Overview
The Sound-Reader Shadow Goblin is the dark, listening hand of the Umbral Hollow, a nearly-blind goblin of the sunless sinkhole who reads the dark by sound and shadow and treats light as noise. It is small, watchful, and absolutely certain of the sound, a being for whom the dark is a word you read and keep, and for whom the soft floor of the hollow is a room it knows by heart. Where the goblins of the hollows read the dark and the goblins of the ring tend the light, the Sound-Reader goblins listen, and they have been listening to the first sound in the first hollow for a very long time.
Habitat
The Sound-Reader Shadow Goblin keeps to the listening hollows of the Umbral Hollow, a deep sunless sinkhole lit by pale fungus growing in slow rings, its floor a soft dark known by heart, its silence broken only by the reading and the dark. Its dwellings are dug into the faces of the soft dark floor, hollows of hollowed rock and woven fungus-cable coaxed into a home that catches the pale ring-light on its inner face and the shelter of the hollow on its outer. It favors the stiller hollows where the dark is oldest and the sound is stillest, the places where a reading can be kept without the hollow's own motion breaking it.
Appearance
A Sound-Reader Shadow Goblin stands about 0.72 m tall, small and watchful, with ash-pale grey skin that reads as dark in the hollow's own light. Its hair runs soft black, worn short and bound so it does not catch the sound, and its eyes are dim white, bright and watchful beneath the brow, the color of the ring-light's own glow at dusk. Its forearms are ring-scarred and dusty slate, the color of the dark it has carried for years, and the scars are the map of every sound it has read. It wears lashed hollow-leather and a single reading-stone at its belt, set with a single read-loop at the brow, the loop of a reader.
Behaviour
The Sound-Reader Shadow Goblin is watchful, dark, and profoundly certain, a creature of long readings and long attention who rarely surprises and rarely is surprised. It listens before it reads, often for hours, watching a hollow or a person or a bargain until it understands the shape of the sound, and only then does it read, and then with a watchfulness that feels rehearsed over years. It is not unkind, but it is not easily moved, and a promise made to a Sound-Reader goblin is a promise the hollow will keep long after the maker has gone.
Natural Weapons & Defenses
The Sound-Reader goblin is no light fighter and carries no blade, for its power is the reading and the dark itself, not force. Its primary defense is the hollow, for it knows every turn of the soft dark floor and can lead a pursuer through the sunless sinkhole for days until the pursuit loses its nerve and its balance. Should it be forced to act, a Sound-Reader goblin is quick and precise, 8 m/s through the dark and quick and unhurried, and it fights to unmake a threat rather than to wound it, cutting a cable, dimming a light, or reading a sound until the threat is spent.
Magic Alignment
The Sound-Reader 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 reading and a sound and a dark 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 reading, which is not a magic but is a thing that the goblins of the hollow have read for a very long time, and the reading is the keeping, and the keeping is the whole of its power.
Society
The Sound-Reader Shadow Goblins live in the Umbral Hollow in small, watchful, and sound-bound packs of perhaps four or five, bound by the readings they keep together rather than by blood or by place. There is no elder and no ruler, for a goblin that has read 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 hollow, by a company of dim-eyed readers that has already decided and is only agreeing, and once made they are kept, for a goblin that breaks a reading is a goblin that has broken the whole of what it is.
Culture & Lore
The culture of the Sound-Reader Shadow Goblin is a culture of the kept reading, a whole way of life organized around the idea that a word that is watchful and sound-bound is the only honest word in the hollow. They keep no records, for a goblin that has kept a reading does not need a record, the keeping is the record, and the keeping is watchful and sound-bound and does not fade. Their stories are slow and watchful, told in the hollow at the dusk, and they are stories of readings kept and sounds broken and the watchful, sound-bound difference between them, told in a voice that is dark and means every reading.
Home
The Umbral Hollow is the Sound-Reader goblin's home and its keeping, a deep sunless sinkhole lit by pale fungus growing in slow rings, its floor a soft dark known by heart, where the goblins keep their readings and their watchful, listening words. It is a strange and dark place, one that stands as if it were a very old animal holding its breath, and the Sound-Reader goblin has learned to live inside that dark rather than against it. The pale ring-light that runs up through the floor is the hollow's own, a soft dim-white glow that the goblins have come to read as the color of a kept reading.
Relations
The Sound-Reader Shadow Goblin keeps a long, careful truce with the other creatures of the Umbral Hollow, a truce of kept readings that has held for a long time and is the oldest and most fragile thing in the hollow. To the pale ring-fungus of the hollow's slow rings the Sound-Reader goblin is a watchful, sound-bound, and absolutely certain presence, a dim-eyed reader that is at home in the hollows and in the dark, and the fungus has learned to grow wide and let the readings pass, for a goblin that has read you has decided you are a keeping and not a lesson.
In the Story
In the story of the hollow, the Sound-Reader Shadow Goblin is the watchful, dark edge of the tale, the place where the hollows read and a sound is kept and a reading is kept. It is the figure that reads a new sound in the dusk and keeps the dark 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 reading watchful and sound-bound and absolutely certain.