Overview
The Ember-Spear Fire Goblin is the small, burning creature of the Emberhollow Caldera, a volcanic goblin who breeds in the heat and fights with an ember-tipped spear, treating the caldera's slow magma lake as a hearth to be kept. It is quick, hard, and absolutely certain of the spear, a being for whom the heat is a resource you breed in and spend with, and for whom the cool is a place you fall to rather than live in. Where the goblins of the cliffs lash and the goblins of the ridge drink, the Ember-Spear goblin spears, and it has been spearing the heat on the Emberhollow Caldera for a very long time.
Habitat
The Ember-Spear Fire Goblin keeps to the collapsed caldera of the Emberhollow, a ring of dead lava shelves centered on a slow lake of magma that never cools, its silence broken only by the crackle and the heat. Its dwellings are scooped into the lava shelves themselves, hollows of cooled rock and woven ember-cable coaxed into a home that catches the heat on its southern face and the shelter of the rock on its northern. It favors the lower shelves where the heat is oldest and the air is thickest, the places where a spear can be tipped without the cool of the upper ring breaking it.
Appearance
An Ember-Spear Fire Goblin stands about 0.7 m tall, small and hard, with heat-tanned russet-brown skin that reads as burning in the caldera's own light. Its hair runs iron-black, worn short and wild so it does not catch the heat, and its eyes are glowing amber, bright and quick beneath the brow, the color of the magma's own glow at dusk. In the amber light of the Emberhollow Caldera, an Ember-Spear goblin reads as a figure of stored ember, present and certain, as if the heat has already decided to take it and is only waiting for the lake to say so.
Behaviour
The Ember-Spear Fire Goblin is quick, hard, and profoundly certain, a creature of long thrusts and long attention who rarely surprises and rarely is surprised. It observes before it spears, often for hours, watching a shelf or a person or a bargain until it understands the shape of it, and only then does it thrust, and then with a quickness that feels rehearsed over years. It is not unkind, but it is not easily moved, and a promise made to an Ember-Spear goblin is a promise the caldera will keep long after the maker has gone.
Natural Weapons & Defenses
The Ember-Spear goblin's first weapon is the spear, a single ember-tipped thrust that spends a stored ember in one bright line, and it is the most effective and the most certain weapon in the caldera, for a goblin that has an ember-tipped spear is a goblin that is not finished with you. Its second weapon is the shelves, for it knows every turn of the lava shelves and can lead a pursuer across the dead rock for days until the pursuit loses its nerve and its balance.
Magic Alignment
The Ember-Spear goblin has no magic of its own, and it does not want any, and the not wanting is the whole of its way of dealing with the world, for a goblin that has a spear and an ember and a heat does not need a spell. It is not attuned to any art, and it is not bound by any word that is not its own, and the not being bound is the whole of its way of being free. Its one signature thing is the spearing, which is not a magic but is a thing that the goblins of the caldera have speared for a very long time, and the spearing is the keeping, and the keeping is the whole of its power.
Society
The Ember-Spear Fire Goblins live on the Emberhollow Caldera in small, quick, and ember-bound packs of perhaps four or five, bound by the thrusts they keep together rather than by blood or by place. There is no elder and no ruler, for a goblin that has speared the most and thrust the most is simply the one the others listen to, and the listening is a keeping and the keeping is the whole of their society. Decisions are made on the shelf, by a company of amber-eyed spares that has already decided and is only agreeing, and once made they are kept, for a goblin that breaks an ember is a goblin that has broken the whole of what it is.
Culture & Lore
The culture of the Ember-Spear Fire Goblin is a culture of the kept thrust, a whole way of life organized around the idea that a word that is quick and ember-bound is the only honest word in the caldera. They keep no records, for a goblin that has kept a thrust does not need a record, the keeping is the record, and the keeping is quick and ember-bound and does not fade. Their stories are short and quick, told on the shelf at the dusk, and they are stories of thrusts kept and embers broken and the quick, ember-bound difference between them, told in a voice that is burning and means every crackle.
Home
The Emberhollow Caldera is the Ember-Spear goblin's home and its keeping, a collapsed caldera ringed by dead lava shelves, centered on a slow lake of magma that never cools, where the goblins keep their thrusts and their quick, burning words. It is a strange and burning place, one that stands as if it were a very old animal holding its breath, and the Ember-Spear goblin has learned to live inside that heat rather than against it. The amber light that runs up from the lake is the caldera's own, a soft rust-red glow that the goblins have come to read as the color of a kept thrust.
Relations
The Ember-Spear Fire Goblin keeps a long, careful truce with the other goblins of the Emberhollow Caldera, a truce of kept thrusts that has held for a long time and is the oldest and most fragile thing in the caldera. To the Wild Boar of the outer wastes the Ember-Spear goblin is a quick, ember-bound, and absolutely certain presence, an amber-eyed sparer that is at home on the shelves and in the heat, and the boar has learned to keep to the cold and let the thrusts pass, for a goblin that has speared you has decided you are a keeping and not a lesson.
In the Story
In the story of the caldera, the Ember-Spear Fire Goblin is the quick, burning edge of the tale, the place where the shelves thrust and an ember is tipped and a thrust is kept. It is the figure that tips a spear in the dusk and crosses the dead shelves very quick and very certain, and the figure that, when the truce with the lower goblins grows thin, is the one that remembers what the truce cost and keeps the old ember quick and ember-bound and absolutely certain.