Logical goblin slayer

[Jouaint]

I also feel it is important to remember that the area Goblin Slayer operates in is called the Frontier for a reason. This is the backwater region at the edges of the Kingdoms influence and even then it is mentioned that the reason things have gotten so bad is because the army has had to pull back from patrols to confront the forces of Chaos in more strategic location. Further after the Hero defeats the Demon King it is treated as a thing that is going to cause a sharp decrease in quests with even a downsizing of the guild and many adventures planning on moving for better pastures.

 

[ATP]

I suppose this is going to be more of a general world building and my own personal rumination post. My goal is to look at the manga/anime Goblin Slayer and try to work out a semi-"realistic" way for the world to work as presented. And up front I want to admit that Goblin Slayer, like most fictional worlds, is more focused on presenting a general "image" and once you peer past the hood things quickly become a mess of contradictory assumptions the author wove to create the setting they wanted.

I fully agree with Bear Ribs take that the more probable outcome of an "easy adventurer world" is that it would look more like an apocalypse with battle scarred farmers huddled in Bastle Houses with militia watching a sentries from behind fences and thorn bushes and the king's army making patrols further out for Goblin, zombie, Troll encounters.

But for me the fun has always been acknowledging the contradictions but trying to work out a way that makes sense, for a relative use of that word, anyway. With that out of the way I suppose I should get started and my apologizes if this is even more rambling than my usual posts.

The Goblin Threat

The meat and potatoes of this discussion. Just how dangerous are Goblins and how frequent are their raids. Something the anime gives us competing ideas about. On one hand on a single day the Guild Hall, as Bear Ribs so elegantly observed, got three separate quests for Goblins before he'd even arrived for his daily check with two more being mentioned later. And he's quite right this is alarmingly high if these are all occurring within a few miles radius of the Guild Hall. If that scale was representative of all Goblin attacks people would be up neck deep in the critters. Yet people act like the exact opposite and we're explicitly told most people only experience with Goblins is frequently chasing off the odd day wanderer.

Now it's possible the Guild Hall example isn't representative. Earlier in the episode Goblin Slayer makes the comment he's had a lot of work lately in response to his rent payment being heavier than normal and later makes a comment about their being an unusual amount of Goblins. Which suggests Goblin infestation is on an uptick possibly connected to the wider war between the Races of Order and Chaos...or just some Gods being dicks with their tabletop game and finding GS of interest.

Further not all Goblin quests are of the same severity. The old man who posts a quest in episode 2 states



From the sound of it the Goblins didn't attack the man's village, otherwise his worry the goblins would eat his cows and burn his fields sound kind of callous, so much that he's found tracks that Goblins came to or near his village, much like GS searches for each day, and now he's afraid not so much for his life persay as his livelihood. Making the Goblins sound more like a pestilence who will destroy/devour your stock and harvest rather than a village razing doom.

This is also the man who acts as if Goblin rape is more a rumor gossiped about than a daily fact of life.

Later Guild Girl gives GS the three Goblin quests she has which would no doubt include the old man's quest from earlier in the day. The details we're given is that one is a "swarm in the western river village", possibly the old man's from earlier, a second is "a small nest in the southern forest" and the third is "an old mountain fort that's been claimed by the goblins". This last one we're told has kidnapped at least one girl and a previous adventurer has already failed to save her. Which may indicate neither of the previous two quests involved actual raids and kidnapped girls.

Further it suggests that even "new" quests at the Guild Hall aren't really that new. Someone has already taken the quest, died and been gone long enough for people to realize he isn't coming back. We might surmise the original quest-giver first posted this quest at a smaller, more rural Guild Hall and when that failed to get traction he then hoofed it to the town in hopes of reaching a broader range of Adventurers.

Further the quest themselves seem to spread across a very diverse topography with the mountain region in particular almost certainly a fair distance away across difficult terrain from either the Guild Hall or Cowgirl's farm.

Lastly the fact the mountain fortress quest was given by the brother of the kidnapped girl likely indicates that this wasn't a full on village destroy attack otherwise it would be doubtful anyone would be around to post a quest or at the very least Guild Girl would have brought it up when mentioning there has been a "few casualties".

Taken all together we might conclude that your typical Goblin quest is a relatively preemptive affair with farmers posting bounties in hopes of preventing loss and destruction. Either discovering tracks near their villages or discovering where a nest of Goblins have made their home and wanting the fantasy equivalent of the Orkin Man to come take care of it. With a smaller subset of those being "come save the girl" or "avenge my destroyed village" types.

Transcript of dialogue taken from here: Goblin Slayer: Season 1, Episode 2 script | Subs like Script

The Bandit Problem

Of course Goblins are just one threat, possibly even a minor one, compared to the cutthroats, trolls, Ogres, Dragons and slimes which we know inhabit the Goblin Slayer universe. So even if Goblins aren't marauding and destroying villages left and right, why hasn't everything else stomped the poor farmers flat?

To answer this does force us to move more firmly into straight up speculation since anime especially focuses almost exclusively on the menace of Goblins with references to almost everything else far from the focus.

We do know that unlike Goblins there are no shortage of volunteers for taking on the likes of Dragons and other fierce foes either for the monetary gain they promise or the experience and prestige which will allow Adventurer rank up in the Guild. With most quests seemingly being completed within a 24-hour cycle based on how the rush to find new quests seems a daily ritual. So a Dragon that has taken roost within the area watched over by the Guild Hall will likely be dead within the week limiting how much trouble it can cause.

I would submit that quite unintentional and almost accidental the King, Lords or Merchants who are offering the large rewards to protect their own interests from the bigger, more threatening monsters are inadvertently shielding the lesser folk. Both in the sense that the 20 bandits Spearman defeats to protect a merchant can no longer go on to terrorize villagers but also creates an unfavorable risk versus reward. That attacking a small, poor village gives you little for your time and trouble while ensuring every Adventurer who needs a paycheck that week will come gunning for you.

Which isn't to say villages aren't ever razed, they almost certainly are. Your are going to have that Ogre that is hungry and isn't thinking of anything past eating your cows or the bandit troop who think your daughters would make fine play toys for the company and damn the consequences. It is just these happen irregularly enough and are spread out wide enough its a more ignorable problem.

Farm Organization

Farms in Goblin Slayer, whether singular homesteads like Cowgirl's farm or villages like GS's home, seem oddly dispersed and decentralized with much of the country side they occupy being lightly cultivated in terms of civilization and are seemingly surrounded in all directions by verdant, almost untouched wilderness and old, long abandon forts. This I speculate isn't accidental but a deliberate choice on the part of the ruling class to spread the risk relatively wide and far.

The power scale of the Demon Lord's army means that it would be impracticable to try and fortify a farm against them. Not only is a Ogre-Mage tall enough that the windows on a Bastle Houses are about eye-level he's likely strong enough to smash through the wall. Short of turning each farm into its own fortress-city any defenses would likely be a waste of time and trouble. Something the human realm, showing signs of being resource strained, can ill-afford. It also has the problem that while it likely won't stop a dedicated attack from the forces of Chaos such defenses would be very effective against the Crown requiring heavy resources to overcome. So there are certainly incentives not to encourage the peasants to fortify.

The Guild of Adventurers provide some protection of course but it isn't absolute and is firmly outside of any single authority's control. Due to its nature you could have the Guild fixating on the Dragon that week hoping to "level up" and ignoring the bandits setting farms ablaze. So instead the human realm spreads its farms out making each one less individually valuable and making each one less critical should it be attack reducing how tempting a target they are.

A deliberately part of this is the lack of any central authority, Regent or noble to these farms but rather their just vassals working their little plot of land out in the woodlands. There's simply no one there important enough to attack, no wealth to attract thieves or bandits ect.

Broadly speaking I'm imagining a spokewheel design with a town at its center as a hub of trade and a widening spiral of dotted farms expanding out from it in ever greater lengths. For more perishable products, like Cowgirl's cheese, are situated within a day's travel to the town while others, like GS village, are spaced much further out where travel to the town is infrequent. After all Cowgirl was excited to visit her Uncle's farm as a child partly because she was going to get to visit the town.

We know both the human realm and the Elves make use of animal drawn wagons, Cowgirl's uncle even uses one in the flashback, so its likely not every farm relies on busty anime girl power to move their goods. With the idea being each farm will independently send its wares to town to be sold which in turn will be centralized and transported from there to where its needed. The towns would also be the ideal place for the textile mills and other process-involved industry for turning raw material into sellable product.

The end result of all this is that while the overall system is inefficient requiring much more effort to move and ship goods its more resilient to attack, which being a kingdom at war likely is the primary factor, while the farm less appealing targets for all parties involved except Goblins who require human females to breed.

Well,it partially explain GS.But - those farmers still should not have glass windows,but rather kind of fortified hut.
It would not stop Kings army,and would be ralatively cheap.
Also,giving them spears and schields/maces for close combat/ and crossbows would be enough to stop goblins,and still not capable of fighting army.

P.S Blacksmith could easily made crossbows,bolts for them,and spears for villagersa.
And,Elves still must live not so long,have more kids and be supersoldiers.
HEA attacked by 10 average goblins in close distance shoud finish them with magic sword,not kill one and almost get gangraped.

 

[Bear Ribs]

HEA attacked by 10 average goblins in close distance shoud finish them with magic sword,not kill one and almost get gangraped.

High Elf Archer is a female in Goblin Slayer. Her main narrative purpose is to either be raped or be threatened with rape by goblins to build drama. If you look at the list of characters, there's like maybe two or three females that don't have that happen and all of them appear only in scenes that don't have any monsters in them.

One other issue with Goblin Slayer is that there's basically no nobility. There's a King but he appears to have no Dukes, Earls, Barons, and so forth who should be running things on the local level. There's Knights but these seem to be an adventurer class rather than lower nobility. The guild kinda fills a part of the noble role but doesn't do most of it, in fact there seems to be little to no tax collection, law enforcement, and the like. The guild charges by the job so really isn't a substitute for local government and seems to police its own adventurers but not the civilians.

If we expand the scope of things to accommodate fuzzy travel times and presume GS is more of a wandering "mysterious stranger" type, this basically removes the only reason the guild should exist, there's no point in a central hub in town to send requests and hire adventurers if the adventurers just drift around instead of receiving jobs from the guild and vast travel times mean any possible request is going to be over and done with months before the guild finds out and has time to send messages by hand anyway.

In a more realistic setting we'd see something more like what happened in real life, the local noble would have some kind of fortification ranging from a simple stockade up to a large stone castle depending on the relative rank and wealth. A town would spring up around this area, likely walled, with the sections outside the walls being dense with agriculture, that's where the farms would be. Any time there's a threatened attack everybody would retreat to the fortified section until the adventurers/knights/military dealt with it. More marginal land beyond that would be primarily grazing, where the shepherds and ranchers could take their herds to safer areas in times of distress.

I can't really believe I'm saying this... but Fairy Tail probably has a more realistic take on the adventurer's guild here. The guilds there are essentially a large number of mercenary companies that offer a local territory a range of options from protections to kill quests to herb gathering, competing with each other for jobs, rather than the strange "Fantasy DMV" we get in Goblin Slayer. This model would be much more suited to Goblin Slayer's frontier, where there's little to no protection from the government we would reasonably see adventurers, essentially vigilantes/mafia, setting up their own protection rackets and ultimately evolving into rival governments, as that's what happens every single time in real life when the government is incapable of protecting its people.

Further not all Goblin quests are of the same severity. The old man who posts a quest in episode 2 states

From the sound of it the Goblins didn't attack the man's village, otherwise his worry the goblins would eat his cows and burn his fields sound kind of callous, so much that he's found tracks that Goblins came to or near his village, much like GS searches for each day, and now he's afraid not so much for his life persay as his livelihood. Making the Goblins sound more like a pestilence who will destroy/devour your stock and harvest rather than a village razing doom.

This one's answered in the Manga, Goblin Slayer has an internal monologue that goblins are cowardly, and goblin scouts will always case an area first before a major attack. He notes that his time to strike is between a scout inspecting an area and when a huge raiding party will show up to attack a few days later.

The end result of all this is that while the overall system is inefficient requiring much more effort to move and ship goods its more resilient to attack, which being a kingdom at war likely is the primary factor, while the farm less appealing targets for all parties involved except Goblins who require human females to breed.

I'm not seeing how this system has any resiliency to attack though. Tiny isolated farms with no defenses aren't going to exist long in a world like Goblin Slayer, and there's no such thing as a productive farm that's also got nothing worth taking, especially in Goblin Slayer where goblins will happily raid the place for a single female. All this strategy of having tiny isolated farms does is ensure adventurers have even longer travel times and less incentive to go, so the farms will have vastly less protection. Much longer travel times and larger carts of goods also means more time between trips, thus far more food and goods stored on the farm, making the isolated farms richer and juicier targets along with being easier ones.

The only way this works is if the farms are also fortified enough that the losses trying to capture them will outstrip any gains from the raid, just having them be small and out-of-the-way actively makes it easier for the forces of chaos.

 

[ATP]

High Elf Archer is a female in Goblin Slayer. Her main narrative purpose is to either be raped or be threatened with rape by goblins to build drama. If you look at the list of characters, there's like maybe two or three females that don't have that happen and all of them appear only in scenes that don't have any monsters in them.

One other issue with Goblin Slayer is that there's basically no nobility. There's a King but he appears to have no Dukes, Earls, Barons, and so forth who should be running things on the local level. There's Knights but these seem to be an adventurer class rather than lower nobility. The guild kinda fills a part of the noble role but doesn't do most of it, in fact there seems to be little to no tax collection, law enforcement, and the like. The guild charges by the job so really isn't a substitute for local government and seems to police its own adventurers but not the civilians.

If we expand the scope of things to accommodate fuzzy travel times and presume GS is more of a wandering "mysterious stranger" type, this basically removes the only reason the guild should exist, there's no point in a central hub in town to send requests and hire adventurers if the adventurers just drift around instead of receiving jobs from the guild and vast travel times mean any possible request is going to be over and done with months before the guild finds out and has time to send messages by hand anyway.

In a more realistic setting we'd see something more like what happened in real life, the local noble would have some kind of fortification ranging from a simple stockade up to a large stone castle depending on the relative rank and wealth. A town would spring up around this area, likely walled, with the sections outside the walls being dense with agriculture, that's where the farms would be. Any time there's a threatened attack everybody would retreat to the fortified section until the adventurers/knights/military dealt with it. More marginal land beyond that would be primarily grazing, where the shepherds and ranchers could take their herds to safer areas in times of distress.

I can't really believe I'm saying this... but Fairy Tail probably has a more realistic take on the adventurer's guild here. The guilds there are essentially a large number of mercenary companies that offer a local territory a range of options from protections to kill quests to herb gathering, competing with each other for jobs, rather than the strange "Fantasy DMV" we get in Goblin Slayer. This model would be much more suited to Goblin Slayer's frontier, where there's little to no protection from the government we would reasonably see adventurers, essentially vigilantes/mafia, setting up their own protection rackets and ultimately evolving into rival governments, as that's what happens every single time in real life when the government is incapable of protecting its people.

This one's answered in the Manga, Goblin Slayer has an internal monologue that goblins are cowardly, and goblin scouts will always case an area first before a major attack. He notes that his time to strike is between a scout inspecting an area and when a huge raiding party will show up to attack a few days later.

I'm not seeing how this system has any resiliency to attack though. Tiny isolated farms with no defenses aren't going to exist long in a world like Goblin Slayer, and there's no such thing as a productive farm that's also got nothing worth taking, especially in Goblin Slayer where goblins will happily raid the place for a single female. All this strategy of having tiny isolated farms does is ensure adventurers have even longer travel times and less incentive to go, so the farms will have vastly less protection. Much longer travel times and larger carts of goods also means more time between trips, thus far more food and goods stored on the farm, making the isolated farms richer and juicier targets along with being easier ones.

The only way this works is if the farms are also fortified enough that the losses trying to capture them will outstrip any gains from the raid, just having them be small and out-of-the-way actively makes it easier for the forces of chaos.

HRE existing only to be almost raped - you have a point,althought i would not say it to her.
No nobles - true,and as silly as no fortified villages.

It is so bad,that almost good.

 

[Bear Ribs]

HRE existing only to be almost raped - you have a point,althought i would not say it to her.
No nobles - true,and as silly as no fortified villages.

It is so bad,that almost good.

Anachronism is poison to realism. Things existed at the point of time they did for a reason and just inserting modern-day concepts or ideas into a fantasy world without the same foundations doesn't work unless you are either making a spoof (Like Dragon Half) or are actively working to rebuild those foundations.

Goblin Slayer wants a modern-day type of nationwide bureaucracy that would require information-age communications to function, modern-style buildings and structural materials like huge panes of glass they should neither be able to make nor could they move safely with the wagons they use, and even the girls wear modern underwear that requires elastic that can only be produced with advanced industrial chemical plants.

 

[Terthna]

Anachronism is poison to realism. Things existed at the point of time they did for a reason and just inserting modern-day concepts or ideas into a fantasy world without the same foundations doesn't work unless you are either making a spoof (Like Dragon Half) or are actively working to rebuild those foundations.

Goblin Slayer wants a modern-day type of nationwide bureaucracy that would require information-age communications to function, modern-style buildings and structural materials like huge panes of glass they should neither be able to make nor could they move safely with the wagons they use, and even the girls wear modern underwear that requires elastic that can only be produced with advanced industrial chemical plants.

Keep in mind; the world of Goblin Slayer is essentially a pen and paper RPG that the gods are playing, with the titular Goblin Slayer being explicitly described as an anomaly that resists being played with. It's implied from the perspective of the mortals being played with that the anachronisms exist because the level of technology used to be much higher, and the constant warring with dark forces keeps knocking civilization back down to a medieval level; but they also exist for the same reason my mother's Dungeon Master, back when she played D&D, had a goblin show up armed with a machine gun that one time.

 

[Crom's Black Blade]

If we expand the scope of things to accommodate fuzzy travel times and presume GS is more of a wandering "mysterious stranger" type, this basically removes the only reason the guild should exist, there's no point in a central hub in town to send requests and hire adventurers if the adventurers just drift around instead of receiving jobs from the guild and vast travel times mean any possible request is going to be over and done with months before the guild finds out and has time to send messages by hand anyway.

I could see something filling the Guild role as a check in station and where quests have been posted. Just less of a DMV vibe and more of a tavern. Where an Adventurer could come in from the rain, grab something hot to eat and see what's plaguing the locals.

This one's answered in the Manga, Goblin Slayer has an internal monologue that goblins are cowardly, and goblin scouts will always case an area first before a major attack. He notes that his time to strike is between a scout inspecting an area and when a huge raiding party will show up to attack a few days later.

True, tying back why GS checks every morning to see if the farm has been scouted the night before. But it does establish that Goblins are viewed more as pests to be eliminated even among the people who are posting the quests for them, and thus have the most direct contact with them.

I'm not seeing how this system has any resiliency to attack though. Tiny isolated farms with no defenses aren't going to exist long in a world like Goblin Slayer, and there's no such thing as a productive farm that's also got nothing worth taking, especially in Goblin Slayer where goblins will happily raid the place for a single female.

Resilience in the form that razing one farm to the ground will not meaningfully impact the human realm's over all food production. And a farm in this situation, for everyone but Goblins, has really only two values. Either you want what it has or you want to deprive the human realm of it.

The dispersed/more numerous farms make it more difficult to do the latter and I will note that the chaotic races in Goblin Slayer seem to rapidly shift from weak but numerous to more singular, powerful monsters with almost nothing between Goblins and trolls and dragons. There are, to my knowledge, no Orcs, Bugbears or Kobalds to help fill out the ranks of the evil armies and the sole exception, Goblins, require a parasitical rape-based reproduction which hinders their utility as canon fodder requiring a rather complicated logistical chain to keep Goblins supplied with both women and the ravenous amount of food they require which almost certainly could be disrupted by the forces of Order.

So I don't think the forces of Chaos have the resources to spare to attack across a broad front hitting these dozens if not hundreds of small, scattered farms spread across miles of frontier land. Not without weakening themselves to the armies of Order/ Adventurers like Hero and her party. So instead the farms are largely ignored in favor of attacking the important towns. Likely the Demon Lord, or his generals, wishing to achieve the moral crushing symbolic victory of taking the capitol as many conquers have desired rather than a strategic resource denial.

Of course that is only one side of the equation. Obviously a farm has things which someone could want if only to fill his belly. But these smaller farms have only a smaller portion of resources meaning any large, organized group of bandits would have to hit several farms either coordinated across miles of land or lingering in the area hitting one farm after another increasing the risk the King's army or the Guild will take notice of them and destroy them. Which makes the farms less individually tempting targets compared to raiding after these dispersed foodstuffs/materials/ect have been centralized in the town and begun to be shipped out in large quantities.

Of course the one exception to all this, as you note, would be goblins who desperately need women in order to breed. And as we see goblins are the one threat which explicitly seems to target farms. Ironically what makes them their biggest threat, their explosive breeding and sex-slave dependent reproduction, is also likely what is inhibiting the goblins and causing them to be for the most part, being a nuisance rather than a devouring green tidal wave. They need numbers to get women but to get those numbers they need women in the first place putting them in a chicken or an egg scenario. With the rapid growth that makes them so fearsome means even a smallish nest will likely exhausts the local food supply causing the nest to fragment and disperse to green pastures perpetually curbing their numbers.

ll this strategy of having tiny isolated farms does is ensure adventurers have even longer travel times and less incentive to go, so the farms will have vastly less protection.

The Adventurers almost certainly cover a wider area the the farms would inhabit based just on the quests GS takes and completes in roughly a single day. Further the Guild doesn't protect the farms, not directly. The idea isn't that Spearman kills 20 bandits because they razed a farm. The idea is that when a farm gets destroyed by bandits the local merchant is suddenly afraid they'll start attacking his shipments and cut into his profit and preemptively puts out a quest for the bandits heads. And again this universe has an almost modern-level information distribution, I can only imagine they employ a pony express style mail service just off screen, so we're likely looking at mere days from the farm razing to a bounty being collected. So it likely is more profitable most times to ignore the farms and focus on trade routes to try and make your money and get out before an Adventurer whacks you.

Much longer travel times and larger carts of goods also means more time between trips, thus far more food and goods stored on the farm, making the isolated farms richer and juicier targets along with being easier ones.

Well you really wouldn't need more than one trip into town per season when you harvested your grain/ cattle had reached slaughter age. It isn't like cowgirl farms where you're producing milk daily that would build up and who seems to go to town every couple of days at least. Now to get the most efficiency you are likely growing different crops at different times during the year with shorter and faster growing cycles but you could presumably transport it out as its harvested.

Further I'm going with the idea there's few if any finished good to be found on the farms other than the village's own cottage industry to meet their needs. Textile mills to make fabric or grindstones to turn grain into bread would all be situated in the town.

 

[Bear Ribs]

I could see something filling the Guild role as a check in station and where quests have been posted. Just less of a DMV vibe and more of a tavern. Where an Adventurer could come in from the rain, grab something hot to eat and see what's plaguing the locals.

True, tying back why GS checks every morning to see if the farm has been scouted the night before. But it does establish that Goblins are viewed more as pests to be eliminated even among the people who are posting the quests for them, and thus have the most direct contact with them.


Resilience in the form that razing one farm to the ground will not meaningfully impact the human realm's over all food production. And a farm in this situation, for everyone but Goblins, has really only two values. Either you want what it has or you want to deprive the human realm of it.

The dispersed/more numerous farms make it more difficult to do the latter and I will note that the chaotic races in Goblin Slayer seem to rapidly shift from weak but numerous to more singular, powerful monsters with almost nothing between Goblins and trolls and dragons. There are, to my knowledge, no Orcs, Bugbears or Kobalds to help fill out the ranks of the evil armies and the sole exception, Goblins, require a parasitical rape-based reproduction which hinders their utility as canon fodder requiring a rather complicated logistical chain to keep Goblins supplied with both women and the ravenous amount of food they require which almost certainly could be disrupted by the forces of Order.

Goblin Slayer does have a large number of mid-tier monsters. Gargoyles and some mid-tier smallish demons show up in a couple of places, the list of creatures that are mentioned but haven't been shown "on-screen" include wargs, giant cockroaches, lamias, harpies, slimes, ghouls, zombies, skeletons, dullahans, and vampires. There's plenty of them, it's just that the focus is on Goblin Slayer and his monomania.

So I don't think the forces of Chaos have the resources to spare to attack across a broad front hitting these dozens if not hundreds of small, scattered farms spread across miles of frontier land. Not without weakening themselves to the armies of Order/ Adventurers like Hero and her party. So instead the farms are largely ignored in favor of attacking the important towns. Likely the Demon Lord, or his generals, wishing to achieve the moral crushing symbolic victory of taking the capitol as many conquers have desired rather than a strategic resource denial.

Why? You've already stated the King will prevent these peasants from taking any measures to protect themselves, so five goblins will wipe out any one of these farms quickly and easily in a single raid. If you have lots of small defenseless farms you're creating the perfect conditions for lots of small bands of goblins to easily hit them repeatedly. In a year just in Goblin Slayer's territory you've lost perhaps a thousand farms at the rate of attack we've already discussed.

Of course that is only one side of the equation. Obviously a farm has things which someone could want if only to fill his belly. But these smaller farms have only a smaller portion of resources meaning any large, organized group of bandits would have to hit several farms either coordinated across miles of land or lingering in the area hitting one farm after another increasing the risk the King's army or the Guild will take notice of them and destroy them. Which makes the farms less individually tempting targets compared to raiding after these dispersed foodstuffs/materials/ect have been centralized in the town and begun to be shipped out in large quantities.

Of course the one exception to all this, as you note, would be goblins who desperately need women in order to breed. And as we see goblins are the one threat which explicitly seems to target farms. Ironically what makes them their biggest threat, their explosive breeding and sex-slave dependent reproduction, is also likely what is inhibiting the goblins and causing them to be for the most part, being a nuisance rather than a devouring green tidal wave. They need numbers to get women but to get those numbers they need women in the first place putting them in a chicken or an egg scenario. With the rapid growth that makes them so fearsome means even a smallish nest will likely exhausts the local food supply causing the nest to fragment and disperse to green pastures perpetually curbing their numbers.

Note that the rapid growth requiring tons of food isn't canon, it's something I mentioned should logically exist but doesn't.

Goblins also don't need very many women. They have supernaturally fast reproduction, Goblin Mother (I linked to her in the wiki in a previous post) went through multiple pregnancies and births in a single week. We get perspectives from goblins a couple of times confirming that a single goblin with a single captive woman can produce a full-sized hive in a few months. Goblins dispersing isn't going to curb their numbers, it's going to ensure there are thousands of small roving bands of goblins that are going to be hitting all your thousands of small dispersed farms every day, and every one of those farms can become a full-sized goblin hive in a few more months. Your idea is literally tailor-made to turn them from a nuisance to a green tidal wave.

The Adventurers almost certainly cover a wider area the the farms would inhabit based just on the quests GS takes and completes in roughly a single day. Further the Guild doesn't protect the farms, not directly. The idea isn't that Spearman kills 20 bandits because they razed a farm. The idea is that when a farm gets destroyed by bandits the local merchant is suddenly afraid they'll start attacking his shipments and cut into his profit and preemptively puts out a quest for the bandits heads. And again this universe has an almost modern-level information distribution, I can only imagine they employ a pony express style mail service just off screen, so we're likely looking at mere days from the farm razing to a bounty being collected. So it likely is more profitable most times to ignore the farms and focus on trade routes to try and make your money and get out before an Adventurer whacks you.

You need to make up your mind if bandits are an actual issue or not, you've zig-zagged on bandits three or four times so far.

Well you really wouldn't need more than one trip into town per season when you harvested your grain/ cattle had reached slaughter age. It isn't like cowgirl farms where you're producing milk daily that would build up and who seems to go to town every couple of days at least. Now to get the most efficiency you are likely growing different crops at different times during the year with shorter and faster growing cycles but you could presumably transport it out as its harvested.

Further I'm going with the idea there's few if any finished good to be found on the farms other than the village's own cottage industry to meet their needs. Textile mills to make fabric or grindstones to turn grain into bread would all be situated in the town.

'Kay, so you've got an entire season's worth of goods stored up on the farm at one time. Do you understand that this means there's an entire season worth of farm production (actually much more since the farmer will store all his food supply for the year) waiting to be stolen by goblins/bandits/other monsters?

This is beyond the fact that farms do not work the way you're imagining here. Farms that are small and isolated do not survive, period. The reason is simple, surplus. If you've just got Farmer and his wife, Farmwife, working the farm, then you have razor-thin margins. Now imagine Farmer was bitten by a snake, or broke a leg, or got stabbed in the ass by a goblin because the king stupidly forced him to install giant ground-floor glass windows. Farmer is laid up for six weeks, the season's harvest is lost because he couldn't tend it, and he and Farmwife either abandon the farm and become beggars in town, or starve to death.

Under those conditions, there are two possible defenses against this kind of catastrophe available to Farmer. He can live in a village with several other farming families, so if he's taken a goblin spear to the ass his neighbors Gardener Shepherd and Miller chip in a little extra to save the crops (Naturally when Gardener is hurt Farmer chips in extra too). The second option is having very large extended families, Farmer's mon and dad (retired but still able to swing a hoe when it's really needed) and his three sons and four daughters are all living with him so when one is hurt, the rest of the family can do some extra because there's enough margin to save the farm. In practice, farmers historically always did both at the same time.

Now you can see the issue here, which is that you cannot have a tiny hidden farm that also has a large number of people on it, likely several families, all living together. There is no logic to this plan, even if we ignore the craziness of expecting the people to put up with a king who treats them as completely expendable and is apparently more afraid of his own peasants than the armies of chaos.

 

[Crom's Black Blade]

Goblin Slayer does have a large number of mid-tier monsters. Gargoyles and some mid-tier smallish demons show up in a couple of places, the list of creatures that are mentioned but haven't been shown "on-screen" include wargs, giant cockroaches, lamias, harpies, slimes, ghouls, zombies, skeletons, dullahans, and vampires. There's plenty of them, it's just that the focus is on Goblin Slayer and his monomania.

Other monsters certainly exist but I'm not sure anyone of these, other than maybe Gargoyles, fulfill the rank and file numbers I was refering too. And most of these, as you say, are merely mentioned with little to any information on their numbers/capability.

Why? You've already stated the King will prevent these peasants from taking any measures to protect themselves, so five goblins will wipe out any one of these farms quickly and easily in a single raid.

Well Goblins are a minor problem, more a nuisance, beneath the notice of almost everyone. They are also cowardly to the extent that even a hundred strong horde will take the time to scout out the completely defenseless farm of Cowgirl. So five goblins aren't going to be attacking any farm. At best they are going to be interested in stealing cows/destroying the harvest and maybe stealing a girl if they can catch her unaware outside at night.

In a year just in Goblin Slayer's territory you've lost perhaps a thousand farms at the rate of attack we've already discussed.

I would have to disagree. Out of the three examples offered to GS, none seemed to involve a lost farm. Only one seemingly involved any loss of life and that one had to be several days old since an Adventurer had already took it and failed to report back in long enough for Guild Girl to comment on it.

Note that the rapid growth requiring tons of food isn't canon, it's something I mentioned should logically exist but doesn't.

And I think it could be used as one of the reasons Goblins aren't a massive green tide. I don't think there's anything in the anime that precludes it, Goblins are referenced stealing supplies/eating after all.

Goblins also don't need very many women. They have supernaturally fast reproduction, Goblin Mother (I linked to her in the wiki in a previous post) went through multiple pregnancies and births in a single week

Oh yes, Goblins are explosive-breeders as I noted. But they have to be because most women don't live for more than a few weeks. Granted part of that is no doubt the strain on their bodies giving birth to such a brood so quickly but the torture and filthy conditions of the Goblin nest certainly aren't helping them keep brood-mares.

So long term, to be able to grow and maintain an army of thousands would require a constant supply of women or the Goblins not to burn through their slaves so quickly. Which is a hindrance to their growth since they are dependent on the number of the other races.

Goblins dispersing isn't going to curb their numbers, it's going to ensure there are thousands of small roving bands of goblins that are going to be hitting all your thousands of small dispersed farms every day

Uh, most Goblin nests don't appear to number anywhere close to a thousand. I think most nests GS has dealt with are in the double digits to very low 100's. So we're looking more at dozens of roving band of weak, cowardly predators that will struggle to find a new home and could be killed by starvation, the elements or other predators. And of course time spent finding a new home means time not spent abducting girls or reproducing.

You need to make up your mind if bandits are an actual issue or not, you've zig-zagged on bandits three or four times so far.

Not at all. I've been, I think, very clear and gone into depth on the bandit issue. You can certainly disagree with my logic but I haven't changed my stance on bandits.

I'm not quite sure why bandits seem such a sticking point when under the paradigm I've been discussing they're dealt with exactly like Dragons.

'Kay, so you've got an entire season's worth of goods stored up on the farm at one time. Do you understand that this means there's an entire season worth of farm production (actually much more since the farmer will store all his food supply for the year) waiting to be stolen by goblins/bandits/other monsters?

Yes, that would logically follow but that would be the same whether you had a bunch of farms or collected them up in a few larger ones. You can't really send corn to the market until it's ready to be harvested so that's an unavoidable. All I can do is try to make that "entire season worth" such a razor thin margin most bandits/other monsters choose another target as more profitable.

This is beyond the fact that farms do not work the way you're imagining here. Farms that are small and isolated do not survive, period. The reason is simple, surplus. If you've just got Farmer and his wife, Farmwife, working the farm, then you have razor-thin margins. Now imagine Farmer was bitten by a snake, or broke a leg, or got stabbed in the ass by a goblin because the king stupidly forced him to install giant ground-floor glass windows. Farmer is laid up for six weeks, the season's harvest is lost because he couldn't tend it, and he and Farmwife either abandon the farm and become beggars in town, or starve to death.

Except Cowgirl's farm appears to have exactly three people on it so it appears that does happen in the Goblin Slayer universe. Of course I'm not saying all farms are like that, GS village existed after all, so farms with larger safety margins certainly do exist. I will point out this is a universe with fairly easy to access healing spells and potions so things like snake bites and broken legs are likely less debilitating than in our world.

Also you seem to be putting more emphasis on being "hidden" while I envision the issue is more due to being spread out. Imagine a space of half a day's journey or more between each farm, be they a single farmstead like Cowgirl's or more like GS village, so either it would take a long time to attack all of them or a very large army spread across miles of terrain.

 

[ATP]

I think,that villages like GS should be wiped out long ago in GS world,not mention CG uncle farm.Yet most of them still exist.
Only logical explanation -- gods are allowing attacks only if there are adventurers nearby.Preferable females,so they could be raped,too.

 

[Bear Ribs]

Other monsters certainly exist but I'm not sure anyone of these, other than maybe Gargoyles, fulfill the rank and file numbers I was refering too. And most of these, as you say, are merely mentioned with little to any information on their numbers/capability.


Well Goblins are a minor problem, more a nuisance, beneath the notice of almost everyone. They are also cowardly to the extent that even a hundred strong horde will take the time to scout out the completely defenseless farm of Cowgirl. So five goblins aren't going to be attacking any farm. At best they are going to be interested in stealing cows/destroying the harvest and maybe stealing a girl if they can catch her unaware outside at night.


I would have to disagree. Out of the three examples offered to GS, none seemed to involve a lost farm. Only one seemingly involved any loss of life and that one had to be several days old since an Adventurer had already took it and failed to report back in long enough for Guild Girl to comment on it.

Go ahead and tell me Cowgirl's backstory right quick.

And saying the goblins are minor, a nuisance, beneath notice, is complete nonsense. Take a look at the guy hiring adventurers again.

Mature grown men don't offer their entire village's collective cash stash while begging with tears running down their faces because they saw a nuisance. They don't make extravagant displays of gratitude, crying and repeatedly bowing because of something barely worth notice. The guy's in a state of complete panic and has rushed to the guild just because somebody saw a couple of goblins that hadn't done anything yet.

Uh, most Goblin nests don't appear to number anywhere close to a thousand. I think most nests GS has dealt with are in the double digits to very low 100's. So we're looking more at dozens of roving band of weak, cowardly predators that will struggle to find a new home and could be killed by starvation, the elements or other predators. And of course time spent finding a new home means time not spent abducting girls or reproducing.

What? Are you seriously arguing that there can't be "thousands" of bands because there's only one goblin nest in the world? I don't know how else to parse the statement that there won't be more than dozens of bands because there were only a couple hundred goblins in one nest.

Not at all. I've been, I think, very clear and gone into depth on the bandit issue. You can certainly disagree with my logic but I haven't changed my stance on bandits.

I'm not quite sure why bandits seem such a sticking point when under the paradigm I've been discussing they're dealt with exactly like Dragons.

Either way, it's relatively unimportant, as goblins and bandits pretty much fill the exact same ecological niche of weak corporeal humanoids that prey on the weak so it's not really worth going around again, I'll drop it.

Yes, that would logically follow but that would be the same whether you had a bunch of farms or collected them up in a few larger ones. You can't really send corn to the market until it's ready to be harvested so that's an unavoidable. All I can do is try to make that "entire season worth" such a razor thin margin most bandits/other monsters choose another target as more profitable.

What other target? You think the rando band of half a dozen goblins are going to decide to take on the guild headquarters, or the king's castle? A soft easy target is ideal even if all it has is several months of food, which it would have to have given your other criterion.

Except Cowgirl's farm appears to have exactly three people on it so it appears that does happen in the Goblin Slayer universe. Of course I'm not saying all farms are like that, GS village existed after all, so farms with larger safety margins certainly do exist. I will point out this is a universe with fairly easy to access healing spells and potions so things like snake bites and broken legs are likely less debilitating than in our world.

O...K... and how are you imagining that working? How are you expecting this to work when the nearest other farm is half a day's travel away and it could take several days to travel to town? Think about the logistics of what you're proposing. Are there thousands of white mages riding a circuit (hope they don't meet any monsters!) to handle the healing of all these massively widely spaced farmers? Are you thinking the cows and chickens are going to feed and water themselves while Farmwife hauls Farmer in a wagon for three days each way to town and the farm will somehow survive that long? How is this easy healing supposed to work in your world where farms are massive distances from each other and all other civilization?

And no, Cowgirl's farm is not like that. It's true they're alone... because goblins wiped out the rest of the village Cowgirl lived at and all their family is dead. But they're living so close to the guild headquarters Cowgirl can take a stroll there with a handcart every morning, at most they're an hour away and given how much we see, it could be only fifteen minutes. Cowgirl's uncle also notably has repeatedly tried to get Goblin Slayer to retire from adventuring to marry Cowgirl and become a farmhand. He's trying to grow the family and add more people.

Also you seem to be putting more emphasis on being "hidden" while I envision the issue is more due to being spread out. Imagine a space of half a day's journey or more between each farm, be they a single farmstead like Cowgirl's or more like GS village, so either it would take a long time to attack all of them or a very large army spread across miles of terrain.

Okay... and that's going to accomplish what? Nobody ever, in the history of the universe, had success by breaking up their defenses so that the enemy could easily concentrate and defeat them in detail. You're saying these peasants are just going to go out and farm when they have no weaponry or fortifications to defend themselves, are not hidden or stealthy, and have no hope of the king ever sending forces to save them, nor can they count on the guild since it's half a days ride to the next farm and likely days to even weeks travel time to an actual town, and the main value is that if they die, well, they were cheap. You're acting like you think peasants are RTS units or something, except even more expendable since even most RTS players will put more effort into protecting their builder units than just going "maybe the other player won't bother to send units all the way over to this side of the map, and if they die they die."

 

[Typhonis]

Villages should be about a day's travel apart. I mean farmers are not going to spend an inordinate amount of time traveling to a village to deliver their produce if their farm or themselves are subject to attack. It makes no sense. Also, how is the king going to enforce his law? Who rules the area in the Kings name and enforces his decrees? Hell even in the modern age you have people between a nation's ruler and the folk on the street. Where are they in GS?

 

[Bear Ribs]

Villages should be about a day's travel apart. I mean farmers are not going to spend an inordinate amount of time traveling to a village to deliver their produce if their farm or themselves are subject to attack. It makes no sense. Also, how is the king going to enforce his law? Who rules the area in the Kings name and enforces his decrees? Hell even in the modern age you have people between a nation's ruler and the folk on the street. Where are they in GS?

I agree. Wendover productions goes into a fair amount of detail on distances, but their analysis of pre-US cities in America suggests that major towns were about 10 miles apart (which jives well with your estimate, this was enough distance for a bit less than half a day's travel to the major town, a few hours to do the shopping, and half a day back). This means any given farmer never had more than a 5-mile trip to the nearest town.



Small farming villages could actually be a lot closer together, from taking a glance at Medieval England I estimate that a lot of villages were only a couple of miles apart.

It's worth looking at the reasoning, a medieval village had a tendency to be 10-30 families, averaging 50-150 people (interestingly this lines up well with Dunbar's number). A village that size has enough surplus to support 1-3 non-farmer specialists, a blacksmith, priest, cooper, etc. Now farmers try to be self-sufficient but invariably need actual specialists for a lot of things, and no village can survive with just a blacksmith or priest when they also need a wheelwright to fix a cart, or a miller to turn their grain into flour. Consequently, villages had to be close enough together to share specialists with each other for basic survival.

Travel times also need to consider weather. In snowy, miserable conditions an entire day might be only a couple of miles, and then when spring comes you get muddy conditions which are even worse. The draft animals need more frequent rests then as well, and no village can afford to be cut off from its neighbors for half a year straight.

As an aside, water changes the equation significantly. In general (Pliny the Elder went into a lot of detail on this on one of his analyses of how grain was shipped to Rome) one mile of travel by road is equal in cost to 5 miles of travel by water using muscle power (either oars or draft animals on shore pulling a barge upriver) or 20 miles of travel by sail/with the current of a river. However, because rivers supply both rich floodplains for growing and abundant water for the same purpose, villages along rivers would often be much denser.

I do agree on the king enforcing decrees, again the lack of nobility, landlords, and basically local rulers of any kind is distinctly weird in Goblin Slayer.

 

[Crom's Black Blade]

Go ahead and tell me Cowgirl's backstory right quick.

And saying the goblins are minor, a nuisance, beneath notice, is complete nonsense.

Cowgirl's backstory would be the same as GS. Their village was destroyed by Goblins. Something that happens but not with the frequency you seem to imply.

As for the man in question, he's clearly distraught through it's unclear, at least in that panel, what exactly he's afraid off. That his village will be wiped out or that the goblins will eat/destroy that years harvest and he and his village will suffer catastrophically because of that.

Further something can be a minor nuisance globally and be quite distressing to the individual it's happening too.

And since we're on the subject of the severity of the Goblin threat, in episode 3 of the anime Goblin Slayer and Priestess return from seemingly the only Goblin Quest that day. And we can reasonably conclude it's the only quest because Goblin Slayer immediate goes out with High Elf Archer and her party to fight Goblins so if there were more waiting in the docket he would have inquired Guild Girl if those were still available.

Further in episode 5 he has no quests and is sitting around waiting at the Guild Hall which is how he got roped into overseeing the promotion trial for the adventurer Hobbit Halfling Kinder Rhea Scout. So I don't think the 5 quests and a village destroyed every day is the best assumption.

What? Are you seriously arguing that there can't be "thousands" of bands because there's only one goblin nest in the world? I don't know how else to parse the statement that there won't be more than dozens of bands because there were only a couple hundred goblins in one nest.

Well it's closer to Goblin nests range from the 20's to maybe a couple of hundreds for the larger ones we've observed. So to get thousands of bands your likely talking about a collapse of all the Goblin nests across the Frontier which would imply they already reached the carrying capacity and those farms would already long be dead.

I would argue that while there are exceptions, those nests lead by Goblin Leaders or Paladins for instance, most nests are ultimately self-defeating. That their explosive growth is unsustainable and Goblins too short-sighted to compensate. Leading to collapse, in-fighting, starvation and ultimately scattering to the four winds as each Goblin seeks out fresher ground to start the cycle anew.

Either way, it's relatively unimportant, as goblins and bandits pretty much fill the exact same ecological niche of weak corporeal humanoids that prey on the weak so it's not really worth going around again, I'll drop it.

Well I think that's part of the miscommunication. The system I'm talking about, by design, *is* weak against Goblins. I'm relying on Goblin attacks just being that infrequent enough and general human short-sightedness to dismiss the concerns as a problem over the horizon.

I would also argue that Goblin and Bandits have vastly skewed priorities since the former essentially can only breed via raiding other women.

What other target? You think the rando band of half a dozen goblins are going to decide to take on the guild headquarters, or the king's castle? A soft easy target is ideal even if all it has is several months of food, which it would have to have given your other criterion.

Goblins? No. I think they would prioritize the farm which is why there are no great rewards for their quests and why no one wants to take those quests.

For everything else, yes they could attack the farm and get several months of food and then be killed by an Adventurer because this world has almost modern-level information gathering and inhumanly efficient Adventurers. Anyone but a Goblin who raids a farm can likely look forward to that being reported in Frontier City by the next morning, a quest put out that afternoon and Spearguy setting out the day after to collect. Because everyone but Goblins are either powerful/threatening enough that they get high paying rewards or they have a high enough prestige Adventurers want to kill them for the bragging rights.

O...K... and how are you imagining that working? How are you expecting this to work when the nearest other farm is half a day's travel away and it could take several days to travel to town? Think about the logistics of what you're proposing. Are there thousands of white mages riding a circuit (hope they don't meet any monsters!) to handle the healing of all these massively widely spaced farmers?

Well potions could be bought and stored like medicine. So while I doubt a farmer could be as frivolous with their use as say an Adventurer I think it's possible a family could keep one or two for emergencies. Failing that I think it would be more logical in all but the most dire of accidents for the Farmer to travel to the healer rather than the reverse. Grant you it wouldn't be the most pleasant of experiences but should see the farmer back on his feet within the week instead of six. With ideally a farmhand taking care of the farm when a potion was unavailable.

And no, Cowgirl's farm is not like that. It's true they're alone... because goblins wiped out the rest of the village Cowgirl lived at and all their family is dead.

She lives at her Uncles's Farm. Presumably the same one she was going to when she avoided her village's death. So no, the Goblin's had nothing to do with Cowgirl's farm.

But they're living so close to the guild headquarters Cowgirl can take a stroll there with a handcart every morning, at most they're an hour away and given how much we see, it could be only fifteen minutes.

I'd actually think the distance is longer than 15 minutes to an hour. From what I've seen, she and Goblin Slayer usually head to town sometime in the morning, due a few errands including sometimes eating lunch and seem to make it back closer to dinner. A round trip is likely closer to 4-8 hours.

Cowgirl's uncle also notably has repeatedly tried to get Goblin Slayer to retire from adventuring to marry Cowgirl and become a farmhand. He's trying to grow the family and add more people.

Well that's certainly a big switch from the anime where he saws the boy has PTSD and that the only reason he allows GS to stay is because he pays them so well. But okay. I don't see what that has to do with whether or not his farm is a single homestead or a village.

Okay... and that's going to accomplish what? Nobody ever, in the history of the universe, had success by breaking up their defenses so that the enemy could easily concentrate and defeat them in detail.

I would say it would spread out the targets increasing the time it would take to hit all of them and hypothetically granting more time to respond. Whether that be in the form of Adventurers or the King's army. That it decreases the importance of any one farm so that if it is destroyed the output of the others mean you won't starve.

Now, of course, any farm actually hit by an attack is going to die pretty horribly which is what we see in the anime.

 

[ATP]

Villages should be about a day's travel apart. I mean farmers are not going to spend an inordinate amount of time traveling to a village to deliver their produce if their farm or themselves are subject to attack. It makes no sense. Also, how is the king going to enforce his law? Who rules the area in the Kings name and enforces his decrees? Hell even in the modern age you have people between a nation's ruler and the folk on the street. Where are they in GS?

Indeed.Only power we see in story is Adventure Guild.Which is stupid,somebody should act in the name of King there.
And,in case of goblins killing entire village,army should react.
I undarstand,that they could not care about one girl or even farm,but entire big village is sometching else.

 

[Typhonis]

They should care about all of the farms over a wide region. Why? Well....who pays the Kings taxes? Fewer peasants, fewer taxes being collected. It IS part of the deal. Peasants pay the king taxes and in return, he protects them. So if the king is not protecting them...

 

[Bear Ribs]

Indeed.Only power we see in story is Adventure Guild.Which is stupid,somebody should act in the name of King there.
And,in case of goblins killing entire village,army should react.
I undarstand,that they could not care about one girl or even farm,but entire big village is sometching else.

We actually get an interlude from Goblin Lord, giving a speech right before the attack on Cowgirl's farm.

Goblin Lord fully expected to raze the entire guild headquarters and the major town it was in with ~100 goblins. From the context he likely would have succeeded if Goblin Slayer didn't have perfect counters already in place to every goblin tactic and Guild Girl blew a huge amount of gold she wasn't supposed to, so she could hire every adventurer in the local guild to fight at the same time.

Goblin village wipes are a pretty serious threat, and a band of 100 goblins with wolf cavalry and shaman support isn't just a village killer, it's a small city killer.

Well I think that's part of the miscommunication. The system I'm talking about, by design, *is* weak against Goblins. I'm relying on Goblin attacks just being that infrequent enough and general human short-sightedness to dismiss the concerns as a problem over the horizon.

The dispersed/more numerous farms make it more difficult to do the latter and I will note that the chaotic races in Goblin Slayer seem to rapidly shift from weak but numerous to more singular, powerful monsters with almost nothing between Goblins and trolls and dragons. There are, to my knowledge, no Orcs, Bugbears or Kobalds to help fill out the ranks of the evil armies and the sole exception, Goblins, require a parasitical rape-based reproduction which hinders their utility as canon fodder requiring a rather complicated logistical chain to keep Goblins supplied with both women and the ravenous amount of food they require which almost certainly could be disrupted by the forces of Order.

Okay, now we're going in circles with the same thing you did with bandits. You don't seem to have an actual position here and will just change to fit the current post while ignoring what you said last time.

How do you square holding both that there're no "mid-sized" monsters, only very numerous goblins and rare singular powerful ones, and that goblins are being held back primarily by a lack of females, with also setting up a system that's deliberately highly vulnerable to goblins and will feed them more females and make it much easier for them to gather food? Are you deliberately trying to come up with a system to beef up the demon lord?

Cowgirl's backstory would be the same as GS. Their village was destroyed by Goblins. Something that happens but not with the frequency you seem to imply.

See above, the entire major city was threatened by Goblin Lord. Small villages would be wiped by a much, much weaker force than that. Again, we repeatedly see people crying for joy at the death of a goblin nest.

This is also yet another thumb in the eye of your notion of travel distances, this goblin nest had to have been incredibly close to this village for that plume of smoke to be visible, perhaps a mile away at the outside, more likely half that.

As for the man in question, he's clearly distraught through it's unclear, at least in that panel, what exactly he's afraid off. That his village will be wiped out or that the goblins will eat/destroy that years harvest and he and his village will suffer catastrophically because of that.

Further something can be a minor nuisance globally and be quite distressing to the individual it's happening too.

There's little functional difference between losing all their food and being killed, either way the village will die. The fact that the guy is talking about young ladies also suggests that he's not sobbing in fear because he's afraid he'll get canceled on Twitter. The woman crying for joy isn't doing that because now a nuisance is gone, and Fantasy!Pope doesn't have nightmares about goblins every single night because they're annoying. Guild Girl doesn't beg adventurers to please take goblin missions, and dip heavily into the treasury with bribes to get more people to fight goblins because they're beneath her notice.

The only people who treat goblins as anything less than an existential threat are a handful of higher-ranked adventurers and even then, they don't act like goblins are a nuisance, they just don't think it's worth their time because they're too high level and goblins are the job of the porcelain ranks.

And since we're on the subject of the severity of the Goblin threat, in episode 3 of the anime Goblin Slayer and Priestess return from seemingly the only Goblin Quest that day. And we can reasonably conclude it's the only quest because Goblin Slayer immediate goes out with High Elf Archer and her party to fight Goblins so if there were more waiting in the docket he would have inquired Guild Girl if those were still available.

Further in episode 5 he has no quests and is sitting around waiting at the Guild Hall which is how he got roped into overseeing the promotion trial for the adventurer Hobbit Halfling Kinder Rhea Scout. So I don't think the 5 quests and a village destroyed every day is the best assumption.

How the heck do you manage to watch stuff so selectively? You manage to pull "They didn't have any goblin quests that day" from episode five while missing the fight against a swarm of dire rats and cockroaches the size of horses, the midsized creatures you kept insisting never appear in the show?

You're also being ludicrously selective in how you're interpreting things. Literally, the main plot of that episode is "Goblin Slayer is badly injured and exhausted after the Ogre beat the tobacco juice out of him in episode 4, and all his party members plus Cowgirl are telling him he has to take it easy and recover before his next goblin mission." Cowgirl tells him this before the opening credits, then Dwarf Shaman tells him that shortly after the credits, and it gets repeated a couple more times. From this, you're extrapolating there must not be any goblin quests, but the far more sane answer is that he's not taking any that day and doing light work as a guild judge because he's not up to actually doing anything more and his party will beat him over the head with a harisen if he tries.

Well it's closer to Goblin nests range from the 20's to maybe a couple of hundreds for the larger ones we've observed. So to get thousands of bands your likely talking about a collapse of all the Goblin nests across the Frontier which would imply they already reached the carrying capacity and those farms would already long be dead.

I would argue that while there are exceptions, those nests lead by Goblin Leaders or Paladins for instance, most nests are ultimately self-defeating. That their explosive growth is unsustainable and Goblins too short-sighted to compensate. Leading to collapse, in-fighting, starvation and ultimately scattering to the four winds as each Goblin seeks out fresher ground to start the cycle anew.

I would also argue that Goblin and Bandits have vastly skewed priorities since the former essentially can only breed via raiding other women.

Would you please make up your mind if you think bandits are an issue or not? The quantum arguments are getting old. "Bandits aren't a problem." "No, this system makes it easier for goblins but reduces the chance bandits will attack a farm so it's all good."
We don't see that goblin nests are self-defeating, we see that goblin nests are defeated by Goblin Slayer, or the rare competent porcelain adventurer group. If these nests wiped themselves out he wouldn't be run so ragged, we wouldn't keep seeing groups of porcelains get wiped and raped, and Guild Girl wouldn't be reduced to begging other adventurers to please take this low-paying goblin job and help cut down on the large number of them.

Even Goblin Slayer doesn't take every single goblin quest. Newbie groups are a thing and we repeatedly see them try (and often die) against goblins, Guild Girl suggests that it's not uncommon for two or three groups to try a single nest. Even if he personally doesn't have that many missions it's completely unreasonable to presume we're seeing every quest and there couldn't possibly be a couple of groups of porcelains trying their luck that morning.

Goblins? No. I think they would prioritize the farm which is why there are no great rewards for their quests and why no one wants to take those quests.

For everything else, yes they could attack the farm and get several months of food and then be killed by an Adventurer because this world has almost modern-level information gathering and inhumanly efficient Adventurers. Anyone but a Goblin who raids a farm can likely look forward to that being reported in Frontier City by the next morning, a quest put out that afternoon and Spearguy setting out the day after to collect. Because everyone but Goblins are either powerful/threatening enough that they get high paying rewards or they have a high enough prestige Adventurers want to kill them for the bragging rights.

Disagree, they don't have that kind of infrastructure. You're literally piling up more non-canon to justify the last non-canon you made up at this point.

They don't have modern-level communications, they're operating in a super-tiny area. Goblin Slayer can walk to the guild in the morning, destroy three goblin nests over the course of the day, and then walk back to Cowgirl's farm for supper that evening. Goblin nests occur barely out of the line of sight of human villages.

If we just take canon as it is, we don't need to make up an imaginary modern-day communications system, we can just accept that actually, all this is happening in a tiny area where the speed of foot messages are sufficient, there's another goblin nest (and human village or farm) every couple miles or so, and a lot of things make more sense without having to make up so much stuff.

Well potions could be bought and stored like medicine. So while I doubt a farmer could be as frivolous with their use as say an Adventurer I think it's possible a family could keep one or two for emergencies. Failing that I think it would be more logical in all but the most dire of accidents for the Farmer to travel to the healer rather than the reverse. Grant you it wouldn't be the most pleasant of experiences but should see the farmer back on his feet within the week instead of six. With ideally a farmhand taking care of the farm when a potion was unavailable.

Why not just have the Enterprise beam Dr. McCoy down to any farmer with an injury and treat them immediately, as long as you're making up stuff that explicitly doesn't exist in the setting? Goblin Slayer is a super-low magic setting. There are no potions. Magic items in general are exceptionally rare, and consumables like scrolls are lostech that can only be found in ancient ruins, nobody living can create them. We've only seen a single scroll in the entire series so far.

The odds that the king can afford to send incredibly valuable scrolls of heal to every farm is not only insane, you're also now undercutting your position by placing even more valuable items in every distant, unprotected farm to draw more attackers and make them juicier targets.

Magic Scroll

Magic Scrolls are rare scrolls that contain ancient magic now lost to the current era. Magic Scrolls are said to be an item usually discovered in ancient ruins, but very rarely. When a Magic Scroll is unrolled, even an infant can cast the spell written in it. Many adventurers simply sell them...

goblin-slayer.fandom.com

I'm seriously questioning your knowledge of this franchise and the base you're building your house of cards on. I mean, I barely looked at it but I still have a much more in-depth understanding.

 

[ATP]

We actually get an interlude from Goblin Lord, giving a speech right before the attack on Cowgirl's farm.

Goblin Lord fully expected to raze the entire guild headquarters and the major town it was in with ~100 goblins. From the context he likely would have succeeded if Goblin Slayer didn't have perfect counters already in place to every goblin tactic and Guild Girl blew a huge amount of gold she wasn't supposed to, so she could hire every adventurer in the local guild to fight at the same time.

Goblin village wipes are a pretty serious threat, and a band of 100 goblins with wolf cavalry and shaman support isn't just a village killer, it's a small city killer.



Okay, now we're going in circles with the same thing you did with bandits. You don't seem to have an actual position here and will just change to fit the current post while ignoring what you said last time.

How do you square holding both that there're no "mid-sized" monsters, only very numerous goblins and rare singular powerful ones, and that goblins are being held back primarily by a lack of females, with also setting up a system that's deliberately highly vulnerable to goblins and will feed them more females and make it much easier for them to gather food? Are you deliberately trying to come up with a system to beef up the demon lord?


See above, the entire major city was threatened by Goblin Lord. Small villages would be wiped by a much, much weaker force than that. Again, we repeatedly see people crying for joy at the death of a goblin nest.

This is also yet another thumb in the eye of your notion of travel distances, this goblin nest had to have been incredibly close to this village for that plume of smoke to be visible, perhaps a mile away at the outside, more likely half that.

There's little functional difference between losing all their food and being killed, either way the village will die. The fact that the guy is talking about young ladies also suggests that he's not sobbing in fear because he's afraid he'll get canceled on Twitter. The woman crying for joy isn't doing that because now a nuisance is gone, and Fantasy!Pope doesn't have nightmares about goblins every single night because they're annoying. Guild Girl doesn't beg adventurers to please take goblin missions, and dip heavily into the treasury with bribes to get more people to fight goblins because they're beneath her notice.

The only people who treat goblins as anything less than an existential threat are a handful of higher-ranked adventurers and even then, they don't act like goblins are a nuisance, they just don't think it's worth their time because they're too high level and goblins are the job of the porcelain ranks.

How the heck do you manage to watch stuff so selectively? You manage to pull "They didn't have any goblin quests that day" from episode five while missing the fight against a swarm of dire rats and cockroaches the size of horses, the midsized creatures you kept insisting never appear in the show?

You're also being ludicrously selective in how you're interpreting things. Literally, the main plot of that episode is "Goblin Slayer is badly injured and exhausted after the Ogre beat the tobacco juice out of him in episode 4, and all his party members plus Cowgirl are telling him he has to take it easy and recover before his next goblin mission." Cowgirl tells him this before the opening credits, then Dwarf Shaman tells him that shortly after the credits, and it gets repeated a couple more times. From this, you're extrapolating there must not be any goblin quests, but the far more sane answer is that he's not taking any that day and doing light work as a guild judge because he's not up to actually doing anything more and his party will beat him over the head with a harisen if he tries.

Would you please make up your mind if you think bandits are an issue or not? The quantum arguments are getting old. "Bandits aren't a problem." "No, this system makes it easier for goblins but reduces the chance bandits will attack a farm so it's all good."
We don't see that goblin nests are self-defeating, we see that goblin nests are defeated by Goblin Slayer, or the rare competent porcelain adventurer group. If these nests wiped themselves out he wouldn't be run so ragged, we wouldn't keep seeing groups of porcelains get wiped and raped, and Guild Girl wouldn't be reduced to begging other adventurers to please take this low-paying goblin job and help cut down on the large number of them.

Even Goblin Slayer doesn't take every single goblin quest. Newbie groups are a thing and we repeatedly see them try (and often die) against goblins, Guild Girl suggests that it's not uncommon for two or three groups to try a single nest. Even if he personally doesn't have that many missions it's completely unreasonable to presume we're seeing every quest and there couldn't possibly be a couple of groups of porcelains trying their luck that morning.

Disagree, they don't have that kind of infrastructure. You're literally piling up more non-canon to justify the last non-canon you made up at this point.

They don't have modern-level communications, they're operating in a super-tiny area. Goblin Slayer can walk to the guild in the morning, destroy three goblin nests over the course of the day, and then walk back to Cowgirl's farm for supper that evening. Goblin nests occur barely out of the line of sight of human villages.

If we just take canon as it is, we don't need to make up an imaginary modern-day communications system, we can just accept that actually, all this is happening in a tiny area where the speed of foot messages are sufficient, there's another goblin nest (and human village or farm) every couple miles or so, and a lot of things make more sense without having to make up so much stuff.


Why not just have the Enterprise beam Dr. McCoy down to any farmer with an injury and treat them immediately, as long as you're making up stuff that explicitly doesn't exist in the setting? Goblin Slayer is a super-low magic setting. There are no potions. Magic items in general are exceptionally rare, and consumables like scrolls are lostech that can only be found in ancient ruins, nobody living can create them. We've only seen a single scroll in the entire series so far.

The odds that the king can afford to send incredibly valuable scrolls of heal to every farm is not only insane, you're also now undercutting your position by placing even more valuable items in every distant, unprotected farm to draw more attackers and make them juicier targets.

Magic Scroll

Magic Scrolls are rare scrolls that contain ancient magic now lost to the current era. Magic Scrolls are said to be an item usually discovered in ancient ruins, but very rarely. When a Magic Scroll is unrolled, even an infant can cast the spell written in it. Many adventurers simply sell them...

goblin-slayer.fandom.com

I'm seriously questioning your knowledge of this franchise and the base you're building your house of cards on. I mean, I barely looked at it but I still have a much more in-depth understanding.

Goblin Lord have very sofiscitated plan,with:
1.100 goblins with 30 wolf riders and 2 shamans using captyred womans as schields as main force
2.30 hoggoblins in ambush if things go South
3.Choosen womans hide with goblin guards in case all other units lost.

GS saw through it all,killed main and ambush force,liberated womans,and finally executed Lord.

But,without that,town would fall,and all girls would end gangraped and killed - but after delivering few litters of goblins.
Becouse that Goblin Lord was smart enough to not kill raped womans before they birth goblins,too.

And it is true about new adventurers being send to claean goblin nest and dying,when 2 or 3 group succed.

Which mean,that humans should long enough go excint.Goblins could mature in weeks,humans need at least 15 years for that.
If you lost 4-8 humans for every nest,humanity would last 2-5 years at best.
Elves - even worst.

 

[Bear Ribs]

Goblin Lord have very sofiscitated plan,with:
1.100 goblins with 30 wolf riders and 2 shamans using captyred womans as schields as main force
2.30 hoggoblins in ambush if things go South
3.Choosen womans hide with goblin guards in case all other units lost.

GS saw through it all,killed main and ambush force,liberated womans,and finally executed Lord.

But,without that,town would fall,and all girls would end gangraped and killed - but after delivering few litters of goblins.
Becouse that Goblin Lord was smart enough to not kill raped womans before they birth goblins,too.

And it is true about new adventurers being send to claean goblin nest and dying,when 2 or 3 group succed.

Which mean,that humans should long enough go excint.Goblins could mature in weeks,humans need at least 15 years for that.
If you lost 4-8 humans for every nest,humanity would last 2-5 years at best.
Elves - even worst.

Humans don't go extinct because Illusion creates new humans and drops them fully-formed into the world to keep up their numbers.

This is also why there's such a gender imbalance among adventurers, Illusion prefers to create young girls so she tends to make parties that are either all female like the party that gets TPR'd in chapter 4 or three girls to one guy like the newbie party in the first episode. It's not actually surprising Goblin Slayer has half a dozen girls thirsting at him when you realize there's actually several girls per guy in that universe. It's more surprising every guy doesn't have a harem given that would appear to be the only option for most women, but Goblin Slayer has the typical Japanese Protagonist inability to recognize how every single girl is trying to get in his pants.

 

[ATP]

Humans don't go extinct because Illusion creates new humans and drops them fully-formed into the world to keep up their numbers.

This is also why there's such a gender imbalance among adventurers, Illusion prefers to create young girls so she tends to make parties that are either all female like the party that gets TPR'd in chapter 4 or three girls to one guy like the newbie party in the first episode. It's not actually surprising Goblin Slayer has half a dozen girls thirsting at him when you realize there's actually several girls per guy in that universe. It's more surprising every guy doesn't have a harem given that would appear to be the only option for most women, but Goblin Slayer has the typical Japanese Protagonist inability to recognize how every single girl is trying to get in his pants.

You are not wrong.
Such world could exist only thanks to Deux ex Machina.