Games for Goblins
Hidden at the edge of reality, orbiting somewhere between the realm of immortal imprisoned gods and the well of souls tapped by the collective subconscious, there is a forgotten realm. Reached most clearly through the dreams of the innocents, this is a world that has become ever harder to reach in a jaded world of science. Many of us have caught glimpses of this world, but few have ever seen hard evidence of it's existence. Like the eldritch lands of G'harne and the Plateau of Leng, this realm is one of the cursed lands scribed into books like the Necromonicon.
A friend of mine inherited a chest of filled with curious trinkets from northern India, Pakistan, Nepal and the hidden valleys of Kashmir. The chest also contained carvings from throughout Asia minor, and archaeological texts from a variety of universities around the world. My friend (who chooses to remain nameless), took copies of the texts an a number of the key trinkets, leaving for the mysterious lands south of the Gobi Desert. Believing he would find proof of the Gobi Death Worm, or evidence of something that would change what we knew about the world...he kept saying something about the word Gobi being similar to the word goblin, I assumed he'd be back after a couple of months.
I was given the original copies of the texts, along with the original chest for safe keeping. While it has been several months since my friend departed, I never really looked inside it. But it's been getting too long now, and my curiosity is starting to get the better of me.
The majority of the books from the chest strike me as the condescending works typical of anthropologists and scholars from the late 19th century, they speak of quaint rituals followed by the uncivilised savages in the unenlightened parts of the world. They talk of people who believe their dreams may be used to traverse the spirit worlds, or perhaps even travel through time itself. Some of the books talk of intoxicants, meditative trances, and hidden rituals; it's the kind of stuff that Houdini spent his life debunking.
One book looks strangely out of place though, it seems to belong but it exists apart. It is written in a language like no other I have encountered. It's illustrations depict inhuman things. I would have thought it a mere childrens book of faerie tales if not for the serious tomes and documents accompanying it.
The book is a simple collection of parchment pages, threaded together crudely with twine, between a pair of wooden covers. It came in a small box with an assortment of dice, glass beads, coins, tokens and buddhist hell notes. With it also came a pair of scrolls each marked in a manner similar to a game playing board. The scrolls have proven too fragile for scanning.
The book seems to describe an inhuman culture, I will call them goblins to respect my friend's beliefs. It seems to describe their pastimes, and the ritual games they use to teach virtues and social matters to their children.
The following is a scan of the goblin text, or at least the pages containing images.
Scanned Images of the Games for Goblin's Text
The flimsy nature of the book's bindings mean that I cannot be sure that the pages are in correct order, and there are far more pages of raw text that I have not scanned in. The text is untranslated, and while I have a vague idea about some of the translations, I certainly haven't managed to decipher it completely.
As far as I can tell so far, the cubic die is an anomaly in the great labyrinth mentioned. Such things are typically whisked away by the industrious creatures who manufacture the great maze that covers their land. Traditionally, caltrops are thrown on the ground and from these evolved tetrahedral dice (d4s). Broken tetrahedra evolved into octohedral dice (page 17 seems to indicate this).
Other games seems to use decks of cards, and these decks seem to follow the tarot system of 1 to 10 with 4 "face cards"; a page, a courtier, a baron and a baroness. The suits seem to be "Cogs", "Bones", "Tools" and "Bugs". There may be major arcana involved, but I haven't managed to gather a full set of these yet. There seems to be a card for an "Oracle", a "Goblin King", a "Lost Wanderer" and a card for the Labyrinth itself.
From what I have managed to piece together so far, it appears that many of the Games for Goblins use these are core ingredients. Other implements for game play seem to include scraps of paper and miscellaneous household items.
The other thing I have managed to discern about the Games for Goblins is that they tend to be short, for it appears that the goblins don't have long attention spans (and they get easily distracted), the rules are simple, but they often teach a lesson.
Found among the games are a wide assortment of pastimes, including board games, card games, games to teach strategy, and games to teach young goblins what it means to be a valuable member of their race. In many of these games, the young goblin takes on a role to learn something about their society or place in it.
I believe that this book is like a counterpart to "Hoyle's Book of Games", but offering these games in the context of a cultural narrative for an inhuman race.
I'm not heading to the sub-Gobi regions any time soon, but I'm interested to learn more about the pastimes described within the book's pages. As a result, I'm opening these images to the public. Please help me to interpret the images and the pages of text, I'd like to learn more about the games they describe and perhaps learn mre about this strange inhuman culture through the games they play.
