Originally posted 23rd of May 2014, originally drawn 8th of May 2014

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So I had an interesting dream a couple of weeks ago (dangit, I really ought to upload things quicker…). I've gotten into the habit of writing down anything interesting as soon as I wake up, because you naturally forget a lot of detail about dreams soon after waking up. Writing them down ASAP is supposed to help improve dream recall, and of course it's fun to keep track of interesting dreams! Usually when I get an interesting one I flesh it out with more ideas after the fact, sometimes for days afterwards. I must be doing this a lot, because my brain was already quickly switching into third-person and brainstorming story ideas even before the dream had ended! 😆

It was set in a modernized DnD-themed cityscape, like if you fast-forwarded it enough for magic/technology/magitech to (re)invent all the modern-day conveniences. Mobile phones, concrete buildings, subway trains, ghettos with Chinatown-style food stalls. All the various traditional DnD species had come together into this big melting pot of a city and left (most of) their various Alignments behind as society marched on. But in a very obvious and thinly-veiled analogy to the real world, each species had their own little official or unofficial sections of the city.

The main character (possibly "me", but my brain switched into a third person view pretty early on) had gone undercover to infiltrate a local criminal organization. Knowing me, the predictable part of course involved transformation. A young human rookie had been magically TFed into a goblin to infiltrate into a goblin mafia-style gang. The proper "twist" though was that on top of having to re-learn the body of an entirely new species (and size class!), this kid also had absolutely no experience with the local culture. He had been raised in a completely different area of the city, with a completely different lifestyle. Even while I was asleep, I could feel my brain mentally noting down how much drama could be weaved out of a basis like that. Which is kind of odd because I don't usually watch a lot of crime drama stories 😛

The majority of the dream consisted of a segment where this undercover guy was in his "apartment". Because it was the slums, the buildings were run down and vastly oversized for a nonhuman, and as a result a place like that would house multiple goblins in the apartment's various rooms to save on space and costs. They'd have their own little designated area of blankets and various brick-e-brac that could be loosely defined as their "bed".

So here he is, this former human huddled in a pile of blankets and trying to sleep. But he can't, because he's not used to this kind of communal sleeping area. Or because he's still not used to this tiny alien body. Or most importantly, because he's paranoid that he's slipped up trying to pretend he's a real goblin who acts like the rest of the mafia gang does. He panics as he goes over all the tiny mistakes he made that day while interacting with the rest of his "fellow" gang members.

In his panic he latches onto one conversation he remembers that seems like he's blown his cover. He grabs the phone lying beside him in his meagre pile of possessions, and bolts up out of bed. One or two nearby half-awake goblins stare at him as he makes a mad dash for the front door. Completely oblivious to who might overhear it, he's dialing his emergency contact number before he even gets out the door. He interrupts the greeting of the operator with the secret password, immediately followed by the second emergency password to abort the mission. He doesn't stop running even as he gets outside to the street, his panic imagining someone around every corner out to get him.

That's roughly about where the dream ended. I figure someone tries to calm him down and convince him he didn't screw up that bad, and to go back to the undercover job. Getting a replacement for this kind of operation wouldn't be trivial, after all.

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So aaaaaanyway, to wrap this ramble short and get back to the actual drawings; this is a bunch of sketches I did to see if I could nail down what my mental image of the goblins from the dream would actually look like. On a whim I tried lining & colouring the one where he's getting some surprising news via a phone call (not the one from the dream). One thing that came from the dream was that I imagined normal human-sized items like phones or weapons would be adorably oversized when used by goblins. 😛

I can't tell if the design looks goblin enough. It's sort of bordering on imp, I think? I wasn't sure if I should go for the stereotypical green colour, and I even checked the DnD 3.5e Monster Manual I had lying around, and I was surprised to find reds/yellows are apparently the norm for goblins. What do you think, does he look enough like a goblin to you?