Goblin Quarter
Dogskull Way, Hive Ward
Forget everything you think you know about goblins, and take a trip through Sigil’s Goblin Quarter. The Goblin Quarter is located at the edge of the Hive Ward, along Dogskull Way. You’ll quickly learn how the street got its name; the goblins paint their decorations in bright colours, sticking them on pikes throughout the Quarter. “After all,” a resident once commented to me, “it’s not like the dog is usin’ it anymore.”
During the day, the streets are empty of everything but shadows. During the night, however, the Quarter comes alive. Goblin ratcatchers prowl the streets with their nets and traps, while goblin masons look for creative ways to shore up the collapsing buildings. The centre street turns into a market of sorts, with goblin shamans selling charms and trinkets, and goblin merchants selling anything they can get their hands on.
Then there’s the food, with spicy smells from goblin cookfires assailing your nose at every turn. A life of poverty has taught these goblins how to make anything edible — anything. Goblin cuisine is an experience no Sensate should miss. Order the Ok’Tre’Bash (that’s the dish with the green sauce), but for Celestia’s sake, don’t ask what the meat is! After all, someone is paying the ratcatchers…
“Says here that ‘Goblins use no form of sanitation, and their lairs have a foul stench.’
— Larm Tcklhwm, reading what a clueless Prime has written about Goblins
Hey, see how pretty you’d smell if you were forced to live in a cave all your life.”
Like most ghettos, the Goblin Quarter is a world within a world. The goblins here have kept a lot of their old customs from the Prime. To a Cager, they dress strangely, talk strangely, and behave strangely. Among themselves, they speak in their high-pitched native tongue. When speaking with others, their planespeak is slurred and heavily accented. A canny cutter won’t let these things stop him exploring the Quarter, though. First of all, the goblins keep themselves and their streets fastidiously clean — a welcome relief from the squalor of the rest of the Hive Ward. Secondly, this is one of the few areas of the Hive Ward that has working sewers. Goblin masons have made sure of that, digging and maintaining the sewer tunnels underneath the Quarter.
And thirdly, these goblins are a lot more hospitable than their cousins who roam the Slags. Chant has it that the goblins who settled along Dogskull Way are heretics of sorts, escaping persecution from their Prime world. They certainly have some bizarre religious rituals; six times during the night, they erupt into cacophonous chanting, praising the glory of their Power. It sounds an awful shriek to non-Goblin ears, but it can save your life if you’re lost in the Hive Ward at night. Just follow the yowling, and you’ll soon be at the relative safety of the Goblin Quarter.
“‘Goblins do not need to eat much, but kill just for the pleasure of it.’
— Larm Tcklhwm, reading from the same book
Yeah, I know of a race like that living here in the Hive Ward.
They’re called ‘Humans’.”
Source: Pol Jackson
