Goblin Gear: Porcupine Part I

Part one of my infamous article making Porcupines a dangerous threat :)

Adam



Goblin Hordes

        A common pest on many groundling worlds, for ages it was thought
that

goblins were too primitive and weak to make a serious impact on

wildspace.  Unfortunately, the goblins did discover the secrets of

spelljamming many centuries ago, and spread across wildspace like a

ravenous plague.  No other known race has ever spread as far and as

quickly as the goblins did, spreading to every corner of the Known

Spheres and beyond.

        Goblin ships, individually no mach for most spelljammers, were
deadly

when encountered in small fleets.  The goblins adapted their mob tactics

when they took into wildspace.  Rare is the lone goblin ship, usually

the survivor of a battle or disaster.  Porcupines, the main goblin ship,

is almost always encountered in clusters of a dozen or more.  Through

the use of teamwork and playing on their strength in numbers, the

goblins preyed upon any and all ships they encountered.  Goblin pirates

were among the most feared in all of wildspace, striking with such

numbers to defeat elvish Men-O-War, heavy human hammerships, and even

the dreaded illithid nautiloids.  Such were the numbers of these fleets

that they decimated the trade lanes.



Porcupine Ships

        The pride and joy of the goblin fleets, the porcupine is a primitive

yet surprisingly powerful ship.  It takes the appearance of a gigantic

spiny ball tipped with conical ram mines and an aft wooden tail.  A

fan-like sail, controlled by a dozen or more stout ropes, is at the end

of the tail.  A solid oak or ironwood door mounts the top of the tail,

through which access to the interior is gained.  The globe is pierced by

four large ballista gunwales and a score of smaller arrow slits.  The

porcupine is a close range fighting craft, able to deliver a deadly

attack when within 100 yards of a ship, but weak against ships attacking

at a greater range.

        The porcupine is grown rather than built.  It is the seed pod of a
rare

plant found only in wildspace.  The spiral-shaped plant is the created

when a seed from the starfly plant accidentally falls into a planar rift

in wildspace (such rifts are often at the center of flame rings).  The

plant takes root in another plane, but grows into wildspace.  The core

of the plant retains a circular shape, often a mile across.  Two to six

trunks grow off of the main trunk, spiraling out into wildspace.  Lesser

branches and twigs intertwine into a net between the trunks and main

trunk, attracting tens of thousands of wildspace fish, animals, and even

scavvars and krajen.  Along the outer rim of the lesser trunks, along

the gravity plane, spiny ball seed pods grow.  When they mature, the

balls disconnect from the tree and fall into the depths of wildspace.

It is these seed pods that the goblins take and use for their

spelljammers.

        Near the time of maturity, the goblins prematurely disconnect the
seed

pods and hollow out caverns inside them.  Weapons, a furnace helm,

provisions, and a built wooden tail are added.  Ram mines are also

added, usually to every third spine.  The mines are created by the

goblins from a concoction of tree sap, leaves, and scavvar blood.  The

mixture created has properties similar to smoke powder, such that it is

usable in ram mines but too dangerous for smokepowder weapons.  Given

how cheaply goblin ships could be created, a tribe could easily support

as many ships as they had warriors to crew them.

        The interior is a maze of small rooms and narrow corridors.  The aft

tail is the main cargo hold, where spare ram mines and booty is stored.

The pump furnace is a large and bulky affair, often shaped like a large

iron sphere with a grate and a pair of pipes leading out.  The pipes

lead out to the aft, blowing the blood red smoke out and past the sail.

Chambers throughout the ship mostly serve as crew quarters, where as

many as a dozen goblins sleep in ratty hammocks and keep their gear in

leather sacks hung from pegs or nails.  Tunnels are low, usually only 3'

in diameter, and chambers are likewise crammed, with roofs only 5'

high.  Several tunnels and very small chambers are close to the outer

surface of the globe are pierced with arrow slits or gunwales for the

ships four light ballista.  Each arrow slit has a light crossbow hung

next to it along with a case with twenty bolts.  The four ballista

chambers are protected by thick wooden shudders that can only be opened

from inside by means of a winch .  Racks along the walls have spare

parts for maintaining and repairing the ballista along with twelve to

twenty javelin-sized spears for the ballista.  The "bottom" of the ship

has a fairly large hemispherical chamber where the goblins keep the wood

for their pump furnace, which is often at least a ton or more.

        The exterior appearance is of a wooden globe covered by a forest of

spines, each 8 to 16 feet high.  Some of the spines are capped by ram

mines, while others may be burned or broken, a sure sign of a veteran of

other battles.  The aft tail looks like a large wooden box rammed into

the aft of the ship, contrasting with the rest of the ship.  A fearsome

face is most likely painted on the front of the globe, usually resulting

in a comical looking ship.

        A unique feature of the porcupine is the lack of a helmsman of any

sort.  The construction of the pump furnace is such that it cannot be

controlled by a mage or priest.  Instead, the magical smoke is the force

that propels the ship.  The goblins channel it out a pair of aft 'tail

pipes', which pushes the ship forward.  Maneuvering is done by

manipulating the sail, which affects the flow of the smoke.  Because

there is no helmsman, the goblins must post a pair of observers, one

each at the top and bottom of the globe to watch were the ship is

going.  The observers shout orders to the eight goblins who man the

sail.  Two more goblins are needed to keep the furnace stoked and fully

fueled.  Despite the lack of helmsman, the ship maneuvers well in combat

when crewed by well-drilled goblins.  Goblins landed their craft by

simply pointing their craft toward the ground and drive the lower spikes

into the dirt.  The grounded spikes keep the ship from rolling away

unless hit by a very strong, almost gale-force winds.



The Hordes

        With an easy to build and maintain ship as its workhorse, the
goblins

spread like wildfire through wildspace.  The majority of the goblin

fleets were small, usually less than a half dozen ships.  The greatest

of the goblin chiefs became kings who commanded the greatest hordes,

sometimes as many as a hundred ships or more with a score or more lesser

chiefs as their lords.  Fortunately, the lives of goblin kings were very

short, often victims of ambitious chiefs.  Civil war was the death of as

many goblins as war with other races.

        Goblin tribes were supported through a mix of raiding, hunting and

gathering, and even primitive farming.  The lifeworlds that spawn the

seeds that become porcupine ships are often the center of goblin

activity.  A single lifeworld can support many individual tribes, who

may war or corporate with one another.  Only goblin kings can unite the

many tribes together into a single nation.  Goblins will settle nearby

life asteroids if their number become such that the life world could not

support their swelling numbers.  Food is gathered from various sources

provided by the lifeworlds.  The typical diet of a goblin included

roots, fruit, berries, wildspace fish and scavvar, rabbits, and other

small game animals they import from other worlds.  Scarce resources for

the goblins include metals of all kinds, stone, pottery, and

domesticated animals.  Such resources are acquired by attacking other

spelljammers or raiding groundling settlements.

        Despite their primitive conditions, the goblins were skilled
navigators

and adventurous souls.  Goblins used their limited resources on hand to

overcome many of the obstacles of wildspace survival.  Through use of

superior numbers and a cheap, easily replaced ship the goblins were able

to defeat their many enemies.  Legends speak of goblin kings overrunning

human cities, elvish ring-castles, and dwarvish citadels, creating an

environment of sheer terror in the space lanes.  There were numerous

crusades launched against the goblins, with varying degrees of success.

These crusades were largely ineffective until the elves mobilized their

great fleets against the goblins and orcs, starting the First Unhuman

Wars.



Pump Furnace

        The key to the success of the goblins lay in their helms.  Though
their

ships were very cheap, arcane helms or furnaces were still very

expensive.  Equipping an expendable ship with an expensive helm was not

a viable option for the goblins.  Instead, they found an inexpensive

alternative in the form of the pump furnace.

        The pump furnace is a large, iron sphere about 15' in diameter.  Two

pipes lead out from the furnaces, one on the top and the other at the

bottom.  They lead to the tail of the ship, spewing the smoke generated

by the burning of material inside the furnace.  A swinging iron grate

allows the furnace to be fueled by a team of two goblins.  Runes cover

the outside and inside edges of the furnace, deeply carved into the

iron.

        Within the belly of the furnace the goblins burn wood to travel the

stars.  Ordinary wood will not do, however.  Only wood from magical

plants, such as some trees found in faerie realms or more commonly the

wood from a carnivorous tree or a starfly plant, provide the magic

needed to power the furnace and thus propel the ship.  The runes that

cover the furnace transform the magic inherent to the wood into a

magical smoke that exists the furnace through the two pipes, which

accelerate the ship forward.  Maneuvering is done by manipulating the

sails which changes the course of the smoke and thus the direction of

the ship.  The furnace is powerful enough to escape the gravity well of

a world as well as any arcane helm, and can push as much as fifty

spacial tons forward.  The vast majority of goblin porcupines are 30

tons because of the size limitations of the seed pods, but some smaller

craft can be encountered.

        Building a pump furnace takes a fairly significant amount of
resources

for the goblins.  First, an iron sphere, about 15' in diameter, needs to

be forged.  The goblins build a sturdy frame of iron.  A frame must be

assembled inside the porcupine it is to power, as cutting a hole large

enough to put the heavy furnace into place can cause irreparable damage

to the ship.  The frame is covered by thin sheets of iron which are

banged into place.  Goblin shaman carve runes into the metal sheets,

each of which carry a minor enchantment.  When combined, the runes give

the pump furnace it's power.  Goblin rune carvers are detailed below.

        In game terms, a pump furnace requires one pound of fuel every hour,

and can push a ship forward with a ship's rating of 2.  It can achieve

spelljamming velocities, but a lit furnace explodes if it enters the

flow.  The furnace does not pollute air as quickly as a normal fire, but

counts as five medium-sized creatures towards the total strain on the

air envelope.  The red smoke expelled by the twin pipes do not remain in

the air envelope, instead leaving a trail in the void.  The smoke

dissipates slowly, usually taking as long as a week to vanish (d6+1

days).  The smoke trail is allows the ship to be easily tracked, one

major downside to the regular use of the pump furnace.  In almost all

other respects, the pump furnace acts like a minor helm.

        The goblins circumvented the problem of flow travel through use of

"tanker" ships filled with gas.  They empty a immature seed pod,

hollowing it nearly completely.  Sap is used to seal it except for a

single hole, to which a special furnace is hooked up to the pod.

Several tons of wood are burned in advanced, filling the pod with

several months supply of smoke.  A ten ton seed pod is most often used,

as the walls are thickest and the best seal.  A pipe connects the tanker

to the porcupine's furnace, which tows the craft immediately behind it.

A tanker carries enough smoke to give the ship a four month supply.  In

most cases, a tanker is only used in the flow, as one decreases the

maneuver class of the ship to E.