Special Treat: Momma Gobbo Backstory (Part I)

Y'all...I started turning my Call of Cthulhu one-shot into a short story to share with you today. It's a bit too big. Like, it's way more work than I have time for this month. I think that might be a Fanfiction Friday I move to November, but we'll see.

So instead, today I'm going to tell you a little bit more about my favorite little goblin witch, Momma Gobbo.

I've told you before how I played her as a D&D character in DM Tina's Ravenloft game, which you can also read the aftermath of, but even when I was recapping those original sessions, I never really got into what Momma's story was before the Mists rolled in and whisked her off to Barovia.

What lead to Momma ruling over her clan of goblins?

How did she develop her sorcerous power to conjure food?

What made her become the evil scourge of the Phandalin region?

I know, of course. Before the first session even started I wrote a lengthy backstory for her that I had Tina look over to make sure it fit. I like to think it was that backstory doc that inured Tina to me when we first started.

It was very much a "Same Hat" kind of situation where it became clear the two of us shared a lot of the same kinks.

So here in a 2-3 part series, I'm gonna give you all the deets on Momma Gobbo's origin story.

Content Warning: child abandonment, starvation

A Goblin By Any Other Name

Preface: I used a combination of Volo's Guide To Monsters and Xanathar's Guide To Everything to randomly generate a lot of this, then I filled in all the gaps with kinky details.

A goblin girl was born the runt of a brood of goblins living in the depths of the Cragmaw Caverns. As she was the smallest of eight goblin children in a brood of pariahs; yet another mouth amongst too many to feed, she was tossed aside to be eaten by the hook horrors.

This was a common and necessary sacrifice amongst the dozen or so goblin clans that lived together under Queen Gullet Cragmaw: it thinned the ranks of her subjects, and it kept the hook horrors at bay.

The baby goblin wailed for three days in the depths of the cavern's maw.

But the hook horrors never came.

Even the feared Gnasher, the biggest and cruelest of them, didn't come to feast on tender goblin flesh.

The baby just cried and cried.

By the end of the third day, a family of goblin gatherers, the Stalactongues, delved deep into the caves to find mushrooms to prepare for the queen. Instead, they found the baby goblin.

Goblins typically don't care for the young of other goblins. It's forbidden to deny their god Maglubiyet the death of the weak, but Ma Stalactongue just couldn't figure how a little goblin baby could survive in the cold and dark for so long.

In the goblin tongue, there is no word for miracle. But that's exactly what they had encountered.

So they scooped up the baby and claimed it as their own child. They named her Glug, and made her a part of the Stalactongue clan of gatherers.

Unbeknownst to all within the depths of the maw, the baby goblin had been chosen.

A pact had been made between three powerful beings: one abyssal, one fey, and one divine. The pact was initiated by Vengaburst, demon duchess of gluttony, who planted the seed of her abyssal power inside the soul of this baby goblin: the power to weave magic through appetites, and to conjure magic in the form of deliciously fattening food.

Each of these powerful beings wagered a different outcome for this goblin. Whoever's outcome matched the most closely to the goblin girl's life by its end...would win the wager.

Bawling and starving, the baby goblin used this newfound power to conjure dancing milky lights, which staved off the cold and kept her fed, ensuring she survived.

And now, with new parents and a new name, she was heading back to the goblin clans.

(Free members, if you wanna read on you must become an Imp Tier member or above. Now's the time~)

A Gluttonous Gatherer

Years passed, and Glug grew up into a young adult.

She possessed a large head of straight purple hair, and gleaming violet eyes that set her apart from her yellow and red eyed broodmates.

Being a gatherer, she could leave the caverns and explore the wider world of the Sword Coast with her adoptive family. It was bright and beautiful, and Glug loved it more than anything. To her, the dark, cramped environs of their home caves were nothing but stifling and stuffy.

Gatherers find, sneak, steal, pilfer, and rob foodstuffs for their clans. While they do learn a fair bit about farming and tending to plants, they learn just as much about how to steal from the taller peoples of the world: plundering chicken coops, burglaring trade caravans in the night, and pilfering pies off of window sills.

The last one was Glug's favorite.

Less than a day's sneak from the Cragmaw Caverns was the sleepy town of Phandalin; a predominantly halfling and human town that loved to bake and brew. Glug stole from them whenever she could, often idling in the shadows on the eves of roofs to watch the washing maidens dance and sing as they worked.

It didn't take Glug long to become enamored with the lives of these people. Especially the ample waistlines of many of the washing maidens.

A stirring swirled up inside of Glug. A deep and uncanny desire she couldn't rightly explain.

A yearning to feed and fatten others. To sate their appetites and watch their bellies grow.

As this yearning grew, so did the magic inside of her.

Without truly meaning to, one afternoon during Phandalin's harvest festival, while watching the comeliest (and fattest) washing maiden eat and grow stuffed, Glug conjured an entire pie onto the table next to the others! Her desire to feed this shapely human woman manifested itself into a physical pie!

It stood out amongst the others: smaller but stouter, with misshapen lattice overtop, its filling a dark, oozing blueberry rather than all the apple pies around it. Nonetheless, its delicious smell wafted over to the human woman, and she quickly scooped it up and cut herself a large slice.

Glug watched with bated breath as the woman she adored ate her magical pie...gasping in delight at its delicious taste, urging her to gobble up the whole thing.

Its magic filled the human woman, causing her to swell up by (1d4 x 5) twenty pounds! Her soft belly and bosom split the seams of her cotton chemise, leading to a very sudden and awkward reveal that caused the whole festival table to erupt in hoots and hollers.

Glug got spooked by the roaring humans, and scurried away back to the goblin's caves...emptyhanded. She'd wasted too much time dallying and ogling and didn't steal the harvest foods she'd intended on.

Coming back to the Queen without gathering something good to eat meant punishment, and with Glug's adoptive family's place in the goblin hierarchy being as low as it was, it wouldn't just be her that was punished.

Frantic and desperate, Glug scrambled for a solution.

Only for her to conjure an identical pie as the one she'd conjured earlier. Her eyes glowed and her skin tingled, leaving her exhausted, but she had something to give.

When the time came for the gatherers to offer up their tributes to the clans, the goblin Queen selected for herself first. She was a powerful booyahg wielder, a master of a magical circlet she'd acquired decades ago, and had long held the throne over the region's goblins.

She selected Glug's pie first.

When she bit into it, she quickly demanded to know the gatherer who had brought it.

Glug slowly admitted it was her. She expected punishments to rain down upon her. This was it, the end to her already short and mostly miserable life.

But the Queen was pleased! She wanted to know where the pie was pilfered from, because she wanted more!

Glug lied. "It came...from Phandalin. From one of the human...bake-rees" she said.

The Queen was pleased. She charged Glug with returning to Phandalin with a group of expert gatherers to steal as many of these pies as possible the following day!

Glug swallowed.

Blueberries, or any edible berry for that matter, weren't native to the region. Apples were Phandalin's prized crop. The pie had gotten their by booyahg; by magic!

How was she going to be able to come up with more...with everyone watching?

*** *** ***

I'll have another part of this story up for the next Special Treat. I hope you've liked it so far~ As always, let me know in the comments below.

-Miss Indulgence