The goblin crew were often referred to affectionately as ‘cousins.’ Loud, messy, brilliant in their own wrong ways. Some with the sharpest funneling instincts this side of the mines, others who couldn’t tell a war plan from a biscuit recipe but had grit enough to try anyway and take instruction from Pa and Uncle Kinxy on gettin’ better.
There were 18 or 19 of them, give or take. Numbers shifted. Folks went missin’ for a while, then came back with tales of creepin’ through city life, education, or a hog that needed trainin’. Some never returned, but their names stayed carved in the raid ledger, crossed out in Ma’s moon ink.
Each cousin had a story. Some were kin Ma had taken in from the crumblin’ clan of old, while others arrived later, drawn by the scent of smoke, potion brews, or word that a new kind of family was buildin’ in the hills.
Cletus was the loudest of the bunch, all sass and bad ideas, with a talent for getting into moonshine and a knack for getting others in trouble. He’d never met a switch he didn’t eventually deserve. How he came to find the clan was a mystery. He was found half soaked in Uncle Kinxy’s old moonshine barrel, talkin’ nonsense and swearin’ he was raised by lightning. No one saw him arrive, he just was, one morning. He once tried to rig up a mirror trap to confuse enemy defenses. The mirror fell on him, the hog panicked, and he ended up headfirst in Ma’s spell pot. He still swears it was a tactical diversion.
Ellie Mae was the opposite and near obsessive about following orders. She kept her spells polished and her war logs straight. Ma said she was “the good one,” which meant the others rarely listened to her. She came with Ma from the old clan, already organized and carrying her own war logs in a satchel too big for her. She walked the whole way without complainin’, only stoppin’ once to double check her target list. She once cried over a one star raid she made on a base two levels up, then stayed up all night studying Pa’s strategy scrolls until she could at least hit a two star. But even that wasn’t good enough for her.
Eri was steady. Not flashy, not loud, but always around in the background, running tactical drills and building up her base. Everyone liked Eri, even if no one could remember where she came from. She was left on the porch one morning with a note pinned to her cloak that read, “She don’t speak much, but she listens.” No one knows who left her, and Eri’s never offered. She once silently fixed three war traps that Cletus had backwards during an enemy raid, without waking the hogs. The clan only found out weeks later when Uncle Kinxy noticed the logs didn’t match the blueprints.
Looty, short for Little Loot Goblin, was scrappy and squirrel-fast, always chasing treasure and scheming ways to sneak an extra hog leg at dinner. You could count on Looty to run fast and tattle faster. He was once caught tryin’ to drag an entire loot cart into the holler, convinced it was his by “finders’ rights.” He claimed he'd been on his own since the last raid and figured this place looked safe. Pa let him stay once he saw how fast he could run. He once disappeared for a whole afternoon, only to return with a sack of stolen human marshmallows and slightly singed eyebrows. When asked what happened, he said, “Don’t ask. Just toast.”
RG, short for Rednekk Goblin, had more brawn than sense, but he was loyal. He’d follow Cletus into most disasters, just not the ones involving spiders or soap. He was found stuck in a fence. No one knows how he got there, he won’t say. Just growled, “Y’all need sturdier fences,” when Ma pulled him free. Been with us ever since. Once challenged a rival goblin to a duel with a stolen fence post and a mop bucket. No one knows who won, but the outhouse still leans left.
JT was quiet, cautious, and a bit suspicious of everything. Thought too much and talked too little, which meant when he did say something, folks listened. He followed Pa and Ma from the old clan, quiet as a shadow. He never said goodbye to the old clan, just packed his tools and followed Ma like he’d already known she was leaving. He once warned the clan not to build the flame finger cannon so close to Kinxy’s still. No one listened. He didn’t say “I told you so,” but he did bring marshmallows to the fire. The same ones Looty stole.
Mo doesn’t say much, but when he does, it’s either a rallying call or a warning someone’s about to get the boot, or the belt. Solid attacker, never flashy, just gets the job done, even if he forgets to bring his hero weapons once in a while. When he shows up, it’s usually because Ma had to go hunt him down and bring him in from wherever he was in the woods. He had wandered in from the fog with no explanation, wearing half a cloak and singing a battle hymn in a language no one recognized. Claimed they were “guided by fate,” and then asked where the war paint was kept. He once held a mock funeral for a goblin cousin’s exploded siege cart. It was wildly emotional, involved interpretive dance, and somehow ended in a rainstorm. No one questioned it.
Alexis has ideas. Big ones. She’d declared herself in charge of the capital shed, and Pa watches closely. She was dragged over from the old clan by Ma with one arm around a crate of spell books and the other drawing diagrams in the dirt. She had ambition in her eyes and a map already half-drawn. Once in the new holler, she tried to reorganize the armory. She once redrew the entire base layout for Capital Peak, using twigs, moss, and bottle caps instead of arranging it. Eager to help, one of the first to volunteer, she had a mind full of plans and a heart set on proving herself. She didn’t just want to fight; she wanted to lead, to build, to organize. Asked to be given the keys just to help with the Capital shed and meant every word of it. Sometimes her eagerness runs ahead of her level, but no one doubts her heart, nor her hope in the future of the holler. She may be young in the eyes of the war council, but she’s watching and waitin’.
Nickie wandered into the holler after Territory Wars ended, just as things were settlin’ and stew pots were bein’ scraped clean. Ma said she was kin from elsewhere, someone she trusted, someone worth bringin’ in. That was all Uncle Kinxy and Pa needed to hear. She didn’t make a fuss. She picked a quiet corner, set up her base, and joined the clan like she’d been born to it. She was still figurin’ out funnelin’, sure, but she didn’t pretend to know what she didn’t. She listened more than she talked. She and Ellie Mae hit it off almost immediately. Close in level, they started runnin’ friendly attacks against each other, quiet practice, late evenings, usually ending in shared laughter and some tactical analysis that Ellie would overthink for days. Nickie never minded. She had a way of keepin’ things calm when Ellie’s brain went spiral. “She keeps me from stressin’,” Ellie once admitted. And Nickie? She just shrugged and said, “Well, somebody’s gotta.” She ain’t loud, but she’s steady. The kind of goblin who shows up, pays attention, and always backs the ones who brought her in.
Krypto was the clan’s bright, restless perfectionist, always tinkering, always learning, always chasing the next challenge. When he wasn’t running drills or fixing up his base, you could usually find him somewhere off in the hills, buried in a new project or pushing himself to the edge of burnout. Ma often had to go hunt him down, tapping her wooden spoon on a tree or calling his name across the ridge until he’d come sprinting back to the war barn, wide grin and all, rattling off ideas the whole way.
When Krypto was around, he was chatty, lighting up the clan circle with his excitement, tossing around strategies, jokes, or encouragement , especially for Looty, his unofficial little brother. Krypto helped shore up Looty’s defenses, coached him through tricky attacks, and always had his back when Cletus’s mischief pulled them into trouble.
He went hard at everything: raids, builds, even Ma’s war talks. Sometimes that fire left him crashing, worn out and holed up in his hut for a stretch, but he always bounced back with twice the energy. He was one of Ma’s late night talkers, too, just like Uncle Kinxy, the kind who’d sit by the fire after the others had drifted off, swapping thoughts about war plans or what the world beyond the holler might hold. And when Krypto spoke up in the war barn, folks listened, because they knew he’d already thought it all through three times over.
Late at night, when the fires were low and the stars hung bright, you’d often find the cousins gathered around, roasting marshmallows (usually Looty’s stolen stash from his raids on the humans), patching up weapons, swapping tall tales, or poking fun at each other in a tangle of banter and laughter.
“That one attack you lost last war?” Cletus smirked, tossing a half melted marshmallow at Krypto. “Pretty sure you zigged when you shoulda zagged, cousin.”
Krypto caught the marshmallow midair and lobbed it back without blinking. “Says the fella who blew up half the wrong base.”
Looty grinned, chiming in, “At least none of you launched your siege machine without back up troops. Twice.”
Ellie Mae let out an exasperated sigh, shaking her head. “If y’all spent half as much time studying the war scrolls as you do slinging marshmallows, we’d have won that war easy.”
“Aw, lighten up, Ellie,” Cletus laughed, ducking as Looty flung a gooey marshmallow blob across the circle. “We’re building team spirit!”
Splut! The marshmallow smacked right into Alexis’s battle map, sticking there like a gummy little badge of defeat. She groaned, trying to peel it off. “Seriously, you all are the worst.” She tossed it back at Cletus, and it caught in his hair.
"Alexis!" he yelled, pulling at it with chunks of hair attached. Ellie Mae laughed. "Good one, Alexis!"
More than once, they ran tactical drills out in the fields, testing siege machines, practicing attack formations, or trying out some half-baked new idea, usually Cletus’s, that sounded genius until it blew up a shed or launched a hog through the wrong wall.
Uncle Kinxy’s still had been blown up more times than anyone could count (Uncle Kinxy never forgot, though he did eventually forgive), Ma’s garden had been trampled under stampeding goblin feet, and a perfectly good storage shed was once flattened when Cletus declared he was testing a “low altitude siege drop.” Strangely, though, they always, always managed to steer clear of anything that belonged to Pa. Nobody had to explain why.
Ma, of course, was the one wrangling them all back to task. When Krypto, Mo, and sometimes Alexis disappeared off into the hills, deep in thought or tangled in some side quest, it was usually Ma who went to find them, tapping her wooden spoon on rocks or trees like a summon bell. They always came, smiling or sheepish, ready to do their attacks.
And through it all, Pa would just shake his head, arms crossed, delivering his usual warning in that steady, gruff voice: “You break one more thing, you better be ready to build two.”
The goblin clan in the holler was large, but some names came up more than others, especially when trouble was near.
Together, they made up the core of the holler’s young war force: part strategy, part chaos, and all goblin.
Loading comments...