Goblin, Hobnoblin (3.5e Race)

Hobnoblin
Hobnoblins are a subrace of goblin and often appear within tribes of goblins or with other goblinoids. While they're not as naturally gifted as stealthy riders as a typical goblin, their other abilities and social perceptiveness allow them to fit into niches around camp.

Personality
Hobnoblins like to talk, and they're quite adept at it. However, they're still goblins, so they tend to talk about crude topics and tell stories or jokes in the wrong settings. Oddly, this can make them endearing and charming as curiosities… in the right dose.

While most goblins are greedy for possessions, a hobnoblin is greedy for attention and information. They're more likely to covet books than shiny trinkets, which is fine with other goblins and allows them to get along since there's no direct competition for prizes when they raid or capture intruders.

However, hobnoblins love shiny trinkets with stories attached, like heirlooms and artifacts, and horde such things when possible.

Physical Description
A hobnoblin differs in stature quite a bit from a typical goblin, but is still immediately recognizable as a goblin creature.

While they run the gamut of fat to thin and athletic to frail, the basic frame remains the same. A hobnoblin grows to around three and a half feet tall and weighs about fifty pounds. Female hobnoblins are slightly taller and heavier than the males. Their bodies are compact and their limbs are long and wiry. Their arms and legs are about the same length (as are their hands and feet).

Hobnoblin heads are large for their size (just a bit smaller than the right size for a Medium-sized humanoid) and sit on short necks, appearing propped right on top of its body. Their ears and noses are long, pointed and angular in contrast to their bulbous heads. Their eyes, bright and large, gleam from the fronts of their faces and come in a variety of common and uncommon colors, with warm tones being most common. A hobnoblin's corneas are a golden-yellow or flaxen hue instead of a typical white, and are often only visible in the corners of their eyes due to their large irises.

Their mouths are wide and frog-like with tight lips, allowing them to project their voices. Some hobnoblins develop a throat bulge and a deeper, richer voice uncharacteristic of small goblins. A hobnoblin's small, multitudinous teeth make taking large bites of chewy material quite difficult. As such, they prefer to eat foods that are either thin or shred easily.

Their hair is often coarse and unmanageable. It typically grows in lighter tones when they're young and gets darker as they age, up until old age when it turns silver or white. Blacks, browns, oranges, grays and dark greens are common hair colors, but other tones are not unheard of. If they let it grow long enough, they usually tie it back. Some hobnoblins are born without any hair and may sport smooth, patterned or pebbled skin, adding to their frog-like (or toad-like) appearance.

Hobnoblin skin is typically a shade of subdued orange or ochre, with mud browns, foggy grays, muted greens, slate blues and twilight purples common among their diverse population. They usually dress in leathers and stitched hides or furs. Hobnoblins tend to take a greater effort in their presentation than is expected among goblins and might even qualify as "fashionable" or "surprisingly not odorous". Most hobnoblins don't reek of rancid onions and foul cheese and in fact give an aroma of squash, pumpkin or damp earth, making them much easier for other races to tolerate.

When traveling, they often keep their side-arms at hand and can often be found riding a suitable beast, such as a trained goblin dog, deinonychus, donkey or boar.

Hobnoblin blood has a purplish tinge.

Relations
Most other humanoid races believe the common misconception that goblins are stupid. Goblins are just as intelligent as humans, its just that their social skills make them coarse and they often lack the training and schooling afforded to more refined races. It is a surprise then when folk meet a hobnoblin and find that it can carry on a conversation about topics other than spilling blood and looting bodies.

Hobnoblins get along well with most goblinoids. Though, a hobnoblin's talkativeness can get to be an annoyance if not properly kept in check. A hobnoblin's gregarious nature makes him ideal for goblin tribes to send out on trading deals, scouting missions and as envoys and messengers. Occasionallly, hobnoblins find better treatment, more interesting knowledge and better opportunities outside their tribe and simply don't return from tribe-appointed tasks. Because of the amount of desirable resources to be found in the outside world, hobnoblins possess an increased likelihood of becoming adventurers than other types of goblins.

Individually, a hobnoblin has a better chance of getting along with some of the more refined humanoids than any typical goblin would. However, hobnoblins still associate with the rest of their ilk, and that makes them suspect as a group.

Hobnoblins share a few traits in common with the flintspark goblins.

Alignment
Hobnoblin disposition is interesting among goblin kind. While most goblinoids lean toward evilness, the hobnoblin leans more toward chaotic inclinations. Their greed affords them little desire to follow rules to obtain satisfaction.

Lands & Culture
Goblins have long maintained a near-ubiquitous infestation across the continents of many worlds, with subraces dominating the more extreme climes. Hobnoblins though, are found almost exclusively among other goblins. Very rarely will they form communities on their own as their environment often doesn't afford them the safety of self-reliance. Only the most xenophobic tribes of goblins refuse to keep a few hobnoblins among their number.

Hobnoblins, like most goblins, breed constantly to keep up their numbers with their high mortality rate. The young grow quickly, albeit a bit slower than is typical amongst goblinoids. Hobnoblin parents often maintain multiple families simultaneously. Once any children reach four years of age or so, a single parent may take over raising the child so that the other parent can start or maintain a different family. Hobnoblin children (occasionally called hobnibs) often move from family to family. Before they're adults, they're often raised by the whole tribe with "home" only being wherever they happen to bed down at. This helps strengthen them to the community and prepare them for their social function later in life.

Since goblins can also be cruel, malicious creatures, especially when resources run low (which is frequently, as they have little recourse to save for the future), they're loathe to welcome interloping children. In such cases, they learn very young how to steal and deal with bigger, stronger rivals.

Religion
A hobnoblin's charisma is thought to be a divine blessing or gift bestowed upon goblinkind. It is thought that a divine nectar was bestowed upon them, from which they gained their social prowess. The responsible deity or extraplanar being is unknown and this origin is speculation. Regardless of the history, a hobnoblin's charismatic nature makes him oddly suited for manipulating magic divinely, lending some credence to the story.

Many hobnoblins worship or revere deities known among goblinkind. Chief among them are nature deities and trickster gods. Some hobnoblins take to traveling as shamans to seek out other goblin settlements and spread stories and dogma to those that will listen. They often have to dumb down these stories and add embellishments to entertain their audiences.

Language
Hobnoblins speak Goblin quite often. It's a language of guttural syllables and chittering sounds. They also speak Common, often adding Goblin words to properly describe the subject at hand. As social creatures, they also speak other languages when they're smart enough to learn them. This usually means learning the languages of the creatures near to where their tribe resides (so they can spy, trade or even surrender if things turn ugly).

While proper etymology is difficult to follow in Goblin at best, the name "hobnoblin" roughly translates as "the rogues who do and don't have" or "the have and not kin". It is thought that the "have" refers to the divine draught that granted them their charismatic potential.

Hobnoblins with a penchant for writing often choose to learn Dwarven, as Goblin borrows the Dwarven alphabet.

Here are some Goblin words that may or may not be slang and are added into conversations in other languages:

Names
A hobnoblin often goes through a few names in his lifetime and may keep several names at once or drop one when he becomes tired of it (or feels it no longer reflects his personality), which is easier said than done. Their first names are given to them most often by their parents and generally encompass some early childhood behavioral trait or feature that makes them easily recognizable.

As they age, hobnoblins pick new names or titles. If they move from one area to another, this is accomplished by simply picking a new name and telling it to others. Otherwise, he often has to prove himself with his new name, lest he gain a different name granted to him by his others in mocking insult of his choice.

There is no clear distinction between male and female hobnoblin names.

Sample Names: Belter, Booka, Botlord, Bugbat, Chawbone, Crowdretch, Crycrail, Dubjack, Fiddlesavage, Fungfretch, Gilgat, Gorg, Gortch, Lerp, Loutby, Mugdoor, Rekur, Ribsplinter, Skig, Sprel, Toadhorse, Tuddler, Umberash, Whistlecarver, Wugwuk