Greenskins: Goblins, Hobgoblins, and Orcs

To most humans, dwarves, and elves, the relationship between goblins, hobgoblins, and orcs is obscure. There are many popular theories of this among humans and dwarves especially, whose ancestral lands have in centuries past been nearly overrun by Green Hordes. The most widespread view is that goblins, hobgoblins, and orcs are related but distinct kinds, akin to variants of domesticated animals, all of whom dwell under the rule of the orcs. After all, the three greenskin races share the same tough skin, ranging in color from brownish-green to dark grass green, all live together, and usually fight together. But their differences in size, strength, and intelligence are dramatic, especially between goblins and hobgoblins (though hobgoblins, for their part, don't seem to be too much less intelligent than orcs). Another, less popular view claims that greenskins are a single species with three biological castes, like ants or bees. Proponents of this view recognize that the properties of goblins, hobgoblins, and orcs are not clearly analogous to the biological castes of any other species. Goblins are stupid and weak, but are obviously the most numerous and are clearly independently fertile; isolated goblin infestations pose problems all over the continent. Orcs, meanwhile, are nothing like queen bees. And no one knows what the hell the deal with hobgoblins is.

Basically every theory humans and dwarves have come up with concerning this question is wrong. To be fair to them, the greenskins do a good job of keeping things secret.

The Greenskin Life Cycle

Goblins are the earliest stage in the life cycle of greenskins. Hobgoblins are the second, and orcs are the last. When a goblin is ready to become a hobgoblin (and the process is repeated for a hobgoblin becoming an orc), they start overeating as much as possible, until they are grotesquely obese. Then they are hidden by their fellow goblins, usually by being buried alive. A cocoon forms around the goblin, and the entirety of the organism dissolves into a soup of biomolecules and disorganized cells, save for their central nervous system, which is kept safe inside of a thin membrane that greenskins call a "brain bag." A new hobgoblin body forms inside the cocoon around the brain bag, and the brain bag eventually dissolves so as to allow the brain to connect to its new body's peripheral nervous system. Throughout this process, the goblin dreams incessantly while their brain grows bigger and more efficient inside the brain bag. Every orc will tell you that the dreams are terribly unpleasant going from goblin to hobgoblin, and even worse going from hobgoblin to orc (1).

After the new body has finished forming, there's only a short time for someone else to bring it out of hiding before it dissolves. If it dissolves while its inhabitant is still buried alive, they'll die, so greenskins track how long it's been since someone went into their cocoon, and start checking them frequently to see if they're finished. They do this by squeezing the cocoon to see if the toes have formed, since the toes always form last. When the cocoon dissolves, the only muscle that works is the heart, because muscle memory for everything else gets lost from the newly minted hobgoblin or orc losing their old body. Their family or friends spend weeks blowing air into their lungs, pouring blood (for water and nutrients) into a tube down their esophagus, and moving them around while they relearn how to breathe, swallow, and otherwise function normally. But assuming they're kept alive, as if by magic, they always manage to adapt to their new body rapidly, and soon enjoy their new size, strength, and intelligence, while retaining much of their memory and personality.

But Why?

The greenskins themselves aren't totally sure, but they're pretty sure. Their pretty sure that their odd life cycle isn't natural, and is actually just magic. The same sense of revulsion that is provoked by being near someone casting magic (see "What is a spell?") is felt standing near a greenskin's cocoon while their new body is still forming, and doesn't go away until the toes are finished. And it also just seems too freaky, even to them, to be a mundane phenomenon.

And they're completely right. The reason why they aren't totally sure is that they don't know where the spell came from. And the reason why they don't know where it came from is that the creator of the spell never bothered to tell anyone he did it.

Lifeweaver

Before humans and dwarves even had cities on the Eastern Continent, there were no hobgoblins and orcs, but there were goblins. And goblins in those days were a fair bit smarter than they are now, but still quite weak, and easily hunted. Things became even worse when some human idiot tried riding a horse for the first time, and managed to actually get somewhere with it. The advent of horsemanship was threatening to bring goblins to extinction. In those days, the most powerful goblin Wielder of the Talent, that strange power to affect the world just with the will, was a recluse they called Lifeweaver. Barely anyone ever saw him, because as much as he liked tinkering with living things, he didn't much like when they tried talking to him. But he was the type of person who hates people in particular but loved them in the abstract, so when he came up with a fix for the goblins' calamity, he cultivated his Talent until he was able to create the spell, and then did. He just never bothered to let anyone know. He's still alive (having figured out early on how to Will himself to stop aging), but doesn't really bother with his own kind (or anyone else's), except to check every once in a while to make sure they aren't liable to go extinct.

How Does It Work?

If the greenskins knew, they definitely wouldn't tell you. But they themselves don't know, and different hobgoblins and orcs have different theories of how they managed to get "ready" to transform. Most goblins die without ever finding themselves suddenly compelled to stuff themselves and curl into the fetal position, ready to make themselves new bodies. That's why the most common greenskins are goblins, then hobgoblins, and then orcs. One popular view is that to get ready to transform, you have to get really strong, which is why goblins love calisthenics, and hobgoblins love lifting weights. But that doesn't seem to work for everyone. Meanwhile, Ubrikdke the Almighty, the most famous orc sorcerer in recent history, reportedly felt her first pangs of cocoon-hunger as a hobgoblin after waking up at her desk where she had fallen asleep memorizing spell incantations. Lifeweaver only knows what the greenskin life cycle's requirements really are, and he sure isn't talking.

What is a spell?

A group of robed figures chant meaningless syllables in a circle, while a nude man in the center carves a piece of flesh from his thigh with a curved, silver knife, and throws it into a fire. The fire turns bright blue, and he shouts in triumph. A hundred miles away, his mortal enemy stubs his toe, the first a series of unlucky occurrences which will plague the rest of his life.

An orc riding a lindwyrm chases a frantically fleeing human horseman across the steppe. The horse is fast, and gaining distance. The orc clicks his tongue and draws a bone wand from his saddlebag. He breathes in deeply, points the wand, and howls while making an occult gesture with his other hand. The ground below the horse moves as though alive to wrap around its hooves, and as the animal's fetlock snaps, the rider is thrown forward, breaking his neck as he lands. The orc massages his temples, nursing a headache while his wyrm finishes off the horse and begins tearing into its unfortunate rider.

What the hell is going on here?

The Puzzle

Most of the categories people use to make sense of what happens in the world are kind of made up, and don't have strict conditions for their applicability. No one knows how many different sequences of fundamental physical events there are which can rightly be called "storms," which is part of why it is pretty hard to predict for sure whether a storm is going to form in the next hour just by looking at a few events. Unless one of those events is a successfully performed stormcaller spell, in which case for some reason you can be nearly certain that one of the many sequences of physical events you'd say counts as a "storm" will happen!

This weirdness isn't just with spell effects. A particular stormcaller ritual calls for the practitioners to be humans wearing blood red robes. But is "being blood red" a unique, determinate property? No, of course not; it has countless physical determinates, since there are countless ways a physical object can be a particular shade. The robes could be made of a material which, under ordinary lighting conditions, looks blood red due to the light it reflects. Why it reflects that wavelength of light could have to do with any number of physical properties different. Or perhaps it isn't even a reflective material, but rather florescent, and at the right temperature or after being "charged up" with high-energy radiation it glows blood red under any lighting conditions. Once again, there are many ways it could be, physically speaking, such that it emits light that way. And so on. But no matter how it is that the robes are the right color, the ritual succeeds so long as they are colored blood red!

Combine these two and magic seems hardly imaginable. Events involving non-natural, mind-dependent properties with vague applicability conditions can reliably cause other events of different, similarly non-natural kinds. Meanwhile, the fundamental events (which actually fall into natural kinds) underlying these phenomena always work out to make things turn out the way we'd expect. You can't figure out an explanation for why the stormcaller ritual works by finding causal relationships between all the different determinate ways to perform the ritual correctly, and all the different determinate physical phenomena which count as "storms," because there are no causal processes capable of explaining the rules for the spell at that level of fundamentality. And yet the spell still works!

So what is a spell? How is all this possible?

Spells Are Not Grounded How Things Are

The reason why spells can't be explained by the more fundamental properties of the objects and events involved in their performance and effects is that spells are not grounded by how things actually are. The causal processes involved simply don't depend for their existence on the real properties of any events and objects. A spell is grounded in how something seems, and not how it actually is. Seems to whom? To the person who created the spell, of course.

But more on that later. The power to make a spell effect happen characterizes the spell's components, and is not reducible in any way to ontological grounds of those components. These robes are blood red, which is why they're able to function (along with other components) in calling storms. But it simply doesn't go any deeper than that. Its in virtue of the robes being blood red that they're able to function in calling storms, and not in virtue of whatever it is in virtue of which they are blood red. That's why it doesn't matter whether they're blood red in virtue of being reflective, or florescent, or under certain lighting conditions, or whatever. Reduction and explanation aren't transitive here: the robes being usable as spell components reduces to and is explained by their being blood red, and their being blood red will (for each case) reduce to and be explained by some physical properties they have, but their being usable as spell components has absolutely nothing to do with those physical properties.

Where Do Spells Come From?

Some beings have a certain talent, or if you like, The Talent. The Talent is the ability to make things be the case by willing that they be the case. The Talent is very rare among the mortal races, but among dragons and fairies, it is ubiquitous (and there's debate as to whether the gods have the Talent or not). Most users of the Talent are only good at making certain sorts of facts obtain or certain kinds of events happen using their Talent. It's also extremely difficult to cultivate, so most with the Talent never get any better at using it. Among mortals, thousands of times more Wielders of Talent have died never able to do more than light a candle at will than have managed to reach the level of being able to create a spell. That's why most spells were introduced to mortals through bargains with beings like fairies and dragons, who are both generally more naturally Talented than mortals, and have more time to improve.

And it is Wielders of Talent who create spells, because only the Talent (and maybe the gods, if what they're doing isn't using Talent) can introduce new, irreducible properties into the world and make them characterize the medium-sized dry goods and ordinary events with which they transact. Sufficiently powerful Wielders can simply will that it be the case that one kind of event has the power to cause another, and thus introduce new laws of nature.

But that's why magic is grounded in how things seem, and not how they are. The creator of a spell does not have some wide but specified variety of physical phenomena in mind when they will that a certain ritual will cause a storm to appear. They have in mind a concept, one with the semantic range of the word "storm." When they thus bend the world to their will and create a new law that a storm will happen when a certain ritual is performed, the law connects any instance of something they would regard as successful performance of the ritual, to an occurrence which would satisfy their idea of an appropriate storm.

For the same reason, no two castings of the same spell produce exactly the same effect. The law is as vague as the concepts it's based on, and permits a wide range of effects to occur, as long as they'd fit with what the spell's creator had in mind. But unless you look very closely, more closely than the creator of the spell was thinking when they made it, you won't notice the difference.

Why Is Casting Spells Difficult?

The minds of almost all beings are repulsed by magic. Something deep in their psychology, deeper than any of their other senses, is a sense of just how wrong magic is. The Talent is when Wielders, not bothering to fully understand nature, assert upon it their impoverished understanding and force it to obey. Spells are when they do that, and make it permanent, twisting nature's very laws into an image rooted in whatever conceptual system they happened to have. The part of every being's mind that longs for reality itself more than concepts and conventions can sense magic, and revolts against it. When spells are cast, untrained animals flee, and most people are unable to restrain a flash of terror and hatred.

Sorcerers aren't much different from anyone else in that respect. Even having an intention to enact spell components is mentally taxing, to say nothing of actually going through with it. Therefore, sorcerers practice just picking a few spells each day and resolving to only cast those spells, to constrain their own intention to use magic enough to get through the day without having a mental breakdown. They similarly incur mental fatigue each time they cast one of those spells, limiting how many times they can do so without endangering themselves. Part of getting better at sorcery is getting better at tolerating the sense of ontological wrongness that accompanies willfully practicing magic, which is why better sorcerers can prepare more distinct spells at a time and cast more frequently. 

Comments on the Heresies of the Elves

The fundamental heresy of the elves is their vain belief in the continuity of intelligence in the universe. From this doctrine stems their widespread denial of the gods' creative roles and preference for reincarnation among views of the afterlife, and their ancient willingness to treat with all manner of malicious spirit which thankfully has been largely abandoned by all but the most savage of their kind. Each of these mistakes of theirs shall be treated here in turn, but since they can be shown to all grow from the same root, we begin with the root. The source of this fundamental heresy is perhaps a characteristic vice of arrogance. If one were to ask a learned but otherwise ordinary elf, even be he a wretch, whether he thinks there may be any being in existence who is by their very nature his natural and essential superior, most probably he will reply in the negative. More than that, even should he be healed of a terrible illness or injury by the prayers of the Blessed faithful, which evince the power and glory of the gods in the liberality with which they are answered, he will go on in his arrogance, thinking of his healing as akin to the services of a physician rather than a gift and instruction from the masters of his very life.

I refer to this heresy as that of the continuity of intelligence in the universe, by which I mean that the heresy consists in believing that the qualities and powers of even the gods are of a kind with those possessed by lesser spirits, elves, men and dwarves, and even the beasts and birds. The most blasphemous expression of this belief surely is to be found among the tales told of the elven hero whom they call Brother Clever. Baseless stories of Brother Clever's many victories over divine spirits and the honors with which they showered him can be found among all elven tribes, and exemplify most clearly the prideful frivolities with which elves tend to waste the gift of their centuries of life. For though among men and dwarves many fools still cling to the old religion of strife, they at least know that whomever may be a god, he is deserving of their worship, whereas the elves do not accept even this.

Hence, the Master begins the section of the root text with a verse introducing this most fundamental heresy:

Single in merit is all of existence,
All of a kind though they come in degrees.
Equal are we to the gods in potential.
Power is nothing but vision and Will.

"Single," i.e., not plural or admitting genuine distinction. "In merit," i.e., in worth, in dignity. "Existence," i.e., sentient existence, as in the phrase "what Fate has written over my existence." "All of," i.e., all kinds of and all cases of. "Of a kind," i.e., in whatever respect endows merit, worth, or dignity, grounded in a common quality. "Though they come in degrees," i.e., in contrast to differing in kind, merely differing in intensity or number of that quality. "Equal," i.e., the same, at the same state. "The gods," i.e., the heavenly rulers and their servants among the spirits. "In potential," i.e., in capability, the phrase used here to indicate that it is possible that we equal the gods even if we presently do not. "Power," i.e., divine power, the powers displayed only by the gods, such as true healing and the purifying fire. "Is nothing but," i.e., merely consists in. "Vision," i.e., sight, in this sense an elliptical expression for creative genius, as in the phrase "the painter's vision." "Will," i.e., the Active and Sustained application of the Talent. The elves take the view that the gods' works are merely Acts of Will, akin to those of an elven or human capable of Wielding the Talent, and that a well-cultivated Wielder could replicate any of them, even as a mortal.

The High Elven teacher Loroa Rai Uneh has argued for this view in his Questions for the Eastern Priests, a manuscript of which was given to the Master by the author himself, whereby the Master reproduces the opponent's first argument over the following four verses...

Excerpt from Comments on the Heresies of the Elves, by the Very Venerable Priest Judgejoy on his own preceptor Most Venerable Priest Judgeglory's The Heresy of the Elves, prepared in the fifteenth and sixteenth regnal years of the Sixth Diarchy, Serene Diarchy of Vale and Mountain, R.E. 366, following the author's return from the diplomatic mission to the Elflord Yieh Rai Salolor.