Editing Lyraea:Gobi (section)

== History ==

Gobi didn't even know other Realmstars existed until she was nearly 8. All she knew was her clan. Even more than being violent, brutal creatures, goblins on her home Realmstar are scavengers. Everything Gobi knows about mechanics and ships, she had to learn by doing, and she entirely taught herself, despite what the rest of her clan expected of her. They '''expected''' her to join in the scavenging, join them in tearing apart any ship that dared to drift close to their planet. No one from her clan did anything to keep or make the ships functional - the large parts were used to make shelters, the small parts were used to make weaponry, and everything else was either hoarded or traded to other clans.

Gobi was interested in the ships from the start. She wanted to know where they came from. She wanted to know about the creatures living - and dying - in them. She wanted to know '''everything'''.

This behavior was not encouraged. When she asked too many questions, she was punished, so she learned not to ask. When she was caught trying to make a piece of ship tech work again, she was punished more, so she learned to be sneaky. And when she finally succeeded, when she managed to make a tiny, one-being craft flyable again, she got the '''fuck''' off of her home Realmstar.

Of course, being a sheltered kid (effectively 9 years old at the time), she could have very easily fallen in with a bad kind of crowd. Luckily, she stumbled across a member of the Starforge Guild who was having a bit of trouble with one of his reaction coils. It was a problem that Gobi had encountered herself when she was rebuilding her little ship, so she was able to fix the problem in a matter of hours all by herself. When she told the man she had no formal training and, indeed, had just rebuilt her ship herself, he took her straight to the head of his branch of the guild.

Though she wasn't interested in committing herself fully to the guild - there was still too much to see and do! - she did agree to some more formal training. It was essentially an apprenticeship, where she studied under another mechanic.

Gobi caught on fast. She couldn't follow written instructions and her grasp of proper schematics was flimsy at best, but she was a master at intuiting what different ships needed to work. She could almost sense it, like an empath but for mechanics. She was quick in her work as well. Her size made her the perfect candidate for the fiddly little bits that sometimes needed repairing in the tighter spots around engines and such. While she wasn't terribly strong, she could still manage her tools with ease, even when those tools were bigger than her. All told, she caught on to more during her six months as an apprentice than many tended to learn in years.

Throughout it all, her mentor, Claudius, tried to get her to formally join the guild. Eventually, after much persuasion and just a little bribery, Gobi agreed to become an independent contractor of sorts. She wouldn't become a full member, but she would do occasional work for the guild. And she was glad she let Claudius finally talk her into it, because the arrangement became very lucrative, for both her and the guild. Not only was she now being paid for her mechanical work, she was able to go on excursions that required her skills. She got to visit new Realmstars and meet new people as part of her '''job'''. And she didn't have to kill anyone! At least, that wasn't a priority. Sometimes it just happened.

One thing that Gobi learned during her time with the Starforge Guild was that goblins grew differently than other creatures in the universe. During her apprenticeship with Claudius, she met his family - his wife, their daughter and her husband, and their three children, the oldest of which was Gobi's age. She found '''no''' similarities with the boy. He was absolutely a child. Had Gobi remained on her home Realmstar, she likely would have a child of her own and maybe another on the way. Claudius' daughter and son-in-law were in their early 30s and were talking about having another baby. Gobi had two older siblings, at least three younger, and her parents had been maybe 20 when she finally left home. Claudius was 63 and still perfectly healthy. Goby didn't know anyone from her clan older than 50. If they weren't killed in battle, maybe they'd make it longer, but it had been a violent Realmstar. There weren't many elders, and those that were got that way by being faster and stronger than the rest.