The Obstetrician, Scullion and Harker Association

Theme music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vElbh2Ox1dA

“Don’t let me detain you.”
Those words echoed through the heads of every pony in the company, the most stern of warnings the Archlord Manifest Destiny ever gave any creature under his purview. The most disturbing thing about it was that nopony in the troupe, or possibly any troupe, knew what it meant. It was widely rumored that neither did the Archlord. After all, he could execute any of his servants on a whim, so while his tone suggested entry into a brand new circle of hell created specifically for disobedient gobbos, his words were a little bit lacking.

Sufficiently chastised, the Obstetrician, Scullion and Harker Association of Formerly Loam Valley (a rather unfitting name, not only because the association no longer kept any midwifes on payroll as that sort of thing was apparently now a job reserved for prim young ladies, nor because the association’s idea of a “harker” was someone who climbed things for a living, but because the valley formerly known as the Loam Valley had, in fact, recently regained said name) headed on their way. Today was merely the beginning of yet another contract, a job that, while the organization was loathe to accept, all were far too cowed to deny the black-caped unicorn’s demands, no matter how ridiculous.
This was how things worked in the business, after all. Evil overlords were on top of the pile, followed by intrepid young lads and lasses who knew how to best annoy evil overlords, then anyone else who happened to be a real pony, then there were things like dragons who you obeyed because dragonfire was painful, and after them the diamond dogs, who honestly didn’t seem to grasp the concept of hierarchies anyway, the savages, and then there were goblin ponies, or gobbos, as most were wont to call them. There was, strictly speaking, nobody below the gobbos, but generally it was believed that delicious delicious parasprites somehow managed to fall into this not-tier of the hierarchy.

And now, orders straight from the very tip top of the pyramid were being handed right down from the bottom. This was perhaps due to the lack of absolutely insane real ponies currently available to follow orders, an overabundance of intrepid lads and or lasses, or even the ongoing Dog’s Day Out strike organized by the Dogs for Outdoors, Sunshine, and Hookers. Whatever the reason, these particular gobbos were getting quite the opportunity.
After all, very few gobbos ever got to man the front door, much less take over for the entire Association for Sabotage & Militant Engagements. The prestigious positions of things like “Trap Setter”, “Trap Inspector”, and even the most enviable of jobs, “Doorguard/Key Holder”, were now being given to the noble gobbos of the Obstetrician, Scullion and Harker Association.

You are the Obstetrician, Scullion and Harker Association. You have only 1 duty in life. Survive to the next paycheck.

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Goblin Ponies

Goblin ponies, or more commonly, gobbos, are perhaps the strangest breed of pony to ever walk the land. They are all about the size of Falabellas, an important adaptation for a species perennially crawling through excessively tight spaces, and constantly kept underfoot by everyone else.
Socially, gobbos are almost disturbingly communal; unlike most species, they see the world almost entirely as systems, and they are essentially blind to the trees in the proverbial forest. This is, for example, why they understand the “hierarchy” of creatures so very well. Their communalism is a result of both societal and physiological forces. As to the physiological ones, the most important factor lies in that they are always born in litters of 4 to 7 members, and all members are empathically linked to one another, forcing them to understand one another all too well. From birth, these creatures act as a group rather than like individuals. As they grow older, the link only grows stronger; as they begin to dream, their dreamscapes become linked together, forming a single dream they coexist in, rather than a bunch of separate brainspaces; elder gobbos who still have a link (i.e., still have living littermates) are known to develop what is known as ‘twinning’, where the creatures think so much alike that they truly act as a single unit, so much so that they make games out of speaking sentences a word at a time.

Just to further emphasize this fact, you are, strictly speaking, not playing a gobbo. You are playing somewhere between 4 and 7 gobbos (I will determine your litter size myself), all of whom are linked together and act as a unit. Generally you will only ever play 1 gobbo at a time, with the others fading into the background when needed. Should you lose a gobbo to anything, well, that’s just a loss of part of the litter; while there will be a little tiny bit of mourning, actual, proper mourning won’t occur unless it’s the second-to-last or the last gobbo in your litter who just died. This also gives you a limited sort of omnipresence in the dungeon, which means that there’s no reason you can’t just jump into any activity you wanted to, so long as you’ve got enough gobbos to have one just happen to be there.

For ease of conversion of OCs to a gobbo subspecies, I have a handy-dandy chart based on morphology, habits, and temperament. You can always disobey the chart, it’s just suggestions:
Diggers
Diggos, dingos, dirtheads
Regarded as a sort of degenerate equid, diggers can easily be differentiated from a real pony by the fact that they lack front hooves, and more importantly, the fact that they have an atavistic 4 toes on each foot, rather than the equine 1, though they retain the strength of their nails, allowing them to, well, dig, like moles.

Cavers
Cavies, batties, guano/guana
Cavers in many ways resemble their far more noble thestral brethren, though a thestral would be utterly embarrassed to be caught with the stubby wings of a caver. Nonetheless, these wings are a caver’s pride and joy: they not only let them fly about in tight spaces that would never allow a larger pony to soar, but their digits are highly flexible, and surprisingly strong for how thin they are. A caver can easily use their wings just as well as a normal pony might use their hooves, though with a disturbingly greater amount of dexterity.

Leggers
Twinkletoes, legos, changelings, bugs
Leggers come from somewhere in the line that produced cavers, except somewhere along the line their morphology decided a full 180 would be evolutionarily advantageous, and while it turned out to be a pretty fine adaptation, nobody’s quite sure where we lost that link. Where a caver has a set of wings, a legger has an extra pair of legs, for a total of 6. Their skin is leathery and while they lack much in the way of fur, they have thick, tough hides that protect them from the outside world. Perhaps most importantly, they have an extraordinary grip strength in their hooves, allowing them to walk along most walls and ceilings as easily as a pony might walk along the ground; their morphology also leaves them far more stable than a simple quadruped, and allows them to ‘stand’ up and use their forelegs freely without needing to deal with delicately maintaining their balance.

Tinkers
Tinks, fey ponies, fairies
Born with short little goat horns and cloven hooves, tinkers are even less ponies than the average gobbo, though they are treasured by their cousins for their magical talents. Tinkers have an acute sense for arcane energies, and tend to have an even better mechanical eye than their kin, so while their magic is typically poorly developed and malformed by equine standards, they can make perfectly fine use of telekinesis to replicate most sorts of actual spells.

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Character Sheet
You need to submit your signup in this format.
Link to official character sheet:
Name(s): (you can either have 1, or you can give me a bunch for your littermates)
Subspecies: (Digger, caver, legger, or tinker, you decide)
Appearance: (any notable deviations from either the normal sheet or goblin pony physiology, also any cute clothing you want to wear you cuties)
Abilities: (as above)
Normal Occupation(s): (what you normally do for the Obstetrician, Scullion and Harker Association. Don’t worry, we’re actually a very diverse organization, trust me. Find a job, any job whatsoever, and stick it in here, and I’ll say either ‘yes’ or ‘no’)
Position(s) Desired: (what position you want them to have, remember we’re going to work in a dungeon/castle, all that jazz)
Misc.: (anything else you wanna say to me)

Link
Name: LuLu.
Subspecies: Tinker
Appearence: Pink and yellow trench coat.
Abilities: Anything they touch smells of copper and cut grass for weeks.
Normal Occupation: Thematic bat/rat/cockroach agitator.
Desired Position: Trap design consultant.
Misc: I like trains!