What Is A Goblin?

What is a goblin? What are those things you find in dungeons that crawl and skulk in the shadows, stabbing at you with sharp bone knives and staring into your soul with their hateful shining eyes?

Why do they hate you? Why do they build traps to kill and maim and hurt? Why do they cackle with glee as they cut out the entrails of your fallen comrades?

Why do they stay away from the light? How come they are so much more dangerous by darkness than in broad daylight? They must need to see after all, why else would they have eyes?

How do they breed? Do they breed at all? How come they are already in tombs and crypts and ruins and labyrinths long before humans break down the bricks that seal them in?

What do they eat? Is it the adventurers they kill? The mushrooms growing in their damp caves and moldy passages? The fierce red eyed rats the size of dogs that squeak and scurry in the unnatural darkness of the goblins’ lairs?

How are they related to the faeries? Why do faeries refuse to talk about them? Do faeries fear goblins? Can faeries even experience fear? Why is the goblins’ language so similar to the faeries’ own tongue?

Why do they hoard treasure and magic items that they never use? They have no need for commerce, no need for money, so why do they have chests full of glittering gold and jewels? 

Why are there no baby goblins? Do goblins age? How old is the beast I just killed? A day? A month? An aeon?

Why do some call them kobolds while others call them orcs, and yet still others insist that they are gnolls? Whats the difference? Why does it even matter, if they are all the same type of creature anyway?

Why are they so pale and nearly hairless? Why do they need such sharp teeth? Why are they so twisted and malformed? Is this what they consider beautiful? Do they even have a concept of beauty?

WHAT IS A GOBLIN AND WHAT DO THEY WANT FROM US??