Hey guys, I've been worldbuilding a bit, and I think it might help if I have some feedback as well as some people pushing me for details I might miss. All this is planning for a book I might try to write sometime, and besides that, worldbuilding is fun! I hope you'll have fun reading about all this sort of stuff, even without much of a plot latched on to it, it's fun to think about how this would work in real life.
Anyways, I'll be doing this in chunks, and you guys can choose which chunk comes next. The first chunk is the sentient race inhabiting the planet, called Gaiun, a slightly larger-than-Earth planet orbiting Alpha Centauri B. Gaiun (originally called many names by the goblin tribes and still called Gaia by the humans -The suffix "-un" meaning "man" in the goblin tongue and "-a" meaning "woman") is heavy on Chlorine, though not to a toxic level, and this resulted in bacteria taking a backseat to fungi in terms of decomposition. But we're here to talk about Goblins.
The average Goblin (Ub in their tongue, suffixed by the honorific most applicable to the group. When talking about the species as a whole, the "-a" honorific is used.) is approximately five feet high, rounding up. Goblins as a species have brownish skin, tough and wrinkled, which is actually a very soft form of Chitin that is structurally closer to the shell of a beetle than the skin of a human. Regardless, they look and act like mammals do most of the time, and are Bipedal. In fact, Goblins lack the flexability to touch their toes without bending their legs, and do not have the ability to throw objects, resulting in a very different form of warfare focused on melee combat as opposed to human spears, which are often made by tribal societies with throwing as an option.
Goblin body forms are instantly recognizable. Goblins are short and fairly stubby, with large, extra-wide heads that earned them the name "footballs" in American colonies on Gaiun. Goblin eyes are also very different, morphing from humanoid eyes before pupation to a yellowy sclera and a rectangular iris, not unlike a goat. Goblin eyes are designed to spot color in the horizontal dimension and movement in the vertical, to avoid becoming meals for hungry beasts of the forest, who are camoflauged well in the veritable rainbow, or unwitting victims of an errant Flying Star, a surprisingly large killer considering they're seeds! Gobling ears are also large, and able to pick up on subtle inflections in the voice. Luckily, goblins living with humans today have compensated; a natural goblin from before the Diaspora Uba would find them to be far more loud and obnoxious than the most belligerent of New Yorkers. And woe to the goblin that meets another that is actually from New York.
Luckily, Goblins do not cluster well and prefer life in rural environments. While there is no biological mechanism preventing a Goblin from living in the inner city, psychology wise Goblins are focused on small groups, and with their memory for names and faces, city life can become overwhelming. Today's goblins are often farmers, providing many of the crops humans use to survive, or soldiers, utilizing their unique eyesight to spot signal flags during Radio Silences.
Goblins are egg layers, making them seem closely related to the Platypus. However, internally a Goblin is still insectoid, and they share no more than 20% of their genetic structure with animals on Earth. Only the most basic strings are the same, though many lead to the same effect. Goblin female lay eggs twice per year, with a small degree of control on when the egg laying happens. A female goblin can lay up to twelve eggs at once, but Goblins never take care of their own young. Instead, the eggs are hatched communally, and the biology has compensated by causing the innards of the egg to help dissolve the shell of another egg. The soft eggshells are then eaten by the newly hatched grub.
One controversy in the goblin community today is the question of Larval Cannibalism. To better observe how this controversy came to be, we must look harder at the reproduction of the Goblin.
This is Meea, a hatchling of the Oubba Tribe. They kindly allowed us to take photographs of their grubs in our own studio, provided they sent along someone to watch the grub for signs of bad health. Meea seemed slightly frightened by all the attention at first, but she warmed to our team soon enough!
However, a larval Goblin is perfectly happy in this environment. Larval Goblins look like they have similar eyes to humans, but in reality the iris is simply not fully shaped yet, resulting in the larvae having vision far below that of adult Goblins. As they do not rely on eyesight, they must rely on other senses. However, larvae do not have ears of any sort yet, nor do they have any sort of nose. Intensive research was done, and it turns out that Larval goblins operate solely through the use of two hyper sensitive heat pits on the back of their head. By sensing the world through heat, they can navigate through the light and the dark equally well, and explains why the grubs develop defects if left in a environment too hot or too cold; they can't see anything!
However, not everything is fine for a larval Goblin. A full clutch of Goblin eggs (usually 50-75) is often larger than the tribe itself, and the grubs cannot eat anything more solid than jelly and more fluid than a thick cream. Thus, the larvae begin to cannibalize the weak, small, or otherwise unfit, puncturing the flesh of their brothers and sisters with the two sharp mandibles on either side of their mouth. Goblin larvae incapable of running away or fighting back are quickly eaten, until eventually only a few Goblins remain.
After approximately two to three weeks, the larvae begin to pupate, spinning a cocoon around themselves in a thick wall of silk. This silk is finer than any produced on earth, but as the removal of the cocoon kills the pupating goblin inside, it's highly illegal to manufacture. Goblin Silk coats and clothes are illegal to make, purchase, or wear, carrying a heavy fine and up to 50 years in prison; a third of the average human lifetime!
However, sometimes the larva will fail to spin a full cocoon, or another larva will come across and, if they harbor a grudge, unravel the cocoon as it's hardening. The grub inside dies, and the goblin matron watching the grubs traditionally makes a hanging ring of silk from the cocoon of the deceased grub. These rings are used by Goblins as a means of mourning when a friend passes away; usually hung on the house or hut of the dead Goblin. The design on the silk is unique to each, and is said to hold the captured spirit of the lost grub and bring good spirits back to the home of the dead goblin, allowing it to be reused. However, this belief was largely abandoned post-contact, as many Goblins converted to Buddhism or Catholicism and practised the mourning rituals human worshippers do.
If the cocoon is left alone, within the span of three weeks a new Goblin emerges, physically adult. While reproductive processes take several years to start, growth is slow and stable by this point, and no major changes will happen. The Goblin matures sexually at approximately seven years old, and will live to be on average one hundred, barring disease or strife. So what next, if anything? The world has a diverse array of Flora and Fauna, and the Goblins have a culture and language that is undeniably alien, but oddly resonant. It's your choice.
