Most humans assume that halflings are called “halflings” because they are about half the height of a human. Naturally this is wrong, or at best, misleading.
But don’t expect a halfling to tell you the truth. Ask them about it and they will agree with the commonly accepted definition. Or pretend to get angry, and then laugh it off. Or just change the subject and call for another round of drinks and a fine song.
What they won’t do is tell the truth about halflings and their all-too-apt name.
Long ago, in times lost to memory, there were humans, but no halflings. And then, as now, some humans worshipped gods. One of those gods was Magara the Mistreated, a god of luck – both for good and ill. Followers of Magara would experience great fortune one moment, and equally great calamity the next.
Magara's followers were taught to embrace the highs and lows of Magara’s fickle luck in equal measure. But humans being humans, they could not resist the temptation to tamper with Magara’s blessings, and they used forbidden magiks to twist the god’s influence toward the “great fortune” end of the luck spectrum.
When Magara found out – of course they found out – they were displeased. Magara unleashed a powerful curse on those who broke the compact. Each disobedient soul was split in half. Their good fortune was given over to newly forged souls; these became the halflings. Those who betrayed Magara were trapped in the other half of the soul, experiencing only bad luck in all of its forms. These souls became the goblins.
Half Full or Half Empty?
For every halfling that walks the earth, there is a goblin.
The name “goblin,” of course, has been linguistically scrambled. It began as “obling” – “ob-” (as in opposition, like in the word obstacle) “-ling”. Opposed to halflings. The other half of the halfling. That’s what a goblin is. The word’s etymological journey includes a sort of reverse pig latin, where the "g" from the end of “obling” moved to the front of the word to create the modern “goblin.”
A goblin is the halfling’s dark mirror. A halfling’s barrow is cozy and tidy; a goblin’s warren is chaotically jumbled. Halflings are most active from late morning to early evening, while goblins thrive from nightfall to dawn. Halflings love to barter and trade; goblins prefer to bicker and steal.
Halflings are not ashamed of this, per se; it's not really their fault. But every halfling is aware of how lucky they were to be spared from Magara's fickle judgment. And every goblin is understandably resentful of their situation. Consider that this curse was placed on them by a cruel deity as punishment for something their distant ancestors did. Magara is long-dead or lost and raving mad (scholars disagree), but is certainly no longer able to lift the curse. Goblins didn’t ask to be the despised shadow of amiable burrow-dwellers. Is it so strange that they view the surface world with a mixture of envy and disgust?
And on rare occasions, they have an opportunity to defy their fate. When a goblin meets a halfling who is the direct descendent of their mirrored original ancestor, they know. And they believe there is a way to put together what once was sundered. To join halfling and obling, and emerge as something new, reunited, whole and strange.
