Guide to Goblins: The Trickster

This post is part of my Guide to Goblins series. Click the link to check out the rest.

When kicking off this series, I wrote about the historical and mythological roots of the goblin. While it was not a universal trait among some of the more common modern interpretations of goblins, something that does recur amongst our mythological goblins is their role as tricksters. Knockers and Muki love to steal mining equipment. Pukwudgies will use their mind-control magic to mislead and taunt.

This week, we're going to focus on only one new goblin depiction that highlights this role of trickster to be its defining characteristic. I looked at a few different tricksters, but I wasn't able to come up with enough things that would make them feel substantially different, so I'm just narrowing this post in on my favorite. Specifically, we'll be focusing on the Iberian Trasgu, present in Spanish and Portuguese folklore. We'll adapt this creature into goblin subcultures for our TTRPGs. Our guiding questions are: what is the historical context of these stories? What are the key elements of this goblin? And then how can we adapt this goblin for our TTRPGs?

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To recap the scope of our project: I want to keep the D&D framing of "goblin" as a specific thing. All our different folkloric "types" of goblins can be treated as differing cultural groups within goblin-kind. This way, we can create a more varied, less monolithic sort of goblin.

Trasgu

Our goblin this week is the Trasgu, an originally Celtic folk creature that now lives on in the folklore of northern Iberia. The Trasgu is a household prankster, meaning that it lives in your house and causes mischief, like rearranging your pans and breaking your plates.

Trasgu / Ninarcomics

Historical Context: Everyday Life

Usually for our goblins in this series, the trasgu does not seem rooted in any particular historical moment. It is not a product of rising industrial mining, colonial enterprise, or warfare. David Wacks, professor of Spanish and Medieval Studies at the University of Oregon, writes that the trasgu "is a metaphor for the normal disorder that invades our lives, a reminder that despite our best efforts, some things will never be completely organized or regularized. They are margin of error incarnate."

Asturian Mythology | David A. Wacks

This is a far more mundane and universal allegory than, say, the industrial knocker or colonial pukwudgie. For the purposes of this post, it means two things: it means we have a lot more liberty in our adaptation, as we do not need to reference any particular historical development (such as invasion, for the pukwudgies) to inform our version; second, it means that this section on the trasgu's history is going to be comparatively a lot smaller.

One historical component that I do want to address from Wacks's blog post about the trasgu, which has been an invaluable source to me, is the role of traditional mythology in modern Spain and its political implications. Mostly, I think addressing this can inspire what is otherwise a mostly blank canvas for our trasgu; this is meant to inspire, rather than limit, our adaptation.

Wacks describes the people who continue to believe in traditional folklore as generally anti-Catholic. Keeping to pre-Christian beliefs in supernatural beings, which were often viewed as heretical by the early Catholic Church during the medieval period, is an act of resistance to the dominant Christian framework. In Spain, particularly in Asturias (the trasgu's origin location), this anti-Catholicism was associated with anti-fascism, as the Catholic Church supported the fascist dictator Francisco Franco during the 20th century. We'll use this basic idea of the trasgu as a force for resistance against authority, government, and the church as part of our adaptation.

Depiction and Traditions

The trasgu is often depicted as something between what Americans would consider a goblin and a leprechaun. Wikipedia describes the trasgu as "a tiny man who limps with his right leg; he has dark skin, wears red clothes and a pointy red hat. He has a hole in his left hand. He is described at times as having horns, [a] tail, sheep ears and long legs, and wearing a long black and gray cloak; at other times he is described as small, with long thin legs and wearing a tight dark brown dress."

Most of these points are backed up by Wacks, who is a more academic and reliable source than Wikipedia. Red cap? Yes. The hole in his left hand? Also yes, and the hole is a particularly defining feature that I'll expand on in a bit. The horns, tail, sheep ears? Those are all things that Wacks says are medieval Christian efforts to combine devilish features with the existent trasgu, to try to associate the pre-Christian trasgu with notions of evil. We'll skip those.

The hole in the left hand is particularly interesting. Some of the far less-than-reliable "monster hunter blog" type sources I read attribute this to being so that, if the trasgu tried to rob you, things would simply fall through his hand. I don't hate that explanation. But particularly when combined with the somewhat antagonist relationship between Catholicism and the trasgu throughout its folk history, from its branding as a devil by the medieval church to its 20th-century associations with factions resisting Franco, I wonder about the relationship between the trasgu's hole and the stigmata. The stigmata are wounds in the hands, feet, wrists, head, and back, meant to mirror the crucifixion wounds sustained by Jesus, and are seen as holy signs when they appear on a normal person. While I haven't found any academic scholarship or even any fringe cryptid hunters arguing that the hole in the trasgu's hand is a reference to the stigmata, I would personally be surprised if there is no relationship in a creature that feels so tied up with its relationship to Catholicism.

Either way, I don't think it is necessarily relevant to our adaptation of the trasgu. The trasgu has a hole in its left hand. He wears a red cap, but I also want to distinguish him from our redcaps. I think the full red cloak would be a good way to distinguish the trasgu from the redcap. He limps. He has relatively long legs proportionally and dark skin for a goblin--though I think we'll keep the general yellowish tones of D&D's standard goblins.

The trasgu's "powers" are mostly just annoying. "Nocturnal noises are attributed to him, and also small pranks like changing the location of objects," according to Wikipedia. A well-treated, thanked trasgu will be helpful by doing household chores. Getting rid of him is difficult, as he will pursue a family until the ends of the earth once he has been in their home. In order to get rid of one so that it doesn't follow, you need to assign it an impossible domestic task so that it will get distracted trying to solve it, such as fetching all the water of a sea. Once it fails, it is shamed and will leave the family's house rather than show its face.

Adaptation

Thinking of trasgu as a goblin subculture, we're going to draw from two major themes: resistance to authority (the church, the government, general ideas of being a prankster), and an intense level of pride (as failing at a task causes them to leave a family's house). Our recurring goblin theme as largely living in common with one another and sharing things also gives us a reason for our trasgu to act as tricksters and annoyances: they're just moving the kitchen to suit them, but it is infuriating nonetheless for the humans who can no longer find their good pan.

In some ways, I think that this makes the trasgu as a culture just a sort of local street urchin. The trasgu are just around; they're common; they possibly lived in the region before the humans/elves/dwarves/etc. But they are happy to welcome these others into their region and do not see themselves as owners of the land. When a dwarf comes and claims a farm, the trasgu says "fine, they're also living here now," and tries its best to help out these new residents. They're not servants or slaves; they're peers. The trasgu gets just as annoyed as the dwarf when the dwarf moves pots and pans around, and so the trasgu "fixes" it, only for the dwarf to return it to another way. Think of the trasgu as a bad roommate.

Our trasgu are not particularly adept at magic, though they have an uncanny tracking ability which they'll use to pursue those of their "household" even if they move. You are all family now, whether you want to be or not. The trasgu are just hard workers and rarely need to sleep (maybe they have an ability like the D&D elves Trance), and so are capable of doing more household chores than someone who does need to sleep.

Our trasgu also are intensely proud as a culture. This is not reflected in their mechanics, but culturally, these are people who are quick to take insult (leading to more malevolent pranks). Failure, even more than insult, is shameful in trasgu society, and many will move great distances to avoid facing their failure, preferring a voluntary exile.

In terms of mechanical ability, trasgu are slow thanks to their innate limps. One leg should be longer than the other, to make this a biological characteristic rather than something individual. Of all our goblins, however, the trasgu is probably the least likely to be faced on the field of battle. Trasgu rarely fight, preferring passive-aggressive pranks to express displeasure than outright violence.

Trasgu culture, when they are amongst their own kind, is similar. There is not a strong tribal identity; instead, they tend to have highly fluid boundaries with one another and an intense culture of adoption. If you're in the same region as a trasgu, you're likely already considered adopted by them, which is why they're helping out around the house.

In terms of appearance, we'll keep the standard goblin appearance as our base: sallow and wrinkly skin, pointy ears, and sharp teeth. Their skin tone is a darker shade of yellow than many others. Almost universally, they wear a full red cloak and red hat–it is the marker of adulthood in trasgu society. They have long legs for a goblin and a short torso, with one leg slightly longer than the other to cause a biological limp.

For more details on trasgu society and the full stat block variations, you'll have to pick up Guide to Goblins when it is released. I'm still not publicly releasing a launch date for that, as I have editing and formatting to do, and I just got back from vacation, so I'm not sure how long that will all take me. However, this will be final post in the guide to goblins series before the launch. So stay tuned for news about the launch–if all goes according to plan, it will be some time in August.

Conclusion

A shorter blog post this week because of the focus on only one trickster goblin! You can read all about the other goblin types that I've covered in my full Guide to Goblins series. Be sure to subscribe to the blog to have future posts delivered to your inbox so that you make sure that you do not miss any! And stay tuned for news of when I'll release the full and polished product!