Anarchists of the infinite dark. Chaotic where nothing so uncertain should be able to survive. By chance alone they thrive, by chance they die
Physical Appearance
Are these monsters even Goblins? No two are quite the same. Most have no heads. Instead, big gawping faces occupy the centre-mass; lumpy spheres ringed with limbs; long dandling legs and nearly indistinguishable arms spreading out like spiders limbs. Others so crooked-backed that they are grown into hoops, even rolling along on their knobbly spines, bouncing the ground with pugnacious faces on each turn. Others long and loopy, with fifty eight vertebrae and six to eight limbs, who scurry like centipedes along the ground.
The chaos goblins sunless skin stained black with crazed tattoos, full-body or half-body black paint, tattooed vantablack ‘gloves’ or ‘boots’ so that they seem to move along like ghosts, or one half blackened, the other kept pristine. Others graffitied with crazy notions and scurvy pictures. In off hours the Chaos Goblins tattoo each other and themselves with whatever they have to hand; blood, brain paint, ash, ichor, mondmilch. Don’t confuse it with a Culture.
The Chaos Gobs have monocoloured eyes. Either utterly black, like a sharks, or and infra-white sclera and iris that backscatter unlikely radiations into visible light, meaning the whites of their eyes, which are the whole of their eyes but for the pupil, glow or stand out clearly in the dark, especially when there is no other light at all. Such goblins often paint or tattoo themselves utterly black, leaving only their eyes. They find this hilarious.
Chaos Goblin eyes can also ‘bulge’ and ‘flex’. Rings of muscle around their cartilaginous orbits, and very robust jelly, mean the eyes themselves writhe and warp in shape, sometimes pushing and squeezing the ball into a peeping scope, or even ‘closing’ entirely, making the face a blank,
Somewhere equatorial to the eyes, swivelling radar ears turn like blinking chameleons. Beneath; their twitchy noses poke and point this way and that, leading the way, and under those the mouths are full of teeth of knives, while the Goblins carry knives of teeth, along with the most bizarre assortments imaginable; umbrellas, hats, man-skin gloves over tattooed black hands, geegaws and trinkets. Always jiggling and poking, snorting and chuckling are the Chaos Gobs.
Culture (?)
Horror Goblins banished from the sun for deeds too-queer. Worshippers of primordial chaos, and the chaos Dukes they find in worms, in pies, in dung, in eyes… Even Goblin Lands won’t take them in. Thus came they, blindways, nightwayes, west of Midnight, north of Quiet, down down down to the Underground, where no sun shines and dreams and dark are one.
Even here nobody likes them! (Maybe the dErO, who use them as hunters and deniable ‘proxies’, (like a rabid frog on a candyfloss leash). Or at least they try to. The Chaos Goblins find the dErO hilarious, but they find everything hilarious.)
Anarchists of the Veins. Hell Gobs! Terrorists! Friends to slime and slug. Goblins who got a little too dark. Chaos! Or expressions of it.
They must engage in some kind of economic activity, if only for the fun of it. They seem to have…. stuff. As well, they must have some kind of irregular pipeline to other multiversal goblin cultures - they have some animated weapons and goblin guns. They have met David Bowie. (The actor, not his character in Labyrinth.)
Too twee? Too cringe? Too twenty-twelve blog post? They don’t care. In fact, that makes it better. In the whole of any Veins-World, the Chaos Gobs are the only creatures who may have met David Bowie, or will even know who that is, when even the Player Characters don’t.
I’ll say this; the Chaos Gobs have so much respect for Chaos they will usually respect a bet, and the more inane and chaotic the bet the greater respect it has. Cards & Dice? = FOR CUMPS. Lets bet on flies landing on shit-piles, or whose eye pops out first, or who can eat more of a live snake, each starting at a different end. Yes, the Chaos Goblins will respect a bet, for the five to thirty minutes that makes up their short-term memory. After that they stop caring at all.
But that doesn’t mean they will chase you down. They are chaotic after all. Might simply doodle on the walls, or sing a song, or eat each other. Best to run while you have the chance.
Material Culture
Wherever they are the Chaos Goblins ‘Chaos Aura’ (see ‘Mutational Effect’ below), warps and alters the environment in various ways, but they also make raw physical changes that anyone could do.
In the living expression of course, its hard to tell where madness ends and the extra-real beings. The Chaos Gobs certainly don’t know.
They shit everywhere, paint the walls with shit. They poop in many colours. They paint the walls with Brain-Paint, (see below), and who knows what that might do? And they paint the walls with paint, if they happen to have any. They carve passages into goblinish shapes, their halls are like cathedrals where only gargoyles and grotesques are allowed. Gieger would enjoy them, and yes! He was one of them! They bore random holes to nowhere, build castles made of moon-beams, imported from the seas of the Imprisoned Moon (How did they get them, since they are so poor in every other way?)
So, imagine this; a ridiculous cathedral with the windows being crazed paintings in luminescent shit, or actual para-reality doors…
Yes they might have some treasure. They might have the treasure. Of course they don’t know what it is, or care. Its in a bucket and the bucket is what they value. They will chase you TO THE ENDS OF THE FUCKING EARTH about that bucket!!!
On the move you might find them hiding Man-Camels in a hole that wasn’t there before, or collectively inside a box that shouldn’t be present at all. (Many Chaos Goblins can climb out of one thing.)
Tools And Weapons
Man-Camels
Trepanned or brain-screwed naked human beings with elongated limbs. Used as beasts of burden.
Brain-Paint
Vital Chaos Goblin tech, and a major source of conflict with Soft-Heads who also needed those brains. Brain-Paint is made from the brains of wizards, or anything analogous to a wizard in Goblin eyes, mixed with.. whatever really. What a Chaos Goblin paints with Brain Paint becomes conditionally-real. A tunnel painted on a wall becomes a tunnel, a hole becomes a hole, a princess becomes a princess (a Chaos Goblin version of one anyway). This may be how Chaos Goblins gain irregular access to other Goblin Realms; by just painting them on the wall and walking in, then getting out fast before they forget they can’t really be there. The useful effects of Brain-Paint for non-chaos-goblins are highly irregular, and it doesn’t work at all if not painted by a Chaos Goblin. The negative effects usually work.
Living Weapons
Chameleon Whips actual chameleon tongues make their targets appear differently, Sting Stones are wasp-souled sling stones, Spider-Guns like silk-spewing bagpipes. They are rumoured to use tame (?) Ungulix as hunting hounds.
Madlights
Important in the Veins, Chaos Goblin lamps are always varicoloured and always move madly, either flung and whirled about the head, or actual living bugs and floating frog-balloons lit from within but still trying to hop. They are carried like child’s balloons or like toys, or streamers, bouncing and whirling about.
Other Items
Potion-Pots, Sticky Pokers, Fiddle-Diddles, Hidey Box, Boomerangs, Hooks, Grease, mall-bought shuriken, Madness Pipes.
The Power of Chaos!
Existence for the Chaos Goblins is a dark, violent, anarchic comedy that never ever ever ends. A cruel, surreal, picaresque from which they cannot escape, from which they cannot wish to escape.
They are like a corruption, a Cancer on Reality. Causality bubbles and warps around them. Extremities of chance become common, rare events; regular, humours change. Their physical environment also warps, becoming emblematic, expressionist, arch and Caligarish, somehow performed.
Those who are captured by Chaos Goblins, inevitably monstered, stripped, tattooed, altered, are either made into man-camels, or slowly devolve into Chaos Goblins themselves, as they go utterly mad. These ‘Changed Ones’ are the Chaos Goblin shaman who perform their Grand Transformations.
Chaos Mechanics
Chaos Goblins don’t roll dice, they just flip coins. Heads is a crit, or the highest number possible from the equivalent die roll, tails is a fumble, or the lowest number possible. A die-equivalent can be managed by making all ‘odds’ crits and high and all ‘evens’ fails and fumbles.
All Chaos Goblin action oscillates between bizarre flukes of terrifying good luck, and the most laughable and deranged failure, with nothing in-between. Their 'magic' is the ability to act like cartoon characters.
Chaos Aura!
The Chaos Aura around a Chaos Goblin randomises the effect of any spell cast upon them. Usually this just randomises between any spell of the same level, but on a d20 roll of 20, it randomises between all possible spells of any level.
Chaos-Tricks!
Thankfully, each Chaos Goblin can only use one Chaos Trick at a time, and usually only one Chaos Goblin can use each Chaos Trick in each encounter.
It takes actual concentration to do it. But more important than concentration is circumstance. In the words of Roger Rabbit, ‘it has to be funny’. Though ‘funny’ for a Chaos Goblin doesn’t mean funny for anyone else.
Still, in effect, if a Chaos Goblin uses a Chaos Trick during an encounter, that Goblin can only use that one power, and only that Goblin can use that ability. Otherwise it wouldn’t be ‘funny’.
Elongating Arms
Extend your arms like a huge accordion! Or like long loopy animated limbs! Or like big mad snakes!
Inflated Body
Huff and puff and a Chaos Goblin can inflate itself just like a balloon and float about in the same way, waving its limbs for some level of control. Pierce it and it goes ‘vvvveeeeeeeeee’ and flies about like a balloon, instead of collapsing like a body of equivalent mass.
Deranged Disguise
A Chaos Goblin can disguise itself by dressing very crudely as whatever it wants to be seen as. They can even disguise themselves from the Dungeon Master. For instance the Dungeon Master might say;
“In the middle of the battle, a hot princess appears and starts making lovey dovey eyes at you?”
“Where did she come from?”
“I have no fucking idea.”
Bear in mind; Chaos Goblins are mad, stupid and cringe, so while their disguise might be impenetrable in a metatextual sense, it will often stand out as being utterly retarded. (But look out for those occasions where it isn’t.)
Harmless Liquefaction
A Chaos Goblin can be liquified and poured into something, before being decanted and reassuming its form. This honestly has limited combat utility.
Hiding
A Chaos Goblin can hide behind something that has no space to hide behind, like a long thin rod, or under a rug.
Limb Fix
A Chaos Goblin can lose a limb and replace it with something else that is sort of like a limb, simply popping or screwing it on or in. This might be sword, a hook, a bone, another Chaos Goblin or anything really.
Impossible Shadow Puppets
A Chaos Goblin can make shadow puppet animals or beings on a cave wall and use them as actual creatures.
Grand Transformations
A Shaman is required for this, or someone the Chaos Goblins think is a Shaman. A Big Ritual takes place and one, or more, or all Chaos Gobins are transformed, either randomly, or all into Bat-Goblins, or Fish-Goblins with smiling goblin faces, or Mist-Goblins or are agoblimated into a single Mass Goblin Mega-Goblin.