Goblin yelling FREEDOM time.

[hider= Rita, the Goblin Knight]
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[h1][color=green]Rita, the Goblin Knight[/color][/h1]
[img]https://i.imgur.com/7Xwul8w.png[/img]
[url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3g8O551qaYU]warpath theme[/url]
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[color=green][h3]Titles (in order gained)[/h3][/color]
Runt, cherry top, humilover, knightstabba, horserida, the greenest knight, the strangely honorable, rusta o chains, rebel of green, god mounta, the demon lord, the goblin queen, the goblin formerly known as queen, champion of the small folk, devil slayer, she who would break the heavens, first among mortals, the eternal liberator.

[color=green][h3]Age[/h3][/color]
Rita is 36, which is impressive for a goblin as while they can live to about 70 at most, they basically never get anywhere close.

[color=green][h3]Race[/h3][/color]
Rita is a goblin, one of the most pathetic species ever to have been made, or at least that is how the prejudice goes. They have green skin, very large ears, eye and hair color trending from yellow to red, and generally stand three feet tall, with none of the brawn species like the dwarves have to compensate. Their only real positive traits are an excellent set of senses (having decent night vision, an enhanced sense of smell and exceptional hearing) used to detect danger, coupled with rapid breeding and maturation rates. Oh and in the eyes of anyone looking for minions, the art of enslaving goblins being older than recorded history is quite the boon.

[color=green][h3]Form[/h3][/color]
Rita has long red hair that she styles into a set of braids and equally red eyes. She stands at about 2.6 feet and has the functionally muscled build of a lifelong warrior. She has several scars, the most notable being one on her left temple along with several more scattered across her body.

The goblin is most often seen wearing a practical set of relatively plain plate armor adorned with a flowing golden cape.

[color=green][h3]World[/h3][/color]
[hider=Algerntia]
Rita comes from a pretty bog standard fantasy world all things considered. A variety of species, from humans to dwarves dragons and, of course, goblins, dwell in a magically infused medieval stasis. Slightly more of note is the unusual way in which faith and belief impact the world.

In Rita’s world, if enough people believe a thing is true, then it becomes so. If enough people believe a being exists, be it a god, devil or monster, and that can do certain things, then it’s existence and capabilities become fact. Similarly, if enough people are confined another person can do a thing, then they are able to do that thing. More specifically, the act of telling a story about that truth is what engraves it into reality, be it telling it within a person's head or spoken and shared among the people.

This also extends to things like magic and basically any supernatural phenomenon, where functionally you trick large amounts of people and in doing get them to fool reality for you, but in terms of Rita’s story, only gods, devils and heroes are relevant to go over.

Gods are supernatural beings spawned by faith who live in their own higher domains known as heavens, but make no mistake, they are gods, not Gods. They are powerful, but they are not masters of creation, nor sharpers of it. There are many gods, and once formed they do not die, nor do they base their power or vitality on continued belief. Instead, without belief, without their stories being told over an over and mutating and modernizing as the world changes, a god becomes immutable, stagnant, even senile in the worst of cases and, in the games of gods, ultimately easily out maneuvered. A god can still do things of their own accord but, if no one talks about it, if no one believes that it happened, then the very impact of that action will fade, being forgotten or even undone.

Inorder to maintain any kind of fluidity and relevance then, a forgotten god must attach themselves as a bit player in another god's story, generally, though not always, as servant. This means that the equivalent of angels in the world’s heavens are simply gods who are no longer worshiped on their own, and simply play a role in another god’s court.

The dark reflections of the gods are known as devils, beings born of tales of fear, as the pure evil antagonists of gods, as explanations to why bad things happen to good people, etc. Of course, no one wants to worship a being of pure malice, and the other gods don't wish to associate with them either (that would be antithetical to their tales and/or bad pr) and so they are generally confined to their own subset of realms know as hells, where they plot, scheme, bicker and fight amongst each other, all while coveting the power of the gods are freely given, and the source of that power, the mortal realm. The best devils can hope for to remain relevant is to be feared, bought off or bargained with. People believing you are a horrible monster that will bring about the end of days is still belief in the end.

These devils’s most noticeable form of influence on the mortal world is via proxies known as demon lords, mortals made nameless by their pacts with and/or enslavement by various devils, and who’s ultimate purpose is to gather enough power in the mortal realm, spread fear of their master’s name, and to eventually to summon their dark patron into it to wreak havoc. All that stands against them is the might of mortals and their heroes.

Heroes are mortals who, similar to gods and devils, draw power from stories of their exploits and deeds being spoken or sung over and over. A legend about a powerful feat they once performed circulating will make performing that feat again more straightforward with each retelling till it comes with ease. If the story gets exaggerated, or even has details added out of whole cloth, as so often happens when stories are traded around orally, then so much the better, as the hero will eventually be able to do something they never could have done before. As with gods, a hero whose tales fall out of circulation will also not be weakened, they simply don't get any stronger. However, as mortals are people, operating in a purely physical world and using their own hands to do things, they do not suffer the stagnation or fading influence of gods, which is quite the advantage.

Generally however, heroes don’t gain anywhere near the prestige of gods, especially highly worshiped ones, and so the fact that mortals can be empowered by belief is mostly unknown, and the gods, who need and crave belief, aren't exactly interested in sharing the details on this little facet of their universe. The gods are more than happy to insert themselves into the tales of heroes, and to claim credit for their remarkable abilities, as a way of feeding off of their tales and becoming stronger however. Of course, tales of gods granting boons mean that gods can gain the ability to actually grant boons, meaning that their relationships with their heroes isn't purely parasitical.

Mortal lifespans also prevent them from benefiting from generations upon generations of retellings and mutations of their stories as gods do, and instead after their death these tales will generally be co-opted either by an existing god if one has not done so already, or cause the birth of an entirely new god made in the image of the hero.
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[color=green][h3]Legend[/h3][/color]
[hider=book report backstory]
Rita was once a faceless minion of a demon lord, until she was forcibly adopted by an adventuring party when she was just a teen (after said party hacked their way through the rest of the various minions in the patrol she had been a part of). From them she became more worldly than any goblin before her in living memory, and was effectively trained and treated as the squire/daughter of the knightly adventurer who had adopted her.

After several years in their company, the adventures aimed to strike down the demon lord themselves, but were hopelessly outmatched. To save her own skin Rika backstabbed them, (specifically her adopted father with one of his spare blades) when it became clear to her that they were doomed, and in so doing reentered the demon lord’s service and gained a minor position of leadership, along with ownership of her dead father’s armor and his horse. She took these, and a burning resentment for both her forced betrayal and the general abysmal treatment of her people, and used them fuel a climb up the ranks through a combination of conquests in her lord's name and the assassination of her superiors.

As she climbed, she effectively dragged goblin kind up with her, empowering them, organizing them and protecting them from poor treatment. In doing so she became their dark folk hero and, as in her world, people believing something makes that belief closer to reality, their belief in her heroism allowed her to perform greater heroic feats.

Eventually her power and influence grew so large that the demon lord began to fear she would attempt to usurp him as well, and moved to strike her down before she could do the same to him.

Rita was beaten but not killed in the resulting clash, yet her near death at the demon lord’s hands sparked the revolution against him she had been kindling.

While recovering from her wounds, the goblin was lured into the realm of the goblin king, a fading god who coveted the faith her kind had in her, and attempted to force her into marrying him to take if for his own. After a dance of words about how she would ‘mount him’ and ‘take his sword’ the Rita exited the goblin king’s domain riding atop a new divine mount and carrying an equally devine blade.

Armed with this new power she rode out and struck down the demon lord, freeing her kin from his bondage at last. She founded a nation out of the remains of the demon lord’s empire, and then quickly resigned her position as its leader when it turned out she was only really good at war. She couldn't find it in herself to retire either, and so instead struck out, racing across the world on a campaign of liberation. First fell other demon lords and corrupt kings. Then as fatih in her built to absurd levels, she launched  a crusade directly into the hells and, finally, took to the heavens and made even the gods, who had grown fearful of her power, kneel to her might.
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[hider=full backstory]
Rita began her life in a goblin clan who were, like many if not most of their kind, enthralled to the service of a demon 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 demon 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 demon 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 demon 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 demon 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 demon 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 demon lord's enemies (focusing especially on rival demon lords) 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 demon 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 demon 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 demon 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 this war was the goblin king, a lesser deity who was worshiped by the peoples who now saw Rita as their savior. He took notice of their adoration of her and hatched a scheme to take it for his own. As the war raged across the continent, he lured the goblin, exhausted from the stress of brokering her alliance while also being wounded, 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 goblin king’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 demon 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 demon 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 demon lord, with Rita striking the final blow that ended his reign once and for all.

The end of the right of the demon lord lasted for all of a minute, as soon as the news got out Rita was immediately hailed as the new demon 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 demon 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 demon 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 demon 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.
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[color=green][h3]Will[/h3][/color]
Rita is driven by the need to end the mistreatment of the weak. She is mostly focused on what she calls ‘the small folk’ (your goblins, imps, kobolds etc) but ultimately she wishes to see all tyrants fall, and all peoples to be free.

[color=green][h3]Mastery[/h3][/color]
Rita is the hero to end all heroes, a goblin of a thousand tales, the ultimate underdog. On paper she does not seem particularly impressive, being a goblin in armor with a glowing sword and an unusual steed. In practice Rita has far surpassed any mortal limits long, long ago.

Defensively, her natural senses have been sharpened to such a fine point that she functionally has a 6th sense for danger. The goblin also has an intense resilience in a way that, while she can most certainly be hurt, actually putting her down is frightfully difficult. The stubborn little creature will take her licks and just keep going and going, and if it looks like you've got her pinned down she’ll escape to train and scheme, and then come back for a rematch at the most appropriately dramatic moment.

Offensively Rita’s primary strategy is to stab people with a sword using blows with hundreds of times the strength her body should be able to produce behind them. Failing that she has a small pile of tricks up her sleeves gained from various exaggerated tales made true. She can form lances of light, breath fire (thanks the kobold's for that one), tame any beast, leap across battlefields like a grasshopper and create improvised explosives from basically anything (imps for this one), along with a few other party tricks kept up her sleeve from her more obscure stories.

The ability that is perhaps her greatest and yet also her most often dismissed is the ability to inspire and empower others, particularly those considered meek. This is both a psychological thing, seeing a tiny goblin stick it to those far more imposing than her can't help but inspire, as well as an actual faith fueled power. Those who join Rita’s order of Green Knights, for example, can tap into her legend and the previous exploits of their organization, gaining the speed and power to keep up with Rita’s wild charges. Even more generally, those fighting alongside Rita or in her name can tap into the legacy of the army that broke all the hells and heavens of her world, gaining increased strength, bravery and resilience.

Finally, Rita has been taught the secret power of stories and faith, a frightful power in her home world, one less useful beyond its confines. Functionally the barrier between her soul and the souls of others is soft, resulting in external perception lightly warping her flame. By influencing how others see her, she can use them to mold herself into a stronger and better being.

[color=green][h3]Ascent[/h3][/color]
Rita took on her world’s gods, the final tyrants and made them bow their heads to a mortal, and one that she forced them to broadcast to all their followers, predominantly to prove both that she wasn’t going to kill them all like she had all her other foes, and to end their dominance over mortal kind. The unprecedented event made even those ignorant of her invasions of the hells aware of her and in awe of her. Yet what was a heroic liberator with no more tyrants to face in battle? That was the question asked, the universe answered, and ascended the rebel knight to the wheel, where her quest of liberation can continue.

[color=green][h3]Ephemera[/h3][/color]
[b]Inherited Platemail[/b]
Originally cobbled together from her adoptive father’s armor, Rita’s platemail is a simple and unadorned affair that over the years has been ship of theseused into actually fitting her like a glove. It is technically very mundane, but belief in its resilience has given the armor supreme stopping power, withstanding blow after blow without a care. If part of it does break it will shatter rather than buckle, the struck section acting as ablative armor in its last moment and entirely sparing Rita from the blow that breaks that part of her armored shell. Any replacement metal also gains this ability, as long as it does not clash with the rest of the metal aesthetically.

[b]Fang[/b]
A fine blade the color of dawn. Not remarkably sharp or possessing of any exotic enchantments, but the goblin king’s sword is the only blade that has proved again and again that it can handle being swung around by the pint sized powerhouse, and for that she has kept hold of it for all these years.

[b]Sandy the 17th (aka sandy the last, formally known as the goblin king)[/b]
Sandy is, or was, a god, born of legends of a long dead king of goblinkind. He now acts as Rita’s mighty steed, uninstalling his innate shapeshifting ability to provide her the perfect mount for any occasion, be it the traditional war wolf, a dashing stallion, a mighty elk or more exotic rides like sharks, giant spiders, lions, rocs, wyverns and so on. All of these forms are absurdly fast, strong and unerringly beautiful perfect specimens of their kinds

As a being of pure belief he is difficult to permanently kill. Which is a good thing, because Rita managed to go through 16 other steeds in the few years before he met her. The fact that she named all of her replacement steeds Sandy, in tribute to the first, means that even if the latest of their name falls, he can tap into the story that Rita always rides a mount with the same name, and can use that to simply return to life near her whenever it is narrative convenient.


[hider=POV: you upset the goblin]
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GoC8OBjs7Iw[/youtube]
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