More fleshed out backstory of a goblin. Kinda tapers off in detail at the end, but I think the origin story bit is more important than the shonen style escalation/shark jumping that happens after the instigating villein is overcome. Anyway, enjoy a goblin overturning a generic fantasy universe: [hider=Rita] Rita aka: runt, carrot top, humilover, knightstabba, horserida, the greenest knight, the scourge of the forest, the rusta of chains, the rebel of green, the god mounta, the dark lord, the goblin queen, the goblin formerly known as queen, the champion of the small folk, the devil slayer, she who would break the heavens, the first among mortals. Rita began her life in a goblin clan who were, like many if not most of their kind, enthralled to the service of a dark lord. Though goblins are weak by nature, they breed quickly and the art of their enslavement is older than history, making them perfect cannon fodder for any being higher up the food chain than them (which is basically everyone). Most often they are employed alongside other slave races by dark lords, servants of devils whose names are expunged from existence upon entering a dark pact with their vile masters. Rita was the runt of her litter, smaller than even the average goblin, but that didn't really matter much other than getting ribbed for it on occasion. During her early years Rita’s life was unremarkable for a goblin. As soon as she could walk she was put to work, toiling away in the small mine she was born in, a slave to the schemes of her dark master. All that changed one day when she was barely a teen. She was randomly hauled away from work, got a spear shoved in her hands and told to match out along with a patrol of other dark minions, mostly orks whom she and her kin were explicitly acting as cannon fodder for. This wasn't exactly unusual, but what was unusual was that the patrol actually ran into something. She’d fought before of course, but rather than monsters or unfortunate hunters the patrol hit an adventuring party. For most of the minions, things ended as you might expect, the adventurers slaughtering their way through the patrol with ease. For Rita however, who was hurt but not killed in the opening moments, things ended strangely. Perhaps it was because so small, maybe it was because she made made an effort to make her hair nice today in order to impress a now corpse, maybe it was how she just coward among the dead once the fighting was over, maybe it was pure whim, but for whatever reason, the knight (a man called sir Reginald) among the adventurers took pity on her and decided to, for all intents and purposes, adopt her. Thus began Rita’s crash course in the human world, a bewildering barrage of sights, sounds and experiences during which she acted as something between pet, daughter, squire and mascot for the party who she traveled with for many a moon as they slowly got stronger and better equipped. To protect her own skin, she played the role they wanted her to play perfectly, but inside she hated them. They had, after all, killed her friends and family without mercy. So she plotted revenge in secret but as her worldliness grew, and her very presence among the party resulted in them and others questioning the validity of their ruthless actions against her kind in their war against the dark lord, the need to scheme fell from burning necessity to reluctant burdening commitment. Maybe if time had been on her side she would have eventually dropped her plans entirely, but in the end her hand was forced. The party, partially out of overconfidence and partially out of a growing sense of guilt about killing more and more of Rita’s kin, went to directly challenge the dark lord. They were not the first to do so and, tragically, they would not be the last. As the battle began to go poorly Rita saw the writing on the wall and so she executed upon her schemes and stabbed her team in the back. Quite literally in the knight’s case, sliding one of his own spare swords through a weakness in his armor she knew about from helping him put it on before battles. The revenge did not feel good, but it did save her skin, the goblin being able to honestly say to her old master that she had simply been buying her time while traveling with the heroes, waiting to strike at the perfect moment such as the one presented to her now. For her cunning she was rewarded with a lowly position of command, barely one step up from common underling. She also, however, got to keep the possessions of the knight, including his horse, Sandy. Cobbling together a suit of armor for herself out of the fallen knight’s own, she became the first goblin knight, and swore a silent oath she would take down the dark lord herself, and end his cycle of death that had taken her first and second family from her. To do that, she would have to become stronger. She rose her way up the ranks of the dark lord’s forces through force of arms, first by slaying her superiors in one on one combat to get a true command (an entirely permissible and even encouraged act), and then by forming an order of green knights, wolf riders armored with hydra scale leather who hunted both the dark lord's enemies and various neutral monsters that stood in the way of him expanding his realm. In doing so, and in focusing her efforts on empowering and actually caring about the survival of her goblin kin, she became something of a dark hero, one who protected the weak minions both from the forces of light and from the cruelty of their dark masters. As she build up her influence among her people, she also built up something of a repertoire with the forces opposing her lord, changing the name of the game and forcibly ‘civilizing’ their conflict, making herself into someone who was seen as a reasonable, even honorable opponent who could be expected to show mercy and, importantly, expected that to be shown in turn. She built a significant worthy foe relationship with the knights of her deceased adoptive father, one that would eventually prove vital. Casualty rates massively dropped among those who fought in her name even as they remained an effective fighting force, and soon enough she had risen to the top of the dark lord’s ranks. Despite being near indispensable at this point, the lord did not trust her. As he was right to do. Things came to a head when three of the other right hand minions of the lord attempted to dispose of her, an act that cost them their lives at her hands. The resulting power she would gain was too much, and so the dark lord himself aimed to strike her down. He only succeeded in wounding her, and preemptively sparking the revolution she had been fostering beneath his nose. As civil war erupted among the dark lord’s forces, and it raged the wounded Rita made contact with the forces of light, and convinced them to actively side with her force rather than simply let the war burn to its end and then swoop in to take down the battered victor. Gazing down upon all this, wolf god, a lesser deity who was worshiped by many of the races who now saw Rita as their savior and spiritual leader (most notably goblins who referred to him as the goblin prince) took notice of their adoration of her and grew jealous of it. As the war raged across the continent, he lured the goblin, exhausted from her wounds and the stress of brokering her alliance, into his domain. There, in a twisting labyrinthine forest, he challenged her to a series of trials that, should she fail them, she would submit to him and become his bride, tying her influence to his. The game was rigged from the start, of course, and so it ended in a game of words where Rita put on the airs of a flustered maiden who refused to talk of consummating a marriage in straight terms out of embarrassment. Thus, after a dance of words about how she would ‘mount him’ and ‘take his sword’ the Goblin exited the wolf god’s domain riding atop Sandy the 17th and carrying the blade known simply as Fang. Upon her return to the land of mortals, she learned that the humans had sent a daring force driving into the heart of the war to try and strike down the dark lord, but their fate, it seemed, looked as if it would be going the same way as the adventurers who had adopted Rita. Hearing of this the goblin, still not yet fully recovered, rode to their aid upon her new divine steed. She stormed the dark lord’s fortress with her own knights, linking up with and fighting alongside heroes who were led by a knight who proved to be her adoptive father’s sister. Working together they brought down the dark lord, with Rita striking the final blow that ended his reign once and for all. The end of the right of the dark lord lasted for all of a minuet, as soon as the news got out Rita was immediately hailed as the new dark lord by both sides of the war. As this supposed betrayal threatened to tear apart the alliance of man and goblin, the devils of the many hells that had empowered the old lord to attempt to slip their malignant tendrils into her in his place. In the end, the knight who Rita had only just discovered was her aunt who sacrificed her life to prevent Rita’s corruption, allowing her to beat it back and seal this one piece of access the devils had to the mortal world once and for all. Rather than a dark lord then, Rita was instead hailed as the first goblin queen, though she swiftly also became the last, as it turns out having the most powerful warrior in the nation be your leader does not result in good stateswomanship. She, fortunately, recognized this before it was too late, and, after transforming her new kingdom into a democracy, resigned her position as queen. For a time she stayed and helped ensure the peace between the new nation and the human ones it now lived among, but before too long she grew tired of peace, unable to sit still knowing that there were other dark lords out there and other peoples enslaved to their will. Soon enough the goblin set out on a journey of liberation, traveling across the continent and then across the world, freeing her people, and all who were like them, from the bondage of tyrants of all shapes and forms. As she fought more and more for the people’s freedom, their faith in her grew and grew and, thanks to her godly steed she learned how to harness this power as a god did (a moment that carved their begrudgingly built friendship in stone, for the god did not attempt to steal this power all for himself as Rita feared he might do) and in doing so she became a near unstoppable force on the mortal realm, which only fueled the people’s adoration of her even further. Armed with the will of the people the goblin looked beyond the dark lords themselves, and instead took aim at the source of their powers, the many hells from which all evil seeped. At the head of a mighty crusade made from all races, and with the backing of their gods, she plunged into those fiery pits and against all expectation succeeded in rooting out the darkness within. The gods, both fearing her powers and empowered themselves by the deaths of their dark kin, attempted to force the liberator of all to kneel to their will. A mistake they soon came to regret. Rather than kill them however, for they were the embodiment of good things, just lost in their power, she taught them a lesson in humility as she had the wolf god, forcing them to respect a mortal as an equal, and in doing so getting them to respect all mortals in a way they had never done before. Her story might have ended there, or perhaps in some calamity caused by her being unable to simply sit down and retire after a life of war, if the overwhelming faith and belief in her from all the peoples of the world, combined with the submission of all the gods to her will, had not breached some threshold of power, and ascended her (and her trusty steed) to the wheel. There, new tyrants stand tall, waiting to fall to the hand of the meekest of creatures. [/hider]