There and Never, Ever Back Again by Jeff Mach

Author:Jeff Mach [Mach, Jeff]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: FastPencil Publishing
Published: 2019-06-28T04:00:00+00:00

Why Goblins Hide

Orcs live in caves. Goblins live in shadows. It's the pain of distance versus the pain of proximity.

Humans know the world as being full of creatures of darkness, a place simply pumped to bursting with all manner of Things in umbral spaces, things which hate them. Humans don't seem to have given much thought about who hated whom first.

(That’s odd, actually. You’d figure it would be extraordinarily relevant. If you’re going to have reason to jump at shadows, oughtn’t you wonder precisely what you’ve done to make your dark reflection pissed off?)

(Then again, while curiosity is essential for the growth of society, it also fuels that pesky discontentment thing. And discontentment either gets channeled into appropriate paths and used by said society, or it gets you kicked right on out. Or—this option’s my favorite—they use your ideas, and then they send you away.

Joke’s on them, though. I will always have more ideas. They will seldom find someone like me.)

All right. As an exile, as former person of the day, I am insatiably curious: Why do the things of the Underdark hate those who dwell in sunlight?

I’ve given it much thought. Consider:

As far as we can tell, human culture evolved along what appears to have been some logical paths. Early homo sapiens needed shelter, and sometime early on, they started using that which was already around—namely, caves. (They certainly left enough crude drawings therein.)

(And the new inhabitants of those places, oddly enough, seldom choose to erase those leavings or blot them out. But they do respond. It’s not unusual to discover a crude human cave painting next to an extremely intricate Goblin poem. Because taking the piss at others appears to be a nigh-universal trait.)

Cast your thoughts backwards. If humans are at a stage where they live in caves, they must be at a very early point in their development indeed. Perhaps they don't even have the resources to actually penetrate to the back of the caves with their vision, even at high noon. Perhaps they moved in simply with the hope that there was nothing inside… or the fear of something worse outside. Have you ever awakened at night with unknown breath on your head, coming from a place you can’t see? Likely not, and yet, it’s part of our programmed and collective memories. It does not endear to us those strange things who live in the inky places. We don’t know how long humans dwelt in claustrophobic stone, but they surely got out as soon as they were capable.

Now look on the present, and consider the non-human sentients of this world. Ask yourself: Why do they live in the dark?

Is that how their eyes were naturally adopted? Is this a universe where certain things are built or made, not only nocturnal in a literal sense but somehow full of the stuff of night itself, and already in thrall to the forces of darkness? Are they part of the reason we have so many metaphors of shadow and

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