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...hobolds which wear red hats... |  | |
| - pg.165, The Last Wish (U.K. edition) | |||
Kobolds, also known as hobolds, are small ogroids with dog-shaped faces that dwell in wild forests and various types of underground caverns.
Culture[]
Some of kobolds living near human villages are thought to wear red hats.[3] Knockers are especially fond on hooch and other alcoholic beverages.[4]
Mountain kobolds are organized in tribes. They wear leather and fur clothes and are armed with yatagans, cudgels and light crossbows. More sophisticated than their goblin cousins, they illuminate their habitats with oil lamps and lanterns treating them as a luxurious decoration than the source of light. Being in a constant state of war with gnomes they hate them peculiarly, sometimes keeping gnomish captives imprisoned in wooden cages.[5] Gnomes, on the other hand, learned to evaluate whether the fuss heard in the deeps is caused by kobolds or not.[6]
Characteristics[]
A feature by which kobold is easily distinguished is a dog-like face. Forest kobolds are hirsute human-child-tall creatures with short legs and long arms, while mountain ones reach about 1.20 meters and have hairless reddish skin.[5]
An exceptionally large and stronger breed of kobolds are most commonly known as knockers. Apart from height and breadth, one obvious difference between the two races is that a knocker is hairier and always grows a huge beard that tangles with time, which ordinary kobolds do not as a rule.[4]
Kobold eyes are known to be used as an ingredient, as they can act as a a poison to make the drinker perceptible to visions.[7]
Trivia[]
- Red-Caps are goblin like creatures that would blugeon people to death and then dip their cap in the blood.
- Kobolds and goblins also feature in other works of Andrzej Sapkowski.
- Some forest kobolds inhabiting an abandoned lumberjacks' glade near Ktova village appear in Chapter 11 of The Warriors of God novel. Shortly after his escape from the Trosky Castle, Reynevan is ambushed by about twenty of them; they are described as hirsute creatures being as short as human children, having short legs, long arms and ugly, doggy faces.
- They are featured similarly in his The Eye of Yrrhedes role-playing game. Mountain kobolds from the Crookednose tribe are 1.20 meters tall, have dog faces and, contrary to the forest ones from the Warriors of God, hairless reddish skin.
- The author also wrote a feuilleton titled Ya hoi! Ya hoi! Ya harri hoi! about the origin and role of goblins, orcs and similar creatures in the fantasy genre. A copy of it can be found here.