If you haven’t guessed by this point, these were the people who raised me. The ones that I now know as mother and father… well… mum and dad… we aren’t that formal. I still don’t know why they took pity on me the way that they did. There are orphanages full of children… human children. Why take a chance of a goblin? I may not understand why they made this decision, but I am glad that they did.

  I was certainly not an easy child to raise. My parents were kind and caring. They never hit me like many parents would… and by the gods did I give them cause to. If I ever got violent or aggressive and posed a risk to either them or myself, they restrained me… I mean… they had to… I was a risk to them and myself… but they never hit me.

  Even after the kindness that they displayed I was suspicious of them for a very long time. After a while they allowed me to move around the house freely but never go outside. Naturally, I ran away as soon as they did this. I got as far as the field outside. The bull saw me and charged at me. So, I ran back inside and hid under my bed, clutching Bergy like I had in those early days.

  Goblins are raised to never feel safe. Always be on your guard, for you never know when you may be attacked… or when the next chance to eat will be… or when one of the women will be free for you to have your turn. You need to always be aware of what is going on around you. So, for me to feel safe… hiding under a bed… clinging onto a stuffed creature… it was bewildering.

  My parents had recently bought their own farm on which to live. This allowed them to keep me hidden very easily. After I had gotten used to their language, they managed to establish that I did not have a name. They talked for a long time about what to name me. In the end they settled on Dwynfel. They said that giving me a halfling name would make it easier for me to blend in if I ever need to go outside into the world. That way they could say they adopted a halfling boy to explain my height. I didn’t go out much as a child but my mother always liked to think ahead.

  Apart from my rather pathetic escape attempt, I first left the house properly when I was 6. My mother had made me some clothes that covered every inch of my skin. It had a large hood and I was to wear a mask when out of the house. This allowed me to help out on the farm. I was told that if anybody asked why I kept my skin covered to simply say that I had a contagious skin condition. When you say that people normally drop the subject and stop asking to see underneath.

  Of course, they had given me the exact thing that I needed to sneak out. There was a large hill near our farm. I used to sneak out and climb that hill. It had such a beautiful view of the town below. The town of Kataravonia. At first, I couldn’t see much until I discovered a looking glass in my father’s desk. After that, I could see all of the people going about their business, children playing, people buying food from the markets and all sorts of things. It was my favourite place to be. I was too scared to risk going into the town. But I loved looking at it from afar.

  I remember once there was a big wedding in town. It was so beautiful and wonderous to see everybody dressed in their finery, parading around the streets. I never asked my family what was going on as that would give away that I had left the grounds… but my mother mentioned it over dinner that some noble woman was marrying a prince from the Equine kingdom to the north. Which would explain all of the horse-like people that had been in the town. That was the first time I saw anybody from a non-human race… other than goblins, obviously.

  I mentioned earlier that goblins mature faster than humans. I only mean this in some respects. We reach physical maturity very quickly. We begin puberty at eight. Sometimes sooner. We are fully grown adult goblins by twelve. Roughly speaking… a ten-year-old goblin is as physically mature as a human 15-year-old. We pick up practical skills easily, however other skills we are not so gifted in. Reading for example.

  Despite this, my parents were very committed to making sure that I could read. My mother always said that there is a wealth of knowledge in books and that to disregard them does our ancestors a great disservice. Initially, I did not like this… at all. For those first four years when I didn’t leave the house my mother would teach me language and reading every day. The language I learned pretty well… but I hated the reading. The words were difficult for me. I did not like things that were difficult and I used to lash out. I’d scratch, bite, run, throw, and hide when it was time to read. So, she altered her tactics.

  She simply read books to me. Stories of adventurers, great warriors fighting dragons, archers taking down kings with a single arrow, mages casting spells of great wonder. Once that got my interest, she made me sit next to her and follow her finger as she read. She wouldn’t read to me otherwise. Eventually she got me trying some of the words and it went from there.

  I had not learned to read fully in those four years. It was six years before I was able to read a relatively simple book on my own. But after four years my father had returned to adventuring so my mother and I needed to do the farm work. Hence being given the skin covering clothes.

  This persistence of my mother’s had definitely paid off. I had developed a great love of books. And even when I didn’t understand every word in a book, I still tried. After my father resumed adventuring, he would always return from an adventure with a book for me. He had taken a couple of years out of adventuring when he first found me. He told his party it was to so that he could get the farm fully up and running, but it was to allow my mother to spend her days with me… trying to teach me.

  The first thing he always did upon being paid was go to a book shop. It was these books and stories… as well as my father himself, that made me want to become an adventurer.

  My father’s name was David Vesidia. He was a paladin with an interest in alchemy. Despite his heavy armour he used to carry around a backpack for storing his potions and for placing any ingredients in that he found interesting to experiment with later. It is lucky for me that he had this interest or he would not have had the backpack to hide me in… or that dust to knock me out with.

  I like to think that he chose to be a paladin because they are the righteous frontline of any party. They take the brunt of the damage so that everyone else can remain safe. Which sums up my father’s personality pretty well. He was a tall portly man with a fluffy beard, hazel eyes, and scruffy brown hair. He had a smell of metal, leather and sweat to him.

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  When I was eight, he died during one of his quests. One of his companions came to the house to tell my mother. I hid in my room listening in. Their quest was much more dangerous than anticipated. They were exploring a newly discovered dungeon and an undead dragon was lurking within. My father held off the dragon so that the others could come up with a plan to finish the thing off. They succeeded; however, the dragon had killed my father. My father died giving others the chance to live and I will always be proud of him for that.

  His companions were very grateful. Even to this day they send my mother gold when they complete a big mission to make sure she is doing alright for money. Money however is no substitute for a loving husband. My mother struggled for a while. She tried to hide it from me… she wanted to be strong for me.

  I did not take the news well. I idolized him. He had given me a new life. He had taken a chance on me and he had died and left me. I hate to say this, but I did not see that she was struggling at the time. I was too consumed by my own grief to see hers. I lashed out at my mother a lot during that time. She has various scars from where I had cut her with my nails and bit her. Every time I see them, it makes me hate myself even more than I already do.

  My mother’s name is Indira Vesidia. She is a calm and thoughtful woman. She always has a smell of pastry and cinnamon to her. She has dark hair that she normally wears in a plait that goes halfway down her back. She isn’t tall like my father and has a similar portly frame.

  If I am ever scared, then her arms around me always make me feel safe again. She is so very kind and so very understanding of me. The scars that I gave her make me feel sick now. She says she likes having them. She says they aren’t a reminder of the struggle… they are a reminder that things got better. We went through something awful and we healed. Even so, no matter how many times she says this, they still make me feel sick with self-loathing.

  When I was younger, I considered the way that she would restrain me when I was aggressive as horrific. But looking back now… seeing the scars that I caused my mother from my aggression… I completely understand why it was needed. The restraint that my mother showed was nothing short of amazing. Her husband had just died and the stray goblin that he randomly brought home one day was physically attacking her. She didn’t beat me down; she didn’t throw me out. She held me so that I couldn’t harm her or myself… she held on to me so tightly. As she did it, she told me that she loved me and that she would always be there for me, no matter what I did.

  I was trying to claw this woman’s eyes out and she responded by protecting both of us and telling me she loved me. We had both suffered a loss, but I placed such a burden on her… and she just kept on going. Her inner strength is nothing short of amazing and I have no idea how she got through it.

  What eventually calmed me down was when she went through his desk. We did not touch any of his things for two months after he died. But she decided it was time. Within his desk she found diaries. Adventuring diaries. He had been writing down details of his adventures since he had restarted his questing. She told me that he must have been planning on giving them to me since he knew how much I enjoyed books about quests and adventure.

  I love those diaries. He sometimes got a bit side-tracked and described what he believed to be an interesting mushroom for two pages… but I loved them none the less. They were an insight into my father’s world and it only strengthened my desire to become an adventurer. After reading his diaries I told my mother that when I was older, I was going to become an adventurer myself.

  Now, I need to say… right now… before I continue… this was a terrible idea. My life on the farm was perfect. I could carry on with my life. I didn’t need to see other people. The risk of being discovered was very low. This idea was dangerous… it was stupid… but it was something that I believed I had to do.

  My mother was fully aware of all of this. She told me that it was a dangerous and reckless idea… but that she knew me and knew that I’d try to do it regardless of what she said. So, she was going to make damn sure that I did it as safely and as sensibly as possible.

  Soon after my ninth birthday… as I went about my jobs on the farm… my mother went to the market in town. I assumed to get flour and other essentials. She came back with leather and other materials that I was unfamiliar with. For the next few days, as I went about my duties, I would sneak into the house and watch what she was making. She was so focused and determined.

  After a while she emerged, she presented me with black leather armour. She had adapted it to cover all of my skin. As well as to have convenient easy to open sections so that I could urinate and defecate whilst exposing as little of myself as possible. A nine-year-old goblin is almost entirely fully grown so as I got older it would need very few alterations.

  She also gave me a black enchanted cowl. The enchantment on the cowl meant that the wearer’s face would be perpetually shrouded in shadows. No matter how hard somebody was to look in the cowl they would never see your face. She told me that my father had brought it home from a quest and they had been waiting until I was older to give it to me. She then pulled out a short bow, a quiver of arrows, one regular dagger, a parrying dagger, and a small knife.

  She said “You cannot do what your father did. You cannot be a frontline fighter, and I don’t mean because of your size, Dwyn. If you are at the front then the chances of your armour being damaged or you getting hurt is incredibly high. That is when others may see your skin and as soon as that happens, it is all over. You aren’t gifted with spells, so your best bet is to become a ranger. Provide support with arrows and intel and save the daggers in case anything gets close to you.”

  She then pulled out a little satchel on a belt. “Use this for potions, explosive flasks, poisons for your arrows… anything like that. You should know from your father’s diaries that potions can save your life out there and even the biggest enemies will go down once you get enough poison in their system. Once they are poisoned it is just a waiting game. If you stick to being a ranger you have a chance of actually being able to do this without being discovered.”

  I was a bit disheartened by what she had said, I wanted to be just like my father… a paladin at the front keeping the others safe. I knew she was right, I didn’t like it, but she was right. She went on to say “the legal age for becoming an official adventurer is fifteen. You age faster however, so I am forbidding you from doing this until you are ten. When you sign up you must put that you are 15. You have until then to practise with that bow, and if you can’t hit a target at the far end of the field by then, then I will not let you do this. Understand?”

  I nodded back to her and she continued “and I suggest you read your father’s alchemy books… knowing how to make potions, poisons and explosives will save you a lot of money in the long run… and we are not going to have much in the way of money once you do this as I will need to hire a farm hand.”

  She had really thought this through. I had been daydreaming of just wandering out there and doing something while she had thought the whole thing through. How I could do it safely and with as little risk as possible. After all of the effort that she had put in, I decided I was going to take her advice. I was going to become a master with the bow; I was going to become an adventurer and start earning gold that I could send home to her, so that she could hire as many farm hands as she wanted and ease her burden.