Overview
The Wind-Lash Air Goblin is the light-boned cliff goblin of the Skyspire Footholds, a rope-bound creature of the sheer cliffs who lashes its whole body to the wind and treats the ground as a temporary inconvenience. It is small, quick, and absolutely certain of the rope, a being for whom the ground is a place you fall to, not a place you live, and for whom the wind is a resource you meter and spend. Where the goblins of the warrens burrow, the Wind-Lash goblin soars, and it has been lashing itself to the wind on the Skyspire Footholds for a very long time.
Habitat
The Wind-Lash Air Goblin keeps to the ring of sheer cliffs of the Skyspire Footholds, a place studded with lashed platforms and woven wind-sacks, joined by swaying rope-bridges, its silence broken only by the rope and the wind. Its dwellings are lashed into the cliff itself, hollows of rock and woven sack coaxed into a home that catches the wind on its exposed face and the drop on its hidden one. It favors the higher platforms where the wind is oldest and the air is cleanest, the places where a sack can be lashed without the noise of the lower city breaking it.
Appearance
A Wind-Lash Air Goblin stands about 0.9 m tall, light-boned and lean, with wind-burned grey-brown skin that reads as rope-worn in the cliff light. Its hair runs pale straw, worn short and tied back with a cord so it does not catch the wind, and its eyes are sharp amber, bright and quick beneath the brow, the color of the footholds' own dry light. Its forearms are rope-scarred and dusty rose, the color of the rope it has carried for years, and the scars are the map of every bridge it has crossed. It wears lashed leather and a small woven wind-sack at its back, set with a single rope-loop at the brow, the loop of a lasher.
Behaviour
The Wind-Lash Air Goblin is quick, rope-bound, and profoundly certain, a creature of long crossings and long attention who rarely surprises and rarely is surprised. It observes before it lashes, often for hours, watching a bridge or a person or a bargain until it understands the shape of it, and only then does it move, 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 Wind-Lash goblin is a promise the footholds will keep long after the maker has gone.
Natural Weapons & Defenses
The Wind-Lash goblin is no ground fighter and carries no blade, for its power is the rope and the wind itself, not force. Its primary defense is the bridge, for it knows every turn of the footholds and can lead a pursuer across the swaying rope for days until the pursuit loses its nerve and its balance. Should it be forced to act, a Wind-Lash goblin is quick and precise, 12 m/s along the bridges and faster still when the wind takes the sack, and it fights to unmake a threat rather than to wound it, cutting a rope, dimming a light, or lashing a sack until the threat is spent.
Magic Alignment
The Wind-Lash goblin has no magic, 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 rope and a sack and a wind 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 lashing, which is not a magic but is a thing that the goblins of the cliff have lashed for a very long time, and the lashing is the keeping, and the keeping is the whole of its power.
Society
The Wind-Lash Air Goblins live on the Skyspire Footholds in small, quick, and rope-bound households of perhaps four or five, bound by the crossings they keep together rather than by blood or by place. There is no elder and no ruler, for a goblin that has lashed the most and crossed 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 bridge, by a company of sharp-eyed lachers that has already decided and is only agreeing, and once made they are kept, for a goblin that breaks a word on the rope is a goblin that has broken the whole of what it is.
Culture & Lore
The culture of the Wind-Lash Air Goblin is a culture of the kept crossing, a whole way of life organized around the idea that a word that is quick and rope-bound is the only honest word on the cliffs. They keep no records, for a goblin that has kept a word does not need a record, the keeping is the record, and the keeping is quick and rope-bound and does not fade. Their stories are short and quick, told on the platform at the dusk, and they are stories of crossings kept and words broken and the quick, rope-bound difference between them, told in a voice that is quick and means every word.
Home
The Skyspire Footholds are the Wind-Lash goblin's home and its keeping, a ring of sheer cliffs studded with lashed platforms and woven wind-sacks, joined by swaying rope-bridges, where the goblins keep their crossings and their quick, rope-bound words. It is a strange and quick place, one that stands as if it were a very old animal holding its breath, and the Wind-Lash goblin has learned to live inside that stillness rather than against it. The wind that runs across the cliffs is the footholds' own, a dry, sharp current that the goblins have come to read as the color of a kept crossing.
Relations
The Wind-Lash Air Goblin keeps a long, careful truce with the other goblins of the Skyspire Footholds, a truce of kept crossings that has held for a long time and is the oldest and most fragile thing on the cliffs. To the Gale-Hawk of the high winds the Wind-Lash goblin is a quick, rope-bound, and absolutely certain presence, a sharp-eyed lasher that is at home on the bridges and in the wind, and the hawk has learned to circle wide and let the crossings pass, for a goblin that has crossed you has decided you are a keeping and not a lesson.
In the Story
In the story of the footholds, the Wind-Lash Air Goblin is the quick, rope-bound edge of the tale, the place where the bridges cross and a word is lashed and a crossing is kept. It is the figure that lashes a sack to its back in the dusk and crosses the swaying rope very quick and very certain, and the figure that, when the truce with the lower goblins grows thin, is the one that remembers what the truce cost and keeps the old word quick and rope-bound and absolutely certain.