Worthless God. It is the spirit’s past life coming to the fore. Goblin spirits return.”

I tried to give up on arguing and keep listening. I am a priest of Zeboim and do not want to be swayed away from my cherished god. But I could not yield my curiosity.

And if the bodies are not burned? I asked.

Mudwort said not all clans practice that, as she said some of them fear fire. But no clans leave the corpses intact if it can be helped. If a body is left intact for more than a day or two, the spirit can return to it, where the spirit will be trapped for eternity. It is tantamount to damnation to exist in such a shell.

Some clans of hobgoblins stake the corpses in fields, allowing small animals and insects to feast on the dead flesh. The bones are separated, when little flesh remains, broken, and scattered so the spirit must look elsewhere for a new shell.

One goblin clan of the plains uses the corpses to lure animals that can be caught and eaten. It is the dead serving the living, taking life from death, they say. The remaining goblin bones are not wasted, rather they are used as tools, the ribs often tied together with twine to make breastplates and shields.

The Marsh clan sinks the bodies, letting the fish and the water tug away the flesh and the water push the bones apart.

The Clan of the Dark Sunset hacks the corpses into pieces and feeds the bits to the livestock it keeps.

Some of the free Nerakan clans were known to toss the bodies of the dead into volcanoes.

At first I considered it all barbaric, but there is a practical side to the rituals … the dead do not take up space on the earth.

The goblins take care to bury the bodies of their most hated enemies-whether those be Dark Knights or ogres or minotaurs. They want the spirits to return to the rotting shells, to be forever trapped and miserable for an eternity. I learned they were quite pleased that the Dark Knights in Steel Town buried their dead; the goblins felt it proper that their hated foes condemned their own brothers’ spirits.

If I die in the company of these goblins and hobgoblins I travel with, will they bury me? Or will they care enough for the healing and scant fellowship I offered to toss my corpse onto their pyre?

Will I be remembered too? I wonder.