Overview
The Line-Sworn Hobgoblin is a soldier of the Ironstock Bastion, an iron-skinned goblin of the riveted fortress who holds the drill-line and treats a formation held steady as a prayer. It stands taller than its goblin kin, patient and honor-bound, with the kind of certainty that comes from a life measured in held lines rather than years. Where the goblins of the warrens read the dark and the goblins of the ring tend the light, the Line-Sworn goblins of the bastion hold the line, and they have been holding it for a very long time.
Habitat
The Line-Sworn Hobgoblin keeps to the drill-yards of the Ironstock Bastion, a military iron-forged fortress on a bare ridge, its walls of riveted plate, its drill-yards wide enough to hold a line. Its dwellings are dug into the faces of the riveted walls, hollows of shaped iron and woven forge-cable coaxed into a home that catches the pale forge-light on its inner face and the shelter of the ridge on its outer. It favors the older yards where the iron is cleanest and the line is oldest, the places where a line can be held without the bastion's own motion breaking it.
Appearance
A Line-Sworn Hobgoblin stands about 1.14 m tall, patient and iron-bound, with deep iron-grey skin that reads as dark in the bastion's own light. Its hair runs dark umber, worn short and bound so it does not catch the dust, and its eyes are pale luminous yellow, bright and watchful beneath the brow, the color of the forge-light's own glow at dusk. Its left claw bears the bastion-notch, a deliberate mark in the iron-grey skin, the color of the line it has held for years, and the notch is the map of every line it has kept.
Behaviour
The Line-Sworn Hobgoblin is watchful, steady, and profoundly certain, a creature of long lines and long attention who rarely surprises and rarely is surprised. It observes before it holds, often for hours, watching a yard or a person or a bargain until it understands the shape of the line, and only then does it hold, 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 Line-Sworn goblin is a promise the bastion will keep long after the maker has gone.
Natural Weapons & Defenses
The Line-Sworn goblin is no open-ridge fighter and carries no blade, for its power is the line and the iron itself, not force. Its primary defense is the yard, for it knows every turn of the drill-ground and can lead a pursuer through the riveted bastion for days until the pursuit loses its nerve and its balance. Should it be forced to act, a Line-Sworn goblin is steady and precise, 7 m/s in formation and unhurried, and it fights to unmake a threat rather than to wound it, cutting a cable, dimming a light, or holding a line until the threat is spent.
Magic Alignment
The Line-Sworn 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 line and a word and an iron 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 holding, which is not a magic but is a thing that the goblins of the bastion have held for a very long time, and the holding is the keeping, and the keeping is the whole of its power.
Society
The Line-Sworn Hobgoblins live in the Ironstock Bastion in small, watchful, and line-bound packs of perhaps four or five, bound by the lines they keep together rather than by blood or by place. There is no elder and no ruler, for a goblin that has held the most and kept 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 yard, by a company of pale-eyed holders that has already decided and is only agreeing, and once made they are kept, for a goblin that breaks a line is a goblin that has broken the whole of what it is.
Culture & Lore
The culture of the Line-Sworn Hobgoblin is a culture of the held line, a whole way of life organized around the idea that a word that is watchful and line-bound is the only honest word in the bastion. They keep no records, for a goblin that has kept a line does not need a record, the keeping is the record, and the keeping is watchful and line-bound and does not fade. Their stories are slow and watchful, told in the yard at the dusk, and they are stories of lines held and lines broken and the watchful, line-bound difference between them, told in a voice that is steady and means every holding.
Home
The Ironstock Bastion is the Line-Sworn goblin's home and its keeping, a military iron-forged fortress on a bare ridge, its walls of riveted plate, its drill-yards wide enough to hold a line, where the goblins keep their lines and their watchful, steady words. It is a strange and steady place, one that stands as if it were a very old animal holding its breath, and the Line-Sworn goblin has learned to live inside that iron rather than against it. The pale forge-light that runs up through the yards is the bastion's own, a soft grey glow that the goblins have come to read as the color of a held line.
Relations
The Line-Sworn Hobgoblin keeps a long, careful truce with the other creatures of the Ironstock Bastion, a truce of held lines that has held for a long time and is the oldest and most fragile thing in the bastion. To the riveted plate of the bastion's walls the Line-Sworn goblin is a watchful, line-bound, and absolutely certain presence, a pale-eyed holder that is at home in the yards and in the iron, and the iron has learned to hold wide and let the lines pass, for a goblin that has held you has decided you are a keeping and not a lesson.
In the Story
In the story of the bastion, the Line-Sworn Hobgoblin is the watchful, steady edge of the tale, the place where the lines are held and a line is kept and a keeping is kept. It is the figure that holds a new line in the dusk and keeps the iron very watchful 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 line watchful and line-bound and absolutely certain.