Note: This was published in Rifter #16, and as such, is owned now by Palladium Books. What is below is an excerpt from the original article.

Orcs, Goblins, and Hobgoblins (collectively, with the Kobolds, known as Goblin-kin) form the backbone of many evil armies. They are the grunt warriors, the sneak thieves, and the unnoticed spies that take the brunt of an enemy's wrath before the more elite ogres, trolls, and giants take the field. Yet, aside from that, they also exist independently, in small towns and autonomous tribes, eking out a living doing the manual labor they loathe, or raiding the more successful races and tribes across the Palladium World. Mixed into the violence and theft of their lives are the Cobblers... goblins who have kept a touch of the old faerie magic, including some who constantly seek to master their natural abilities.

Orcs and Goblins are actually a form of debased faerie, turned from their natural, magical life sometime near the end of the Age of Chaos, or perhaps at the beginning of the Age of Light. (Kobolds, too, are Goblin-kin, but they lead a life much different than their cousins, and so aren't covered here.) Hobgoblins arose from Goblin stock sometime late in the Age of Light. The reason for the divergence of these races from the lives of faerie folk (which, though long and quite fun to the faeries, seem to contain little variety or free-will) is not known, though as with all matters historical, theories abound. These include everything from a sick joke by Kirgi, who turned rats and pigs into humanoid form, to aberrations created by the Old Ones, to simple mutations that arose because of the high magic of the Age of Light. One wit has quipped that there seem to be more theories than there are Goblin-kin, but as he was an undergraduate, no one took him seriously.

Perhaps the most popular theory is that Orcs and Goblins were twisted by some ancient form of magus or would-be god, to serve as slaves and worshippers. Proponents of this theory cite the generally weak wills of Orcs and Goblins, and their willingness to bow to a strong leader. In this view, Orcs are assumed to come from the Hairy Jack, Goblins the Grogach, and Kobolds bear enough similarity to Spriggans that they are usually named the progenitor of that race. Some who hold this theory claim that the Gnomes are off-shoots of the Leprechaun, but this claim is rejected by many Gnomish scholars as preposterous. Hobgoblins, they argue, came about when latent faerie magic interacted with the warping magic and brutal conditioning to form a breed that would resist the conditions of slavery. This theory has many merits, including the fact that it explains most of the evidence and, as creatures such as the Dogres and Zavor show, magical meddling in the essences of life is known to be a chancy subject at best.