Overview
The Gill-Deep Water Goblin is the silent, breathing creature of the Drowned Warrens, a gill-rimmed goblin who lives under the waves in chambers no chart has mapped and breathes the water as if it were air. It is small, quick, and absolutely certain of the deep, a being for whom the surface is a place you fall to rather than live on, and for whom the dark is a room it knows by heart. Where the goblins of the cliffs lash and the goblins of the caldera bank, the Gill-Deep goblins breathe, and they have been breathing the deep in the Drowned Warrens for a very long time.
Habitat
The Gill-Deep Water Goblin keeps to the vast submerged cave network of the Drowned Warrens, a drowned bay whose chambers are connected by arches that rise to the waterline, its silence broken only by the breath and the dark. Its dwellings are scooped into the faces of the arches, hollows of drowned rock and woven kelp-cable coaxed into a home that catches the thin waterline light on its upper face and the shelter of the stone on its lower. It favors the deeper chambers where the dark is oldest and the water is stillest, the places where a breath can be spent without the surface breaking it.
Appearance
A Gill-Deep Water Goblin stands about 0.8 m tall, small and quick, with water-pale blue-green skin that reads as breathing in the warrens' own light. Its hair runs kelp-black, worn short and slick so it does not catch the current, and its eyes are pale grey, bright and quick beneath the brow, the color of the water's own dim light at the surface. Its necks are gill-rimmed and dusty teal, the color of the deep it has carried for years, and the gills are the map of every chamber it has mapped. It wears lashed warrens-leather and a small kelp-bound breath-stone at its belt, set with a single breath-loop at the brow, the loop of a breather.
Behaviour
The Gill-Deep Water Goblin is quick, deep, and profoundly certain, a creature of long breaths and long attention who rarely surprises and rarely is surprised. It observes before it breathes, often for hours, watching a chamber or a person or a bargain until it understands the shape of it, and only then does it spend, 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 a Gill-Deep goblin is a promise the warrens will keep long after the maker has gone.
Natural Weapons & Defenses
The Gill-Deep goblin is no surface fighter and carries no blade, for its power is the gill and the deep itself, not force. Its primary defense is the chamber, for it knows every turn of the drowned network and can lead a pursuer through the arches for days until the pursuit loses its nerve and its breath. Should it be forced to act, a Gill-Deep goblin is quick and precise, 11 m/s through the water and steady in the dark, and it fights to unmake a threat rather than to wound it, cutting a cable, dimming a light, or spending a breath until the threat is spent.
Magic Alignment
The Gill-Deep 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 gill and a breath and a deep 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 breathing, which is not a magic but is a thing that the goblins of the warrens have breathed for a very long time, and the breathing is the keeping, and the keeping is the whole of its power.
Society
The Gill-Deep Water Goblins live in the Drowned Warrens in small, quiet, and gill-bound packs of perhaps four or five, bound by the breaths they keep together rather than by blood or by place. There is no elder and no ruler, for a goblin that has breathed the most and mapped 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 in the chamber, by a company of pale-eyed breathers that has already decided and is only agreeing, and once made they are kept, for a goblin that breaks a breath is a goblin that has broken the whole of what it is.
Culture & Lore
The culture of the Gill-Deep Water Goblin is a culture of the kept breath, a whole way of life organized around the idea that a word that is quick and gill-bound is the only honest word in the warrens. They keep no records, for a goblin that has kept a breath does not need a record, the keeping is the record, and the keeping is quick and gill-bound and does not fade. Their stories are short and quick, told in the chamber at the dusk, and they are stories of breaths kept and gills broken and the quick, gill-bound difference between them, told in a voice that is deep and means every breath.
Home
The Drowned Warrens are the Gill-Deep goblin's home and its keeping, a vast submerged cave network in a drowned bay, its chambers connected by arches that rise to the waterline, where the goblins keep their breaths and their quick, breathing words. It is a strange and deep place, one that stands as if it were a very old animal holding its breath, and the Gill-Deep goblin has learned to live inside that water rather than against it. The thin light that pools at the waterline is the warrens' own, a soft pale-teal glow that the goblins have come to read as the color of a kept breath.
Relations
The Gill-Deep Water Goblin keeps a long, careful truce with the other creatures of the Drowned Warrens, a truce of kept breaths that has held for a long time and is the oldest and most fragile thing in the warrens. To the Brook-Salmon of the waterline the Gill-Deep goblin is a quick, gill-bound, and absolutely certain presence, a pale-eyed breather that is at home in the chambers and in the dark, and the salmon has learned to run the arches wide and let the breaths pass, for a goblin that has breathed you has decided you are a keeping and not a lesson.
In the Story
In the story of the warrens, the Gill-Deep Water Goblin is the quick, deep edge of the tale, the place where the arches breathe and a chamber is mapped and a breath is kept. It is the figure that maps a new chamber in the dusk and breathes the deep very quick and very certain, and the figure that, when the truce with the surface goblins grows thin, is the one that remembers what the truce cost and keeps the old breath quick and gill-bound and absolutely certain.