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    The Goblin Companion by Brian Froud & Terry Jones

    Up until now our scanty knowledge of goblins has been based on speculation, but we now know a great deal more, thanks to an important archaeological find of forty-three notebooks created by Dashe, a goblin portraitist. These notebooks are sketchy, but years of painstaking reconstuction by the eminent part-time goblinologist Brian Froud, backed up by years of dry research by his colleague, the noted academic Terry Jones, have amounted to an illustrated Who’s Who of the goblin world. 

    Brian Froud -The Human Artist

    Little did Brian Froud think, when he undertook this work, that he would encounter so much opposition from the goblins themselves. Suffice it to say that he found it necessary to don armour. But even then he found himself unable to deal with the concerted attempts of goblins to wreck his work by forcing him to drink more and more really good wine, and then, while he was otherwise occupied, crawling across his pages with inky feet. 
          Prematurely aged, the artist finally gave up in despair and abandoned his work to the goblins themselves … and to the Pouilly Fuissé….

    Dåshe

    It is thanks to the quick pencil of Dåshe that we have any portraits at all of any of the goblins. It was the discovery of Dåshe’s notebooks (forty-three in all) containing lightning portraits of his friends and contemporaries that enabled Brian Froud, the human artist, (see page 121), to render the representations of the goblins that you see in this volume.

    Agnes

    Agnes is one of the many scavenging goblins that inhabit the Wide Tract of Rottenness that was formed after the Great Collapse of Good Governance in the Labyrinth (see note on Bübl, page 18). 

          Agnes is capable of collecting and carrying seventy times her own weight in discarded economic theories and abandoned political objectives. The empty promises, hollow opinions, and worthless public statements that litter the Wide Tract are all snapped up by this voracious creature. She then delivers them to Gürdy the Burnisher (see page 66), who polishes them up as good as new, if not better, and resells them to the ambitious and unscrupulous of all ages.

    Septimüs

    Septimüs is a typical Night-Troll. He steals silently and stealthily around people’s gardens and under bridges when the stars and moon are hidden by clouds and night is thickest. He is a terrifying and unnerving sight, or rather he would be if you ever saw him, but he is so silent and so stealthy and his visits so brief that nobody ever knows he’s there or even not there (see Bregg the Poet’s “Ode to a Twark’s Egg,” page 79)… and that’s the worrying part.

    Phester

    A very unpleasant goblin. Being very small, he is capable of climbing into an adult animal’s open sore, entering the bloodstream, going once around the system and out again, leaving a small trace in the heart that creates the impression of being in love – but with no particular object for your affection. Most unsettling.

    More of these critters here