In many rpg supplements (Ecology of the Wolf-in-Sheep’s-Clothing!) monsters are made to be pretty natural. Orcs and goblins have proud warrior cultures with matriarchal leadership and passels of little orclings running around to provoke moral quandaries in murder hobos. And that’s fine, but I don’t want to do that. I want my goblins to be weird and fey and never ever be babies unless they’re horrible changeling babies that are switched for human infants in their cribs to horrify their parents.
So how do you answer your innocent little players when they look at you and ask, “Where do goblins come from?”
The LotR movies had orcs grown in cauls in the mud, which I don’t remember from the books, but it was cool.
I could go for some kind of awful cabbage patch kids, born from some kind of big swollen mushroom that grows in dark places under your porch.
They could come from another plane, like “Faerie,” slipping through the “cracks between our worlds.”
Chimeras, magically made by fusing beasts together and granting them a semblance of intelligence. (Hey, it worked and was creepy in Fullmetal Alchemist.) Maybe dog + lizard + human brain? It’s a technique that’s been perfected by now, as they make good, cheap defenders (loyal, savage, able to strategize a little).
Somebody once suggested that Goblinism was a disease/curse acquired through ritual cannibalism, which orcs and goblins encouraged in their captured demihumans in order to swell their numbers. Sort of a “goblindoid-as-wendigo” thing. As such, killing them would be about on par with killing a zombie: unfortunate, but the poor victim was lost a long time ago.
