30 March 2010

What To Do With My Goblins?

I have a lot of old writing that I could post, but I just don't have the time today to transcribe my feverishly scrawled penmanship to a word processor. Some other day.

In the meantime, I've been kicking around an idea that really isn't a story per-say, it's just me fleshing out details of an interesting subculture for a fantasy-type narration. It's a race of cave-dwelling khobolds (or goblins or what-have-you) the only difference between these and the ten thousand other books with gobs in them being that these khobolds are solitary and relatively peaceful. More like bedouin or better yet like deep-jungle-inhabiting tribes, like the Yanomamo: animistic, agrarian, with rudimentary weapons and tactics, suspicious of outsiders but not necessarily hostile.

Anyhow, their economy such as it is revolves around domesticated mountain goats. The animals live entirely in pens in the caves, and are let out at night to graze on the sparse provision of the slopes. Young goats have their voice-boxes snipped, rendering them completely mute. Creepy right? Mute goats with awesome night vision, bad tempers, and strong teeth.

Of course as a result, their primary gods are a mountain thunder god (like Zeus or Baal) a fertility god (who looks like a goat) and an elemental deity that represents water and fire, a duality incarnate in many pagan idols.

The goats are raised for milk, meat, and skins. Much like the Aztecs, this race has an armor that is made from quilted cloth, adequate padding for say a club made from a goat's femur, but paltry protection from swords and flaming arrows. Other than physical appearance, and a distaste for sunlight, I think I've done alright carving out a niche for a sub-race. The only problem I have now is finding a plot to include them in...

I had a sketch somewhere, but have misplaced it since. Here's a picture of a goat. Yes, he can see you.


29 March 2010

The Pastime of the Bored


Well, this is my first blog in a long time... I don't suppose making introductory remarks or excuses will help at all, so I will dispense with the niceties.

I drew a picture of a boy with a tag on his coat waiting under a street lamp, reminiscent of the British children fleeing London for the English countryside during the German bombing raids of World War II. It looked a bit melancholy and miserable so I added a happy puppy and a mosquito. Oddly, it still looks melancholy and miserable. You'll note that the sketch also has the charm of blue notebook lines and barely-visible ring tear-offs in the background. Yes, I drew this during class one night. Yes, nothing has changed in the ten years since I was in high school.

Have notebook, will doodle.

I used to keep my notebooks from classes, tearing out the pages and pages of topic outlines and assignments, keeping only the blank pages and the cool scribbles. "Hey, that's a pretty good imaginary band logo," or "Wow, I did an amazing job on the musculoskeletal structure of that be-cloaked and sword-wielding warrior." Once the scanner was invented, these idle-time twiddlings became wonderful fodder for desktop backgrounds, story illustrations, and now, happily- blogs.