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Welcome gentlefolk, and monsters of all ages. Welcome to the Goblin Ball.

What is a goblin, I hear you ask?

I think you know the answer to that already. I think you’ve always known. Do you remember the noises in the undergrowth as you walked though the forest at night, sending shivers down your spine? You told yourself that there was nothing there, but you knew that wasn’t true. Do you remember the dreams you had as a child, of strange lands and crooked people, and a mirror realm like our own, but…not? You told yourself it was just a dream, but was it? Do you remember the old woman standing at a street corner beneath the lamplight, and the song that stuck in your head as you walked away? You never knew why you suddenly had that tune caught in your brain, but you knew it came the moment you saw her smile. And I know you remember that strange little bar underneath the railway track and the band that you never could find the name of once you left.

You have always known about the goblins. They are the things that live on the other side of the mirror to us, although they come and go at will. They are the things that move at the corner of our vision, and dance though our dreams and nightmares alike. You might have given them other names. A mad Irish stage manager called some of them ‘vampires’; the bards of old called them gods, and then fae; an artist in a garret painted them as nymphs and dryads and then promptly drank himself to death on absinthe. Call them whatever you want, but we’ll use the word ‘goblin’ for now. And admit that they are here.

Here? Where is here? Here is the Goblin Ball. The Goblin Ball is held one night each year, in a place that may or may not exist. It isn’t quite in this world, although it’s close enough that you might be able to slip through, for tonight the gates are not locked as they should be. Each year, all of goblin kind send their best and brightest to dance and make merry. But there is a price.

Many many years ago, at the very dawn of time, four Goblin Lords made a Pact. Who the Pact was with remains…uncertain. Some call him the Devil, although that was not the name he went by then. He granted them his favours in Pacts; gifts and blessings bound up with Geasa, things a Court may not do or lose their power – and let them stretch and grow. They were no longer confined to the corners of human imagination, fighting for scraps and cast aside offerings in the dirt. Instead, he gave them power, grace, and beauty. But at a cost.

Every year, each Court that has traded with the Lord of the Other Place (the place far beyond the mirror and into the dark and the dead) must give up one of their own to be taken to his place, which we might call Hell. Each year, the courts gather ten of their own, and send them to the Ball, knowing that one will not come home. They come from all of Goblinkind - the Court of Lightning, carrying shiny new tech, the Court of Snow, who have not changed since the century turned, the Court of Water, beauties from every age – but they come. All of the ages, all of the ideas, all of the old gods and new, gathered in one place for one single night. Until the witching hour, the goblins make merry, choose lords and ladies, kings and queens from amongst each other. They make trades and settle feuds, and perhaps even fall in love if they wish to take a chance. Old Pacts may be broken and new ones forged, under the watchful eye of the Marketeers. But at midnight, they have to pay their dues. At midnight, the teind is due.

This is that night.

Will you join them?