ScarletFrost
I'm not sure if this is the right place for this, but it can't hurt.
I'm writing a fantasy story, and I'm running into some time-line development issues. It's a bit of an involved explanation so please stay with me.
The goblins in my story extraordinary mathematicians ("measuring the gifts of others") and are deathly allergic to gold ("never able to own them"). While humans can come up with ideas like gliders and paddle-boats, goblins can come up with the advanced mathematics to make them happen. As a result, goblins are the driving force behind technology (such as it is in a sword-and-sorcery Fantasy).
So...Finally to my dilemma: While I want to maintain a general fantasy theme, I want my goblins to be VERY different, especially the good guys.
What sort of inventions would be good for the bad guys and what different inventions would be good for the good guys?
And what kind of time line is feasible? My main goblin hero needs to go from scribe to exile to motivated rebel to king in about 10 years max (goblins don't live long and he's already middle aged). Should I have caches of secret inventions from the goblins of ancient times waiting for the right heir? or is that way too cliche?
This is most important to the second book in the series, Goblin Knights. (The first book is almost done.)
I'm writing a fantasy story, and I'm running into some time-line development issues. It's a bit of an involved explanation so please stay with me.
The goblins in my story extraordinary mathematicians ("measuring the gifts of others") and are deathly allergic to gold ("never able to own them"). While humans can come up with ideas like gliders and paddle-boats, goblins can come up with the advanced mathematics to make them happen. As a result, goblins are the driving force behind technology (such as it is in a sword-and-sorcery Fantasy).
So...Finally to my dilemma: While I want to maintain a general fantasy theme, I want my goblins to be VERY different, especially the good guys.
What sort of inventions would be good for the bad guys and what different inventions would be good for the good guys?
And what kind of time line is feasible? My main goblin hero needs to go from scribe to exile to motivated rebel to king in about 10 years max (goblins don't live long and he's already middle aged). Should I have caches of secret inventions from the goblins of ancient times waiting for the right heir? or is that way too cliche?
This is most important to the second book in the series, Goblin Knights. (The first book is almost done.)
On the subject of mathematics, have you ever heard of gematria? It's a branch of Kabalah involving numerology, sacred geometry, and other esoteric number manipulations. It seems to me that the goblins as you described them would definitely use gematria, and possibly also some of the esoteric teachings of Pythagoras would seem to fit the bill.
As for the "caches of secret weapons", it could be cliche if handled wrong, but if you also use the sacred geometry aspect of gematria to discover these "lost caches" by using a combination of old maps that he (or his allies) discover through the course of the story and a mathematical code similar to the esoteric writings of real-life alchemists (who often used very poetic and symbolic language to hide their secrets from the "unenlightened"). In fact, I can easily see your goblin hero pouring through obscure texts of mathematical equations with hidden symbolic meanings similar to the journals kept by alchemists, puzzling them out gradually a la The DaVinci Code until that sudden "aha!" moment when he realizes that the equations represent constellations as viewed from a certain place on the world your stories take place on, or when graphed, depict a "map" of the location of the next cache.
Also, having the goblins depicted as inventors and tinkerers much like gremlins of WW2 legends makes them far different than the typical goblins of D&D, etc.--and definitely look up goblin tech in Warcraft 3 as Keith Valken Lionheart suggested, and also check out the profiles of some of the goblin NPCs on FFXIcyclopedia, the wiki for Final Fantasy 11 for inspiration.
