Goblins were the first of the Wild to appear in the historical record. Certain references may place them as early as about 1120 AUC, but the first positive dating is of course to 1131 and the invasion that year of the Roman Empire by a goblin Horde.

Goblins are a swarm species. They normally live in small pods of fewer than a dozen members and prefer isolated areas where they can hunt prey without fear of reprisals. Every once in a while, though, a leader emerges with the right pheromones. He attracts followers and a swarm emerges. Most of the time, these swarms disperse quickly, either through the death of the leader or because the swarm decimates its resources, or because the swarm attracts the attention of more powerful species, which destroy it. The latter is what happened after their invasion of the Empire, but the actions of Emperor Gratian and others had the effect of creating a diaspora, scattering the Horde across the Eastern Empire, and goblins can now be found in every corner of Europa.

For a time, goblins were dreaded, as proto-hordes formed, threatening a town or a region. Once the orcs invaded in the 14th century, and trolls after them, the threat posed by goblins receded. They increasingly took to the dark places of the world, where they could still prey upon the unwary and the isolated.

Goblins are not the fearsome creatures they once were. Their claws are vestigial and their mobility is much reduced from the fabled days of their 12th century invasions. They can still create mischief, for they are a destructive race, and every so often someone is killed by them. They may be found particularly in abandoned mines and tunnels and are the especial bane of miners of all sorts (e.g., the tin mines of Cornwall).

Goblins have neither speech nor writing, but they do communicate with one another through the curious practice of “body drumming.” In this, goblins slap different parts of their bodies, click their claws, make unvoiced noises with their mouths. Unique in all the modes of communication, this appears to be a group or communal activity, rather than one individual communicating with a group. This point is much debated by specialists. Some argue that all communications are initiated by an individual for the purpose of communicating a complete thought, while others say it is more of a kind of communication by consensus in which generalized random noises take the shape of a message when there is a threat to the pod or some task to accomplish. Whatever the reality, no one has even begun to fathom the specifics of body drumming.