Overview
The Vent-Keeper Ice Goblin is the patient, warming hand of the Frostfang Crevasse, a thick-necked goblin who tends the hot vents that break through the ice like cracks of light and treats the cold as a room they chose. It is steady, quiet, and absolutely patient, a being for whom a dead vent is the only true failure and for whom a warmth unkept is a warmth unworthy. Where the goblins of the cliffs lash and the goblins of the caldera bank, the Vent-Keeper goblins sit and tend, and they have been tending the first vent in the first fissure for a very long time.
Habitat
The Vent-Keeper Ice Goblin keeps to the tending 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 tend and the cold. Its dwellings are scooped into the sheltered faces of the ice, 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 ice on its outer. It favors the tending hollows where the vent-light is oldest and the air is stillest, the places where a vent can be tended without the deep of the crevasse breaking it.
Appearance
A Vent-Keeper Ice Goblin stands about 0.9 m tall, thick-necked and steady, with cold-pale blue-grey skin that reads as warming 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 patient beneath the brow, the color of the vent-light's own glow at dusk. Its shoulders are vent-scarred and dusty slate, the color of the rock it has carried for years, and the scars are the map of every vent it has tended. It wears lashed crevasse-leather and a small kept vent-stone at its belt, set with a single tend-loop at the brow, the loop of a keeper.
Behaviour
The Vent-Keeper Ice Goblin is quiet, patient, and profoundly steady, a creature of long tendings and long attention who rarely surprises and rarely is surprised. It observes before it tends, often for hours, watching a vent or a person or a bargain until it understands the shape of it, and only then does it tend, and then with a patience that feels rehearsed over years. It is not unkind, but it is not easily moved, and a promise made to a Vent-Keeper goblin is a promise the crevasse will keep long after the maker has gone.
Natural Weapons & Defenses
The Vent-Keeper goblin is no ground fighter and carries no blade, for its power is the vent and the tending itself, not force. Its primary defense is the hollow, for it knows every turn of the tending faces and can lead a pursuer through the lashed ice for days until the pursuit loses its nerve and its balance. Should it be forced to act, a Vent-Keeper goblin is steady and precise, 9 m/s across the ice and steady in the cold, and it fights to unmake a threat rather than to wound it, cutting a cable, dimming a vent, or tending a warmth until the threat is spent.
Magic Alignment
The Vent-Keeper 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 vent and a warmth and a tending 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 tending, which is not a magic but is a thing that the goblins of the crevasse have tended for a very long time, and the tending is the keeping, and the keeping is the whole of its power.
Society
The Vent-Keeper Ice Goblins live in the Frostfang Crevasse in small, quiet, and vent-bound packs of perhaps four or five, bound by the tendings they keep together rather than by blood or by place. There is no elder and no ruler, for a goblin that has tended 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 pale-eyed keepers that has already decided and is only agreeing, and once made they are kept, for a goblin that breaks a vent is a goblin that has broken the whole of what it is.
Culture & Lore
The culture of the Vent-Keeper Ice Goblin is a culture of the kept tending, a whole way of life organized around the idea that a word that is quiet and vent-bound is the only honest word in the crevasse. They keep no records, for a goblin that has kept a tending does not need a record, the keeping is the record, and the keeping is quiet and vent-bound and does not fade. Their stories are slow and quiet, told in the hollow at the dusk, and they are stories of tendings kept and vents dead and the quiet, vent-bound difference between them, told in a voice that is patient and means every tend.
Home
The Frostfang Crevasse is the Vent-Keeper 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 tendings and their quiet, warming words. It is a strange and patient place, one that stands as if it were a very old animal holding its breath, and the Vent-Keeper 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 tending.
Relations
The Vent-Keeper Ice Goblin keeps a long, careful truce with the other goblins of the Frostfang Crevasse, a truce of kept tendings that has held for a long time and is the oldest and most fragile thing in the crevasse. To the Frost-Bear of the outer glaciers the Vent-Keeper goblin is a quiet, vent-bound, and absolutely patient presence, a pale-eyed keeper that tends the very vents the bear warms by, and the two keep their truce on the ice, a truce of kept tendings that is the oldest and most fragile thing in the crevasse.
In the Story
In the story of the crevasse, the Vent-Keeper Ice Goblin is the quiet, vent-bound edge of the tale, the place where the hollows tend and a warmth is kept and a tending is held. It is the figure that sits in the tending hollow in the dusk and tends a new vent in the oldest stone, and the figure that, when the truce with the Frost-Bear grows thin, is the one that remembers what the truce cost and keeps the old tending quiet and vent-bound and absolutely patient.