D&D 5E Fey Hobgoblins, where did they come from? What are they for?

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

One could even say that the D&D Hobgoblin (martial-type) is the weird one in the mythocosmology, hobgoblins would be ancestrally fey. Actually, it can make for a good story as to how a family of hobgoblins fled from fairy and became the lawful evil brutes we all love...

My personal headcanon is that the Gods of the Goblinoids that were conquered by Maglubiyet were actually Archfey of the Unseelie Court. It would explain why the few Goblinoid Gods that we know survived Maglubiyet's Conquest (Khurgorbaeyag the Overseer, Hruggek, Grankhul, Nomog-Geaya, and Bargrivyek) were the more disciplined and, I don't know if this is 100% accurate, "Lawful Evil" type gods than the one that we of that was killed (the trickster god that's spirit now creates Nilbogs). Maglubiyet also apparently killed almost all of the former Goblinoid pantheon, and it appears that he only let the most disciplined and militaristic ones survive. If the gods of the goblinoids were, at one point, Archfey, it would make sense for why the majority of them were exterminated (because Maglubiyet hates tricksters), and would match the 1 thing we know about one of the goblin gods that Maglubiyet killed (being a trickster, like fey commonly are).

I even homebrewed fey-versions of the 3 main goblinoid races (Gremlins for Goblins, Hobs for Hobgoblins, Boggarts for Bugbears) to give player options for the few feyish Goblinoids that either avoided being conquered by Maglubiyet or eventually escaped back to the Feywild and took upon their former nature at some point in the past.

Now, I don't think that WotC will necessarily do anything like this, but if one of the setting books that we're getting next year is in any way related to the Feywild or Goblinoids (which is pretty unlikely, as we just got a feywild book and goblinoids are discussed in Volo's Guide to Monsters, and the Hobgoblin of the Feywild might just be published in the Monsters of the Multiverse book), I do expect something like this to be canonized, or at least hinted at. If Hobgoblins and the other goblinoids were originally from the Feywild, it just makes sense for their Old Gods to have been Archfey.

 

[Lyxen]

In general, I like the way you are thinking, it's just that I'm always totally annoyed at the corruption of concepts by the FR and how they recuperated that poor Maglubiyet.

That being said, the main problem for me is that the three goblinoids have always been extremely different, in particular in behaviour, with the goblins and bugbear being chaotic and the hobgoblins being lawful, which is the core of the problem for fey creatures. All of that is fairly inconsistent, and your history about Maglubiyet might be the best one yet, for some reasons the hobgoblins were more influenced by him ?

 

[Yaarel]

In the real world, the term "hobgoblin" referred to a helpful or mischievous spirit found in dwellings. In A Midsummer Night's Dream, Shakespeare calls Puck a Hobgoblin. And Puck is a vassal of the Fairy King Oberon. So the idea of Hobgoblins being fey is actually a pretty old one!

Yeah.

The hobgoblin is both a helpful hob and a hostile goblin, by playing practical jokes on deserving targets.

The humor is helpful. The joke is painful.

(Thus the fairy jester is a hobgoblin.)

 

[Yaarel]

The goblin should be the butt of the joke.

The hobgoblin should be playing the joke.

The bugbear should be the creepy audience that doesnt laugh.

 

[Mannahnin]

Only the oldest here will remember, but way back in the mists of time when D&D was first invented (the 1970s) anything to do with fairies was not only considered seriously uncool, but vomit-inducingly twee. Not just in D&D, but in art and literature generally.

Then, in 1986, the movie Labyrinth happened, and suddenly fairy goblins where sexy again.

This rehabilitation of the fae didn't start to have much impact on D&D until around 3.5, but the upshot is, you won't find your fairy hobgoblins in something old, but in something new (to D&D at least).

When D&D first came out, yes, fairies were almost exclusively seen in the cutesy Victorian interpretation. Major pop culture examples readers and players would have been familiar with (unless they were really into folklore) would be Disney ones- Tinkerbell from Peter Pan, and Flora, Fauna, and Merryweather from Sleeping Beauty.

Labyrinth did give Brian Froud's lovely weird fairy goblins major media exposure, but before that, the 1978 book Faeries, with illustrations by Froud and famous Tolkien artist Alan Lee hit #4 on the NY Times Best Sellers list, and made a significant impact*.

Faeries (book) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Sharing lodging in Chagford on the edge of Dartmoor,[14] Lee and Froud spent nine months researching, illustrating and writing the book.[3] They referred to the work of leading British folklorist Katharine Briggs as one of their main sources for information about faeries.[15] Other sources include 19th-century folklorists such as Robert Hunt's Popular Romances of the West of England (1865) and Lady Wilde's Ancient Legends of Ireland (1887), as well as stories from the Middle Ages such as those told by Gerald of Wales.[16] According to Froud, Ballantine had "expected a fun, jolly book with fluffy faeries, and what he got were all these green horrible creatures with nasty teeth that bit your ankles, and he was horrified. But our research was based on folklore and on what faeries were really like."[15]

I do think you're right that D&D has kept its Hobgoblins less fairylike up until now. Building on AD&D's concept of them as militaristic, organized and disciplined larger relatives of Goblins, they've been grounded more as a human-like species.

*As a side note, I think the 1977 Dutch book Gnomes, which inspired the '78 Faeries, was probably a significant impetus to Gnomes becoming a core PC race in AD&D. It apparently sold almost a million units in the US in its first year of publication.

 

[Hexmage-EN]

The only major fey relation to hobgoblins I can think of in D&D came from 4E. Off the top of my head, there was a goblinoid kingdom called Nachtur hidden under forested hills in the Feywild ruled by a hobgoblin mage named the Great Gark. The goblinoids and fey of Nachtur were sometimes sent out to work as mercenaries for fomorians or evil archfey. I also recall some lore that said a hobgoblin invasion force tried to conquer a section of the Feywild and were soundly trounced.

EDIT: Apparently a 4E article about the Moonshae Isles in the Forgotten Realms included a detail about the Great Gark sending goblinkin and fey minions to attack the area.

EDIT2: IIRC, I think the early monster lore for D&D Next mentioned that goblinkin originated in the Feywild.

 

[Stormonu]

They're elves who didn't make their beds in the morning.

Y'know - teenagers.

 

[Yaarel]

The D&D orc and hobgoblin feel too similar to each other. Making the hobgoblin Fey helps alot.

Similarly, halfling contra Fey gnome.

We need to think about what exactly Fey is. To me, ether=magic, and Fey is Ethereal positive energy. So, a Fey personifies vibrant magic.

Re the D&D goblinoids: I hope the stat as having a Fey origin.

The Fey hobgoblins are the original ones. The people who their pranks target are generally cruel, lazy, or slovenly. Pranks might cause ones foot to fall asleep, with "pins and needles", tying hair in knots, or something elaborate and embarrassing. The prank against a malevolent creature might be dangerous to the target, but is funny and lacks malice. There is a sense of "fate" (faie) and karma.

Hobgoblins are immaterial Fey spirits. However, the ones who materialized into the Material Plane took on a body of flesh and blood. For some reason, a prominent culture from among these became grim, judgmental, militaristic, disciplined, and perhaps with gallows humor.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

In general, I like the way you are thinking, it's just that I'm always totally annoyed at the corruption of concepts by the FR and how they recuperated that poor Maglubiyet.

Huh. I didn't know that Maglubiyet came from Greyhawk. Add that to the basket of "Greyhawk things that the Forgotten Realms stole", along with Vecna, Acererak, Mordenkainen, Tasha/Iggwilv, Lolth, Gruumsh, and the rest.

That being said, the main problem for me is that the three goblinoids have always been extremely different, in particular in behaviour, with the goblins and bugbear being chaotic and the hobgoblins being lawful, which is the core of the problem for fey creatures.

I mean, while fey do tend to be chaotic, there are definitely outliers. King Oberon in 2e was Neutral Good, Skerrit was True Neutral, the Prince of Frost is Neutral Evil, and there are quite a few other outliers. The family of Fey-Goblinoids could have just been three different representations of emotions in the Feywild, with the Fey-Hobgoblins being Lawful Neutral/Evil, Fey-Goblins being Neutral (Evil), and Fey-Bugbears being Chaotic Neutral/Evil. A sort of goblinoid-twist on the Rule of 3 and its relationship with alignment in D&D (Good-Neutral-Evil, Lawful-Neutral, Chaotic). I don't see the Hobgoblins and their fey ancestors being lawful as being contradictory, just slightly unusual for fey.

All of that is fairly inconsistent, and your history about Maglubiyet might be the best one yet, for some reasons the hobgoblins were more influenced by him ?

It could be that Maglubiyet was always Lawful Evil (which fits him being a God of Conquest), and so the feyish proto-Hobgoblins that were also Lawful fit the best with his portfolio, in comparison to the other proto-Goblinoids that he dominated, so he chose the Hobgoblins to be the leader race of Goblinoid society to keep the others in check.

 

[Demetrios1453]

It wasn't that the Realms "stole" the non-human deities, it was that they were the expected default for every D&D world in 1e and 2e that didn't specify otherwise.The setting-agnostic 2e Monster Mythology book more or less codified this. In fact, that's still more or less the default even in the 5e PHB deity list.

Also, when did Iggwilv appear in a FR product? Her 5e appearances have been setting agnostic.