Overview
The Fang-Warden Ice Goblin is the watchful, bracing hand of the Frostfang Crevasse, a thick-necked goblin who wards the ice fangs and keeps the crevasse's deep passages from collapsing in the long freeze. It is steady, watchful, and absolutely certain, a being for whom a broken fang is the only true failure and for whom a passage unbraced is a passage unworthy. Where the Vent-Keeper goblins tend the warmth, the Fang-Warden goblins brace the fang, and they have been bracing the first fang in the first fissure for a very long time. They do not speak much that is not a brace, and when they brace, every wedge is set as carefully as a crack in the ice.
Habitat
The Fang-Warden Ice Goblin keeps to the warden hollows of the Frostfang Crevasse, a mile-long glacier fissure lit by hot vents that break through the ice like cracks of light, its silence broken only by the brace and the cold. Its dwellings are scooped into the faces of the ice fangs, hollows of glacial rock and woven vent-cable coaxed into a home that catches the vent-light on its inner face and the shelter of the fang on its outer. It favors the warden hollows where the fang is oldest and the air is stillest, the places where a fang can be braced without the deep of the crevasse breaking it.
Appearance
A Fang-Warden Ice Goblin stands about 0.92 m tall, thick-necked and watchful, with cold-pale blue-grey skin that reads as bracing in the crevasse's own light. Its hair runs frost-white, worn short and bound so it does not catch the cold, and its eyes are pale green, bright and watchful beneath the brow, the color of the vent-light's own glow at dusk. Its forearms are brace-scarred and dusty slate, the color of the ice it has held for years, and the scars are the map of every fang it has braced. It wears lashed crevasse-leather and a single bracing wedge at its hip, set with a single brace-loop at the brow, the loop of a warden.
Behaviour
The Fang-Warden Ice Goblin is watchful, certain, and profoundly steady, a creature of long braces and long attention who rarely surprises and rarely is surprised. It observes before it braces, often for hours, watching a fang or a person or a bargain until it understands the shape of it, and only then does it brace, and then with a steadiness that feels rehearsed over years. It is not unkind, but it is not easily moved, and a promise made to a Fang-Warden goblin is a promise the crevasse will keep long after the maker has gone.
Natural Weapons & Defenses
The Fang-Warden goblin is no ground fighter and carries no blade, for its power is the fang and the bracing itself, not force. Its primary defense is the fang, for it knows every turn of the warden faces and can lead a pursuer across the braced ice for days until the pursuit loses its nerve and its balance. Should it be forced to act, a Fang-Warden goblin is quick and precise, 10 m/s across the ice and watchful in the cold, and it fights to unmake a threat rather than to wound it, cutting a cable, dimming a vent, or bracing a fang until the threat is spent.
Magic Alignment
The Fang-Warden 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 fang and a brace and a warden's word 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 bracing, which is not a magic but is a thing that the goblins of the crevasse have braced for a very long time, and the bracing is the keeping, and the keeping is the whole of its power.
Society
The Fang-Warden Ice Goblins live in the Frostfang Crevasse in small, watchful, and fang-bound packs of perhaps four or five, bound by the braces they keep together rather than by blood or by place. There is no elder and no ruler, for a goblin that has braced the most and held 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 fang, by a company of pale-eyed wardens that has already decided and is only agreeing, and once made they are kept, for a goblin that breaks a fang is a goblin that has broken the whole of what it is.
Culture & Lore
The culture of the Fang-Warden Ice Goblin is a culture of the kept brace, a whole way of life organized around the idea that a word that is watchful and fang-bound is the only honest word in the crevasse. They keep no records, for a goblin that has kept a brace does not need a record, the keeping is the record, and the keeping is watchful and fang-bound and does not fade. Their stories are slow and watchful, told on the fang at the dusk, and they are stories of braces kept and fangs broken and the watchful, fang-bound difference between them, told in a voice that is certain and means every brace.
Home
The Frostfang Crevasse is the Fang-Warden goblin's home and its keeping, a mile-long glacier fissure lit by hot vents that break through the ice like cracks of light, where the goblins keep their braces and their watchful, bracing words. It is a strange and watchful place, one that stands as if it were a very old animal holding its breath, and the Fang-Warden goblin has learned to live inside that cold as a room it chose rather than against it. The vent-light that runs up through the ice is the crevasse's own, a soft pale-green glow that the goblins have come to read as the color of a kept brace.
Relations
The Fang-Warden Ice Goblin keeps a long, careful truce with the other goblins of the Frostfang Crevasse, a truce of kept braces that has held for a long time and is the oldest and most fragile thing in the crevasse. To the Vent-Keeper goblins of the tending hollows the Fang-Warden goblin is a watchful, fang-bound, and absolutely certain presence, a pale-eyed warden that braces the very fangs the keepers tend by, and the two keep their truce on the ice, a truce of kept braces that is the oldest and most fragile thing in the crevasse.
In the Story
In the story of the crevasse, the Fang-Warden Ice Goblin is the watchful, fang-bound edge of the tale, the place where the fangs brace and a wedge is set and a brace is kept. It is the figure that sets a wedge into the fang in the dusk and braces the deep passage in the oldest ice, and the figure that, when the truce with the Vent-Keeper goblins grows thin, is the one that remembers what the truce cost and keeps the old brace watchful and fang-bound and absolutely certain.