Hobgoblins. These beings fall into the category known as Universally Reviled Life Forms (see also →Spiderwitch, The, →Troglotroll, The, and →Bollogg, The). This includes those creatures resident in Zamonia and its environs whose deliberate policy it is to spread panic among their contemporaries and, in other respects, to indulge in antisocial, disruptive and killjoy behaviour of every description. If repulsive or even terrifying appearance, Hobgoblins usually operate in packs, making frightening noises and singing horrific songs. They delight in alarming utterly defenceless creatures.
Hobgoblins (cont.). Hobgoblins originated when a will-o-the-wisp (Lux Dementiae) comes into contact with a pocket of Zamonian graveyard gas. Graveyard gas is an evil-smelling vapour that rises from decaying coffins when the soil above them has not been tamped down sufficiently to render it gasproof. Will-o-the-wisp come into being when glow-worms are struck by lightning and go fluttering in an electrically charged condition. When a will-o-the-wisp encounters some graveyard gas - as it usually does, for obvious reasons, above a public burial place - the gas molecules and light particles combine to from that ill-starred invertebrate commonly termed the Hobgoblin.