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Goblins

In General

"If you looked hard, you might be able to find one. But in the end, the only good goblins are the ones who NEVER show their faces to the light of day."

— Goblin Slayer

The very monsters that the Goblin Slayer is killing in his crusade. They're known for attacking various villages in the story.

Abhorrent Admirer: The barbaric, ugly, and unhygienic goblins are essentially this to most of the female cast due to their Mars Needs Women nature. While they can reproduce with women of any species, the women they tend to lust after are usually conventionally attractive humans and elves, and being the evil little bastards that they are, they always try to take the women they target by force. Though a closer reading shows that the narration flip-flops a lot on whether goblins have a similar view of and desire for beauty as humans, or strongly revile human aesthetics and get off more on marring them with their filth. Of course, these two perspectives can be easily reconciled by factoring in goblins’ rampant sour grapes mentality and the fact that, to them, sex and torture are incomplete without the other.
Acquired Situational Narcissism: A goblin at the bottom of the pecking order will whine about how its bosses are superfluous blowhards preventing anything getting done. That same goblin placed in a position of authority a few days later will espouse how leaders like him are on top by merit of their vision and the only ones getting any work done.
Ain't Too Proud to Beg: A goblin feels absolutely zero compunction in rolling over crying for its life. The fact it will instantly attempt to bury a knife in the one causing its self-abasement once they relent helps, but mostly it’s because a goblin values literally nothing except its own hide.
Alien Blood: Goblin gore is mentioned at several points to be weirdly darker and more viscous than human blood.
Alien Fair Folk: Goblin Slayer's sister would tell him that goblins came from one of the sky's moons, specifically the green one. A peek into a portal mirror reveals goblins working a machine made entirely out of human bones under a pitch-black sky, surrounded by endlessly-stretching fields of green sand...
Aliens Are Bastards: If they are indeed from the green moon, they are definitely this, as they are horrible monsters who are intelligent enough to understand right from wrong and just don't care.
Always Chaotic Evil: Make no mistake, these guys are some of the vilest depictions of your standard fantasy goblin in modern fiction. To put it mildly, their entire existence rests on making people's lives as horribly miserable as can be. This trope ends up discussed, with Priestess (horrified at Goblin Slayer killing goblin newborns) asking whether a good goblin could exist. Slayer replies that, even if such a thing is possible, it is simply not worth risking when the much more likely alternative is letting loose upon the world a goblin that is now wise to his tricks and could teach his race to counter them or even utilize them for their own nefarious goals.
Ambush Enemy: Their only major advantage besides their raw numbers is their ability to harness the element of surprise to outmaneuver and pounce on adventurers that stumble through their dens.
Animal Eyes: All goblins have beady, bulging, solid-yellow eyes with horizontal pupils, resembling a goat, or perhaps an octopus or frog. On some of them, the pupils have become distorted or somehow broken up.
Asshole Victim: The whole point of any time when Goblin Slayer finds a nest is watching him give the goblins inside what's coming to them, and watching them get killed without mercy is quite enjoyable.
Ax-Crazy: Goblins are psychotic little gremlins that enjoying tearing apart and/or raping their victims.
Bad Is Good and Good Is Bad: Zigzagged trope. It is occasionally stated that goblins are disgusted by the sight of humans, and the few times we get Sympathetic P.O.V. from one they tend to view human civilized life as anathema. These assertions kinda fly in the face of all the explicit scenes of goblins literally drooling over good-looking fresh prey, and how every goblin of significant intelligence or ambition is trying to coopt or mimic human technology and culture to lift his race out of the muck. The stated sentiments only make sense as attempts by the goblins to delude themselves into believing they are as contemptuous of humans as humans are of them, and deny the reality that the goblins are unilaterally envious of and dependent on the richness of the races they prey upon.
Bald of Evil: For whatever reason, few if any goblins seem to have a full head of hair. This seems to be a sign of rank or evolution, as no standard goblin has any hair, but hobs, champions, and lords have beards and/or a crown of hair (while still bald). One small goblin was seen with a beard and identified as a pirate goblin, but whether that beard was real or just for the joke is unknown.
Bamboo Technology: In Volume 2, Goblin Slayer peeks through the Water Town goblins' Portal Network and sees a group of goblins hand-operating a giant machine in a green desert. Whatever it is (the manga and anime suggest something like a mill) it was apparently made primarily of bones.
Bastard Bastard: Every single goblin is a Child by Rape and part of an Always Chaotic Evil race, so they are literal "bastards" by every definition of the word.
Beneath Notice: Goblins owe their success as career raiders in massive part to the fact that, outside of occasional recruitment into multipolar evil armies, they are limited to attacking the boonies and fringes of society, and at that only in intermittent cycles. The aristocracy are barely aware of the occasional frontier hamlets wiped out, and dismiss it as the perils of expanding civilization and lack of vigilance so long as the problem doesn't spread more.
Brilliant, but Lazy: Goblins seemingly can learn new skills borderline instantly, and have consistently demonstrated across multiple volumes that when forced to build, they are capable of perfectly serviceable if not particularly fine craftsmanship. Nothing is really stopping them from setting up a functional and constructive society, save their own obsession with living only in service to their rapacious appetites.
Cannon Fodder: To adventurers, to other monsters, and even to each other. As long as an objective is eventually completed, the death toll matters little to goblins.
Carry a Big Stick: At their most feral, without a stable civilization to steal from (such as in the depths of a dungeon) they have nothing but crude clubs and branches as weapons.
Child by Rape: Every single goblin by default is one. And there's no end to them.
Children Are Innocent: Not at all. They know from an early age that acting helpless can easily gain an adventurer's mercy, which is why Goblin Slayer doesn't give them any just like the adults.
Classic Villain: All goblins in this setting are unapologetically evil creatures that embody vice and sin- in a rare instance of someone representing all seven of the Deadly Sins. They are a species of vengeful monsters that will never let go of a grudge (Wrath). They are able to devour any living creature, with the sole exception seemingly being other goblins (Gluttony). They look upon other beings with a desire for their achievements and possessions (Envy). They will steal anything of value that they can get their hands on (Greed). Despite having great potential to evolve and adapt, they usually refuse to put in the work to do so unless it becomes necessary (Sloth). They desire females of other species in order to reproduce and would brazenly try to rape women even in the middle of a fight (Lust). Above all else, they are all narcissists who view themselves as better than everybody else and thus believe they are entitled to commit their horrifying actions (Pride).
Cold-Blooded Torture: When they aren't raping their kidnapped victims, they are committing this. There is no rhyme or reason for it, and they don't care if they prematurely kill the victim in the middle of their fun. After all, they can always just capture more. While this is largely true of any male captives, they can, however, display enough rage for a given act to skip right over the raping, in regards to females, and go straight to torture, given enough incentive.
Combat Pragmatist: All goblins are fully aware of their physical and mental weaknesses, and do everything they can to give themselves an edge, including utilizing Poisoned Weapons that will kill adventurers even if the initial stab doesn't do any serious damage, will strike their legs to knock them down when the opportunity is available, outright gang up and dog-pile on anybody that isn't strong enough to resist, and will even take to Playing Possum in order to strike when their guards are down.
Create Your Own Hero: A typical, unremarkable goblin raid against a pioneer hamlet resulted in the traumatization of a young Farm Boy who, after being picked up for some Training from Hell that calcified his vindictive resolve, would go on to become Goblin Slayer and launch a years-long personal crusade in which he has killed thousands if not tens of thousands of goblins across the land almost single-handedly.
Creative Sterility: A point that is made and hammered on constantly is that goblins never make anything for themselves. Anything they have that is more sophisticated than a bundle of sharpened sticks and bones was either stolen or achieved through the instruction and coercion of a more educated, out-of-species taskmaster. However, evidence suggests that lack of goblin culture is due more to unwillingness to create rather than inability, as goblins that are taught can work with their hands without issue, Goblin Slayer believes they could and would be forced to develop cultivation if there were no other sapient species to prey on, and the probable goblin homeland seen through the portal in Volume 2 shows them running some form of industrial machine by themselves.
Crocodile Tears: Juvenile goblins play up what cuteness they have to weep as they beg for their lives. They grow out of this skill as they physically mature, even as they remain just as willing to debase themselves for mercy, but certain smart goblins (like the lord) see the value in relearning to cry on command for the extra pity point.
Cycle of Revenge: It's never explicitly stated what started and who's responsible for the escalating series of attacks that eventually resulted in the goblins' trademark hatred and fervent pursuit of the destruction of human civilization, but they clearly see themselves as part of such a cycle against all other races. As Goblin Slayer notes, it will only end when one side is completely eradicated.
Dead Guy on Display: Goblins will occasionally string up and showcase the bodies of their victims, either as bait for traps or just the boast of an especially egotistical boss.
Decapitated Army: As demonstrated by the Water Town nest, a big horde that sees its leader/best fighter get taken down will turn tail and flee for their lives without a thought.
Devious Daggers: The first goblins Priestess encounters are cave-dwellers who sneak through the tunnels and fight with poisoned daggers.
Diabolus ex Nihilo: An entire race of them. Goblins are universally, and damn near uniformly, sociopathic, covetous, and predatory. They have no form of community beyond squatting together in the armpits of the world until they have enough numbers to go pillaging human settlements, no higher ambitions than being boss of their own posse and carrying off all the food and women they can get their filthy claws on, no interest in negotiation or self-betterment, and no recorded history. Characters idly speculate and make tall-tales about where they even come from, and Goblin Slayer is firmly of the opinion that attempting to rehabilitate or make peace with them is an utterly futile idea, a view that becomes shared by others quickly and easily.
Dirty Coward: No matter how strong they become, a goblin will remain a coward at heart. From lowly child to reigning lord, the probability of fleeing at danger and abandoning fellow goblins to their fates remains roughly the same. Unfortunately, it is because of this that they are an everlasting threat, because goblins avoid attacking heavily-populated areas and only prey on weak frontier towns and villages who barely have the resources to resist them. Only one type of goblin averts this and there's a good reason he does and not without help.
Disaster Dominoes: A riled-up goblin horde crowding in from all directions is a nightmare scenario even for high-level adventurers, but as Goblin Slayer demonstrates in Volume 9, a masterful combatant can trip up one goblin and take another dozen out at once from sheer knock-on collateral effect.
Dominant Species Genes: When they rape a woman of another species (human, elf, etc.), the child is always a pure-blood goblin.
Dressed to Plunder: Quite a few of the boat-riding goblins underneath the Water Town dress like pirates, appropriately enough.
Driven by Envy: Nothing is ever good enough for goblins, because they know that somewhere out there a human has it better, and the thought perpetually drives them to murder.
Elite Mooks: Goblin champions, who are big and powerful enough to casually tear off an adventurer's head, and whom Silver-ranked adventurers (who otherwise see goblins as just newbie targets) regard as worthwhile challenges.
Enfant Terrible: Goblins are instinctive liars and backstabbers even in their child-stage. In Volume 6 Goblin Slayer and High Elf Archer encounter a whelp that just barely left the nest and still had babyfat that palmed a knife even as it cried for its life, and the goblin lord of Volume 1 beat to death an adventuress that showed him mercy when he was even younger.
Entitled Bastard: Goblins regard the world as their oyster and are sociopathic to the point of solipsism. Nevermind being shocked to ever find themselves in a position of peril at another’s hands, they are outraged anyone even tried to resist their attempts to take what they want to begin with. To forgive a goblin and let it go is seen by it as the only correct course of action, and an invitation for it to put you down instead, with no second thoughts.
Even Bad Men Love Their Mamas: Gruesomely averted. Apparently, goblin children have been known to eat the women that gave birth to them shortly after their mothers' deaths.
Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: Goblins have absolutely zero concept of love, compassion, or any other kind of positive bond. In the first chapter, the goblin that picks up Wizard’s staff wears an expression of genuine confusion when she demonstrates emotional attachment to it, and they intellectually understand camaraderie just barely enough to realize that torturing adventurers in front of each other causes additional distress in captives.
Evil Evolves: Goblins, being Explosive Breeders, follow what is known as a Type III Survivorship Curve. Younger specimens of goblins are the most numerous and stupidest of the horde, and naturally are killed in droves. However, any survivors that manage to run will nurse grudges and learn, becoming stronger, and intelligent with age. They mature into self-sufficient "Wanderers" with the leadership capacities to lead new hordes, starting the cycle all over, and are consequently much, much harder to kill. Lords, Champions, Riders, Shamans, and Hobgoblins are in this category, and they are all capable of squaring off against even experienced adventurers. Hence, why Goblin Slayer is so keen on nipping the problem in the bud.
Evil Has a Bad Sense of Humor: The closest thing to a joke a goblin ever makes is pointing at a Breeding Slave and laughing at her misery.
Evil Is Not a Toy: The Desert Kingdom had a dangerously risky plan to breed a nest of goblins to serve as soldiers. The end result was a mutiny.
Evil Is Petty: They live only to steal from and hurt others, and will go out of their way to taunt or psychologically torment their victims if the opportunity is made apparently, such as when one breaks Wizard’s prized staff when it notices her begging for it.
Evil Is Sterile: While they are fast learners, goblins have no culture or ability to invent anything of their own. They'd rather just steal whatever they desire, and anything more advanced than their trademark debauchery is done through mimicry. Averted with the goblin paladin who was given divinely enhanced intellect among other blessings that makes him so intelligent he can copy fighting styles by sight, anticipate his opponent's actions, and turn a savage goblin horde into disciplined warriors while instilling camaraderie and a genuine desire to lay down their lives for a greater cause. He's even more intelligent than a goblin lord and is creative enough to have his people actively plan and build things as opposed to just copying. The goblin's ability to learn quickly and spread their knowledge among their own kind means that if the paladin's horde and the paladin himself aren't killed then more goblin paladins may be created. Even killing him and his horde is no guarantee as if it was done once, it could be done again. Or even that what they learned won't somehow be passed on.
Evil Laugh: Many goblins express themselves with nasally spates of laughter. One goblin in the anime lets out a particularly bone-chilling chuckle just before it starts to rape Fighter.
Evil Smells Bad: It's been stated several times that goblins smell terrible. Apparently, the scent is similar to rotting flesh. Priestess almost throws up a number of times getting too close to them.
Eviler than Thou: Goblins are not powerful compared to many of the threats in the world, and there are villains and monsters who are easily more dangerous and can easily cause more damage to the wider world. However, goblins are notoriously hated and well known for easily being one of the most cruel and sadistic creatures, being willing to use methods of cruelty and torment that far exceed what many higher tiered foes would even consider doing, at least on a personal level.
Evolution Power-Up: The second half of what makes them such a threat besides their unexpected savagery and spite is that goblins are capable of unlocking new powers, inhuman physical might, and even mental acumen through continuous or radical growth.
Explosive Breeder: A thoroughly horrifying twist on the "breed like rabbits" analogy, as all goblins are forcibly bred from other species. Considering how many of these new (literal) bastards pop out of the ground all the time, do the math. Even worse; the time from conception to the birth of multiple goblin children from a single mother is less than one week. In Volume 1, Goblin Slayer discovers four goblin children in a den and remarks that they would have numbered fifty before long.
Express Delivery: While the exact details aren't very clear (like the precise time frame and the average numbers of goblins that are born from the same birth), it's been made apparent the gestation cycle for a woman that is pregnant with a child is unnaturally quick, as one woman can give birth to multiple goblins after one week.
Face Full of Alien Wing-Wong: While goblins are born in a similar way to regular reproduction using a woman's womb, the actual process is nowhere near normal, as it takes less than a week for a goblin to fully form and be birthed, while regardless of the species biology for the reluctant mother, all goblins are born exactly the same, taking on none of the mother's traits unlike regular interspecies children, strongly implying that the internal process is completely alien to nature in design.
The Farmer and the Viper: The only thing that an adventurer is going to get out of sparing a goblin straggler after clearing a nest is a wanderer with a fresh batch of knowledge of adventurer fighting techniques, experience in exploiting human magnanimity, and redoubled hatred of the player races. This applies especially to goblin whelps.
For the Evulz: No goblin has any higher purpose for raiding, raping, and torturing than feeding their own carnal appetites. They explicitly lack the capacity to gain fulfillment through less abusive practices.
Goal-Oriented Evolution: Some of Goblin Slayer's comments suggest that the specialized tier older goblins develop into is determined through choice of the goblin itself.
Grass is Greener: All evidence points to goblins indeed coming from the moon, that moon indeed being inhospitably barren, and the goblin invasion indeed being driven primarily by a covetous drive to claim the fertile Earth as theirs to exploit.
Green-Eyed Monster: All goblins harbor a deep and all-consuming font of envy and resentment in what passes for their souls, exacerbated by the perpetual squalor of their lives and homes and their refusal to actively change any of it. They steal whatever they can, let it get destroyed from lack of maintenance, and do nothing but curse others for having nicer things. A good illustration of this comes from the goblin viewpoint chapter in Volume 4, where a goblin who took a spear from a captured adventurer decides he wants the belt his brother took instead, only to become outraged and possessive when he realizes his brother wants the spear as well.
Groin Attack: According to Goblin Slayer, the groin area is a vital spot for goblins. He even kills one by throwing an axe in the crotch.
Guilt-Free Extermination War: Unless they're taking back women for use as Breeding Slaves, goblins massacre anyone they can't be manipulated into working for. In turn, everyone else will try to kill goblins without remorse. The series makes it abundantly clear that goblins are Always Chaotic Evil to such a degree that the only way this war ends is with one side totally wiped out.
Hair-Trigger Temper: Goblins are described as always sullen or infuriated, always looking for the slightest figment of an excuse to lash out, and always thinking they are entirely justified in their aggreivement.
Half the Man He Used to Be: Goblins do tend to get bisected as a matter of course in fights. Most prominently in Volume 16, when Lizard Priest picks one up over his head, tears it in two through brute strength without even cutting it, and tosses the halves to either side.
Hated by All: Absolutely nobody has anything positive to say about goblins. At least four major characters desired nothing but their complete extinction in at least one point for justified reasons, and many others are perfectly aware how vile and monstrous they are.
Hates Everyone Equally: Every individual goblin views all non-goblins as wretched animals that exist to be subjugated and preyed upon until death, and all other goblins besides itself as dopey, fair-weather cronies to exploit and dispose of for its own gain. In Volume 5 of the light novel, Goblin Slayer is first alerted that something very different is happening when he finds a goblin who was given first aid by another of its kind, since normally a wounded goblin would be left to its own devices.
Hate Sink: A very rare case where this trope applies to a whole species instead of an individual. You'd be very hard-pressed to find any instances where you can sympathize with such creatures. Even then, they will rapidly and cheerfully yank that moment away with a fresh example of their vile cruelty. The franchise makes it clear that species-wide extinction is pretty much the only desired outcome when it comes to goblins.
The Hedonist: Goblins are firm believers in instant gratification, and will help themselves to food or women as much and as fast as the opportunity is presented unless someone is on hand to physically restrain them from jumping crotch-first into sating their desires.
Hellish Pupils: Usually they are portrayed with Blank White Eyes, but the occasional Gross-Up Close-Up in later chapters reveals bulging, goat/octopus-like eyeballs with a cluster of small, uneven pupils around the center one, with branches of them stretching to each corner of the eyes.
Hero Killer: The crux of the series is in reviving the lethality and brutality of goblins even as they are still seen as 1st level fodder. It's not just rookies they take down either; more than one mid-level Steel or Sapphire party has been completely wiped out by the monsters over the course of the series.
His Own Worst Enemy: The whole reason the goblins are so ruthless and sadistic is due to vengeance against other races for the destruction of their homes and slaughter of their race. They feel justified in what they do, but they conveniently ignore the fact they go out of their way to kill anyone that isn't a goblin and happily kidnap and rape any woman they manage to grab on to. If anything, the goblins have only themselves to blame for the onslaught of their people.
Hoist by His Own Petard: Goblin Slayer loves nothing more than turning goblin tactics back against their practitioners, who are too arrogant and shortsighted to ever think they could be beaten at their own games. The most direct example of this is in Volume 2, when the Water Town goblins lock the party in a mausoleum and pump poison gas in. Goblin Slayer seals all the holes leaking gas, and notes that the blowback will have suffocated a number of them before they managed to regroup and start breaking into the room they had sealed to get away from the gas.
Home Field Advantage: Goblins are excellent climbers and diggers with Innate Night Vision and an enhanced sense of smell, stacking the deck heavily in their favor when it comes to counter-ambushing adventurers raiding their caves.
The Horde: The most common and savage of the "Unpraying", the monstrous races and servants of the Demon Lords and Evil Gods, goblins are obsessively hostile and completely incapable of being reasoned with. Guild Girl ruefully notes that even evil lizardmen tribes and other traditionally villainous humanoid races are still open to the possibility of negotiations, and have at least moderately constructive cultures. Goblins are just ravaging marauders with no inclination of rising above their basest impulses.
Hypocrite: Nobody calls out goblins for being barbaric, wasteful, stupid, and arrogant more than other goblins, or with less self-awareness.
Human Shield: Particularly crafty goblins are able to recognize that their female captives that can no longer serve as breeding slaves still have value as deterrents against adventurer attacks.
I Love the Dead: If they have few captive women, goblins have little qualms about continuing to abuse a fresh corpse before getting around to eating it.
Inferiority Superiority Complex: While every goblin is an entitled and arrogant toerag that genuinely thinks it should be the rightful lord of everything it sees, they also are at least subconsciously painfully aware of how stupid and wasteful they are in comparison to the praying races and enact their raids partly from a spiteful desire to ruin what others have that they are incapable of building.
Innate Night Vision: They can see in the dark just fine and use it to their advantage. Unfortunately for them, this leaves them vulnerable to sudden bright lights (such as Priestess's Holy Light spell), which Goblin Slayer takes advantage of on numerous occasions.
Instant Expert: Downplayed, but goblins are amazingly quick to absorb new skills for how dimwitted and oafish they are reputed to be. The main reason Goblin Slayer is so adamant about leaving no survivors is because he is sure that even one goblin just seeing his traps and techniques and living to tell of it would then be able to reverse engineer his strategies and pass those new skills on to the rest of its race in time. This can work against them sometimes, such as in Volume 5 when the Snow Mountain goblins copy Goblin Slayer's loosened-arrowheads trick under the assumption that those arrows must be better in all circumstances than how they were preparing them before if an adventurer is doing it, only for them to prove less effective than usual when they try to use them on the armored target that is Goblin Slayer himself.
Interplay of Sex and Violence: When goblins are stealing supplies or guarding their nests, they go about it quietly and resentfully. The only time they spoil for a fight and are truly fired up is when they have the promise of a sweet defenseless girl to beat into the ground for the trouble. War rape is such an omnipresent and overpowering motivator for goblins that a substantial fraction of any horde is liable to drop everything and get to rutting if they get on top of a female victim that very instant, with no concern for the situation of the ongoing battle as a whole or the vulnerable target they present by not containing themselves until the aftermath.
Irrational Hatred: Goblins despise everything but themselves, but they have a special hate for humans that manifests through a number of almost contradictory resentments and spites. Goblins simultaneously look down on humanity, want to take all it has built, and blame it for their own miserable lot in life.
I Surrender, Suckers: Goblins will without fail shamelessly grovel for pity and then attempt to backstab an adventurer that spares their life the instant they turn around after seeing them beg.
It Can Think:
- Goblins are dumb and weak, but they are also resourceful enough to know how to set traps, as well as to make use of wolves as sentry dogs.
- What is most concerning about goblins is their learning capacity; Goblin Slayer implies many of the tools and skills the creatures use are crude imitations of adventurers'. If that's not enough, hordes under servitude can be taught effectively by their masters, making them even more a hassle than goblins already ought to be. For example, they've already at some point figured out that if they see a light in the darkness, then chances are an adventurer is nearby to kill.
- Goblin Slayer routinely points out their "culture of humor" and penchant for grandiosity as evidence of their potential for civilization building and that rehabilitating them with education won't work.
It's All About Me: Rampant and unwarranted narcissism is probably the least of their negative traits, but still. Goblins tend to see all creatures around them, fellow gobs and enemy races alike, as stupid leeches hogging its rightful bounty. The sooner everyone else recognizes that goblin's natural claim to rulership, or at least dies and leaves its stuff up for grabs, the sooner the world will be set right in its mind.
Jerkass: As Goblin Slayer describes it, they will sometimes just point at a brutalized or dying captive and start laughing. Mocking or celebrating others’ pain seems to be the only kind of enjoyment, let alone "humor", they are capable of.
Karmic Death: With every foul Kick the Dog moment they commit, you're going to want the death of every goblin to be as violent as Goblin Slayer can muster.
The Killer Becomes the Killed: Every goblin is born thinking they can rule the frontier and take whatever they want, be it food, women, or somebody's life. Every goblin massacred by Goblin Slayer is reminded of their proper place in the world — that of bloody smears staining the armor of adventurers.
Kick the Dog: It is noted repeatedly that a goblin's only source of pleasure, be it carnal delight or casual amusement, is from petty acts of physical cruelty. The first example we see is a goblin breaking Wizard's staff after hearing her demand it returned. Needless to say, goblins hand these moments out like candy.
Klingon Promotion: If allowed, a goblin will have no problem killing a leader to take his place. Goblins can make peace with this idea because they assume they can temporarily use the leader for their own ends as long as he stays alive.
Lack of Empathy: Every single goblin is a self-obsessed and pitiless savage who would watch every other creature on Earth die with a smile. This extends to the rest of their race and even their nest-mates; no goblin has any genuine camaraderie with any other one, and the closest they get to mourning their dead is feeling personally affronted that a filthy adventurer would dare rob them of a spare meat shield and prospective crony. This is averted with the introduction of the goblin paladin class as his divinely enhanced intelligence and his divine blessings allow him to instill purpose and valor in the goblins around him which effectively changes his horde into a true army. Goblin Slayer makes it a point of putting an end to him because the thought of more goblin paladins actually organizing the little bastards and giving them a common purpose beyond their own self-interest is utterly terrifying.
Large Runt: Inverted. The goblins in the abandoned dwarven settlement and those raiding the Viking villages in Volume 14 are noted by Goblin Slayer to be unusually well-muscled and tall enough for "their heads to come level with his upper chest", which would put them at roughly four and a half feet in stature compared to the barely over three feet of goblins in his home region. He also notes a few occasions were he faces off with a goblin leader or specialist fighter that is clearly not a full hobgoblin or other evolution but has still grown enough to stand level with a short human, such as the dragon rider in volume 11 or the berserker-imitating ship captain goblin also from volume 14.
Leeroy Jenkins: Their greed, short-sightedness, and arrogance ensues that their attack strategy is never more complex than "charge in as fast as you can and start grabbing the spoils. There's no way we will be the ones to bite it". Most egregious in Volume 10, when the goblins storming the mansion try to sidestep and ignore Lizard Priest to hurry and get their clutches on Priestess in the middle of a battle.
Little Green Men: Goblins in this series are technically aliens, and fully meet this physical standard.
Love Is a Weakness: To an extent they are capable of comprehending the concepts of empathy and bonds between people, but they find the very ideas risible and just another symptom of the inferiority of the races they prey upon, taking a particularly ugly glee in torturing loved ones in front of each other and destroying prized possessions for that extra dose of despair.
Lust Makes You Dumb: They sometimes rape women on the middle of the battlefield while the battle is still going, which frequently gets them killed.
Made of Plasticine: Base level goblins will explode into Ludicrous Gibs at the slightest blow from any of the heroes (barring Priestess).
Magikarp Power: Goblins are genuinely Mooks a dime a dozen, with all the intelligence and individual effectiveness as that implies. Older goblins that have survived the gauntlet of adventurers for years though, they are a much different story. Some become leaders who ensure the survival of their horde, much to the detriment of everything else. Others grow strong enough to give elite adventurers a run for their money. A rare few, such as goblin lords, throw off the characteristic stupidity altogether and develop intelligence on par, if not exceeding that, of a human.
Mars Needs Women: Regardless of race, any pregnancy sired by goblins will only result in another goblin. Recall those children and the kidnapped girls in the introductory arc. The trope is even more fitting given the hints that Goblin Slayer's sister's story that goblins hail from the green moon is actually true.
Mooks: Because of their malevolence and relative ease to control through fear and the promise of plunder and women, goblins are sometimes utilized by other nasties who happen to be in the market for expendable, nasty minions. Most times goblins roam the countryside in unassociated packs, establishing nests or engaging in banditry, becoming a very real threat to the immediate area, though considered more of a minor to intermediate threat in the grand scheme of things. It's only when they grow enough in numbers to become a horde are they considered to be a true threat.
Moral Myopia: Whenever the story switches perspectives to that of the goblins, it is made very clear that they vehemently oppose humans and adventurers for slaughtering them in droves, taking away their children and homes to leave them with nothing. They are justified in their vengeance... so says the wantonly sadistic thieves and rapists who actively prey on the weak without remorse or acknowledgement of consequences.
The Mutiny: A goblin horde has no qualms about immediately turning on a leader that they have lost fear of, even in the middle of battle. The goblin lord in Year One gets shanked for trying to flee, and the goblin paladin has to drum up a stampede to chase after the party to prevent his troops from just abandoning the fort altogether.
Mystical Pregnancy: Any woman, regardless of race, that is impregnated by a goblin will give birth to a goblin. Additionally, gestation of a goblin child is unnaturally quick, with a woman being able to give birth to multiple goblins in about a week. It's revealed in Chapter 30 of the manga that a woman being used as a Breeding Slave by the goblins is expected to have a life span of just under 2 weeks if they are not saved before then, further cementing proof of the quick gestation cycle.
Narcissist: Goblins as a whole are self-obsessed to a pathological degree; unwaveringly convinced of their personal superiority and legitimately outraged that no other beings are willing to just bow to their whims.
Never My Fault: Goblins barely recognize their own kind as thinking beings, let alone other races. Any reaction against a goblin exercising its cruelty is seen as an unreasonable and uncalled for affront to its dignity and freedom.
Nice Job Breaking It Heroes!:
- The reason there are so many goblins running around in the world is due to the fact that there is so little reward in goblin-related quests. People who ask to rid their farm of goblins often do not have the money to pay a proper adventurer to do so. Due to so many adventurers rejecting these quests, the goblins are allowed to Rape, Pillage, and Burn with free rein.
- Because nobody save Goblin Slayer is actually doing any of these quests, the Guild has no choice but to send newbie adventurers en masse to deal with the problem at their nests... some of whom are ill-prepared to deal with the actual threat the goblins themselves pose. Those that survive and succeed are promoted straight-away without any fuss.
- According to Goblin Slayer, the problem is made even worse when people allow fleeing goblin children to live, letting them run away to grow up strong enough to get their vengeance.
- Not helping matters at all are central governing bodies like the Capital, who are too focused on the Demon Lord, politics, and internal affairs to spend any effort protecting the outskirt villages settling the frontier, where the majority of goblin raids (and other monster attacks) occur. Villagers are forced to rely on adventurers they can't afford, when even a lonely military outpost could have sufficed in repelling the frontier's threats.
Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: The goblin's atrocities also led to the birth of their worst nightmare, Goblin Slayer. This is a relentless crusader hellbent on hunting any and all goblins he can until either they go extinct or he dies.
Nocturnal Mooks: While seen active at all times of day, Goblin Slayer says they are naturally most alert at nighttime, and they prefer to raid villages under cover of darkness.
Nonstandard Character Design: The Goblins are drawn semi-realistically with heavily exaggerated and hideous facial features unlike most other characters. Even the Troll, while hideous-looking isn't drawn in such detail. It almost sounds like these things aren't even supposed to exist in the first place.
Normal Fish in a Tiny Pond: In spite of all the havoc they wreak on villages, most goblins really are just Cannon Fodder in the grand scheme of things. Every other species shown in the story (outside of rats) has individually proven to be far more destructive than even what a whole horde could possibly muster. Which, admittedly, doesn't say great things about the world. Still, at least one can take some small comfort in that most monsters are more likely to "kill" when attacking than to "abduct"...
- Whether intentional on their or a patron's part or not, goblins have successfully invoked and exploited this trope by almost never independently escalating their raids from the occasional razed frontier settlement. It's noted that all it would take to force the king to respond militarily to the goblin horde is for them to start seriously threatening the trade routes and established towns of the heartland, but that never happens in significant ways no matter how strong their numbers are.
The Nose Knows: On top of their Innate Night Vision, goblins are credited with an exceptional sense of smell, which is why Goblin Slayer keeps his equipment covered in grime.
Not-So-Harmless Villain: Novice adventurers tend to significantly underestimate the threat goblins represent due to how weak they are individually. The Guild also provides less than stellar rewards for resolving goblin-related problems, largely due to poor villages being the ones who submit them. This makes goblin hunting unattractive and fuels a misconception that weak monsters result in low prize money.
Not Worth Killing: One of the reasons why goblins still continue to exist is because they are so relatively weak and not a threat to major cities and kingdoms. It's just not worth the expense and effort to raise an army to march into the wilderness and purge them when there's so many more serious threats to deal with.
One-Gender Race: Female goblins don't exist. Every single last goblin is born a male; hence their constant need to hunt for the females of other races just to multiply.
O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Goblin Slayer always makes a mental note whenever he sees or hears of a goblin behaving outside of the norm. The little beasties are creatures of habit and typically driven by their base desires first and foremost, so something must be powerful and fearsome enough to force a change of self-conduct. A vivisected corpse found in an alleyway? Captured victims not being raped already after a certain amount of time? Knowledge on how to make and row boats? All of these make for important details.
Our Goblins Are Different: Weirdly enough for a work all about goblins, subverted. Their behaviors and antics in Goblin Slayer aren't too far away from what you'd find in flavor text of many fantasy RPGs. Rather, it's how said antics are examined through the eyes of other characters that makes them fearsome instead of amusing. They are also very much in the Tolkien-ish mold, being an unrepentantly evil, feral, and cave-dwelling species. That being said, as the series goes on and lore on them gets more detailed, they start to differentiate themselves by combining a number of more niche or obscure facets from other works together into one background; being a One-Gender Race who must reproduce with females of other species is a distinct departure from most mainstream depictions (though still a relatively common monster trait in certain hardcore Seinen works and particularly edgy Hentai), them being capable of Evolution Power-Up is fairly unique outside of some video games, and the fact that they are probably literal alien invaders to the setting is novel outside of the Warhammer Fantasy and RuneScape settings.
Our Orcs Are Different: While these are definitively goblins, they seem to have some of the attitude of typical fantasy orcs, and the larger varieties can be seen as straight analogues. Compounding this is that "proper" orcs do not exist in the Goblin Slayer setting; "orc" is simply the elvish word for goblin, which harkens back to Tolkien.
Out with a Bang: Goblins have been known to kill their female captives in this manner, with poor Noble Knight being the most notable example. However, this does apply to several goblins themselves, as Goblin Slayer is perfectly fine with killing goblins when they have their pants down, which he does in Volume 2 of Year One.
The Pawns Go First: A favorite tactics among many of the Arc Villains throughout the series, with the goblins being the pawns. Justified, as in most cases all goblins are The Starscream who would not hesitate kill their bosses, whether they be goblins or non-goblins, should said leaders be caught in a compromising position.
Planet of Hats: Every goblin to a one in this world is barbaric, stunted, self-absorbed, sexually predatory, lazy, hateful, and buffoonish. It’s merely a variance of degrees. It is a slight Reconstruction of the trope as the story goes into a bit of depth as to how they came about (they are experience fodder for a Cosmic Chess Game, and the kind of god that would design and use them is front and center in the narrative) and stay the way they are (pathological slothfulness and entitlement prevents them from even contemplating self-improvement, a Cycle of Revenge keeps resentment between them and civilized races forever running hot, and the fact they have no women of their own means that they couldn’t go their own way apart from others even if they wanted to.)
Poisoned Weapons: They make poison out of toxic herbs and their own waste, and rub it liberally on their blades.
Pride: More than the borderline feral savagery, more than the surprise lethality, more than the rape, what defines the goblins of this series is an all-but psychotic entitlement complex and conviction of their own invincibility. Nothing can convince a goblin that the world doesn’t just exist for their abuse, that it doesn’t have the right or capacity to kill its leader and subjugate its fellows as the new boss, or that any adventurer poses a strong threat to their life.
Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil: In a world where there are fifty thousand kinds of monsters (no exaggeration), many of the main characters see goblins as one of the most, if not the most, evil creatures because they commit such actions as rape, despite being among the weakest tier of monsters. At least higher tier monsters like dragons and rock eaters will kill their prey without dragging out their misery. There are other hostile species like ogres that also commit this act, but since they are much fewer in numbers, Goblin Slayer considers these monsters beneath goblins despite having more raw power.
Rape, Pillage, and Burn: In addition to raiding lone villages, they're also known to rape women... even worse of a matter if you're an elf woman. Though it's noted that this is a gradual process led by smarter goblin leaders instead of constant, full-blown, directionless onslaughts — a goblin band typically raids villages first, stealing resources to form nests, build up their strength, as in taking food and/or females. If left unchecked, they then come rampaging down on such villages once they're strong and numerous enough.
The Resenter: The leading cause of intra-goblin violence is one specimen feeling that a nestmate has cheated his way into claiming better loot or hogging breeding time with the captives. Goblins are barely less malicious towards their kin than to outside races under the best circumstances, and will kill to rectify what they see as shortchanging.
Robbing the Dead: Throughout Volume 2, Goblin Slayer notes that every pack of goblins he and his team have come across all have unusually good equipment, and wonders where it's all coming from. He gets his answer when he finds the source of all the groups is a huge goblin nest living directly underneath a mausoleum built especially for adventurers just outside Water Town.
Sadist: An entire race of them, or else goblins wouldn't have been treated with nearly as much fear by their victims. In Volume 10, the driver of the goblin battle wagon fantasizes about running Priestess over with his tank, and is as or more gratified by the thought of her death as the idea of capturing her as a Sex Slave. In Volume 11, it's stated by the a goblin in a point-of-view segment that the Desert Kingdom guards have to whip them to refrain from damaging their provided breeding slaves, and the goblins hate them for it because they don't even enjoy sex if they aren't also torturing their victim to the point of death during the act.
Screw This, I'm Out of Here!: Goblins will turn tail the instant they realize they are not on the winning side of an engagement. The do both the "panicked rush to flee" style, such as in Volume 2 when Goblin Slayer successfully intimidates a horde into fleeing pell-mell while they cry and wet their pants, and the "abandoned with disgust" type, in Volume 5 when two goblin peons spit and show their backs to the goblin paladin when the party escapes his fort.
Sinister Schnoz: Long and hooked as a vulture's beak, to a one.
Smug Snake: Goblin Slayer mentions this will lead to their downfall; goblins think they're so superior to everything else that they can't fathom that other beings can copy their tactics and use it against them. So goblins fall for tricks and traps every time.
The Sociopath: A remarkably textbook example that encompasses an entire race. Goblins are born without any empathy or ability to self-reflect; they do not, will not, and more importantly cannot recognize the pain they inflict on their victims. They see themselves as the superior race against common sense, and feed into that sense of superiority by degrading others through deception and assault. At the same time, they are blind as to why some people would hunt them down as a result, instead vowing to continue raping and murdering as revenge for something that was their own fault to begin with. Not that goblins need much more motivation anyway, because their short-term thinking and inability to delay gratification means they will almost never pursue anything beyond their destructive impulses. They don't even care for their own brethren, backstabbing and abuse being commonplace within their ranks. Most damningly, like any cornered sociopath they will default to cheap sympathy-ploys akin to slipping a mask on — there's no genuine sorrow present, just the hope that someone falls for their lies. The rank and file goblins act like low functioning sociopaths, while the smarter and more cunning classes of goblins act like high functioning ones.
Sole Survivor: Nearly all "higher-tier" goblin types (except for riders) start off as wanderers; runaway, last living members of their original nests who travel across the land leading hand-to-mouth existences that either end with them starving to death out on their own... or achieving evolution and then status in a new horde.
Sorting Algorithm of Evil: PlayedWith; on the one hand goblins absolutely are the weakest, dumbest, and most pathetic of the sapient monster races, but on the other hand they are also far more lethal than anyone on either side gives them credit for and a combination of factors has led to them actually being more successful Hero Killeres and settlement destroyers than many more sophisticated Chaos races.
Starfish Language: In the manga, whenever goblins actually talk, their speech is rendered as large runic symbols scattered across their speech bubbles that often extend out of their boundaries.
The Starscream: They are noted to always be plotting ways to make others take the fall for their mistakes or mug their fellows for trophies, and all of them dream of knocking off their leader so they can be in charge. It is also mention in Volume 6 that goblins are known to kill their non-goblin bosses, like ogres and demons, should they be weakened enough for the horde to overtake them. Although there are a few exception to this, depending on who is leading the horde.
Suicidal Overconfidence: It surprisingly takes a lot to rattle a goblin on a warpath. They can see their fellows get cut down in droves by adventurers and still convince themselves that they could never fail and be killed like that.
No, each assumed he was the exception. He was smart. He wasn’t like the others. He was better.
Surrounded by Idiots: Anytime there is a goblin point-of-view passage, it'll be at least 70% the goblin ranting about how short-sighted, clumsy, and frivolous its fellows are, and how it is so much more on the ball than the others mere seconds before the section ends with Goblin Slayer executing the narrating goblin.
Tempting Fate: The Sympathetic P.O.V. of goblins tends to almost always involve excessive trash-talking about how inevitable their victory is and how inferior the adventurers are right before they get put down contemptuously. Crowning example would be the volume 14 nest leader, who goes on for a solid page and a half that his magic axe makes him invincible only for Goblin Slayer to cut his arm off mid-sentence. That same goblin comes to at the end of the naval battle and concludes that he has proven his undefeatable nature and can rebuild despite being down a limb, stripped of his gear, covered in burns, his entire horde dead, and stuck on a capsized boat. Cue the downed sea-devil crushing him.
To Serve Man: Goblins will eat anything they can find, but they especially like the taste of human flesh.
Too Dumb to Fool: Goblin Slayer says that the idea of a scarecrow for goblins would be of limited if any effectiveness, as a goblin would only approach human property in the first place if it had backup as part of a raiding party, and thus would more likely try to jump the scarecrow for materials than try to avoid it. This is just one example, but in general he feels goblins are too impulse-driven and full of low cunning for anyone to reliably bait them without his level of insight into their preferred tactics and what triggers their fear and rage.
Goblin Slayer: Goblins are stupid, but they are not fools.
Tricked to Death: Though largely Too Dumb to Fool by Goblin Slayer's repeated assertion, he has been able to bait them a number of times. Most notably in Volume 3, where he sets a row of traps for the approaching horde with glass beads marking the triggers. The goblins easily spot them, laugh, and walk right past them... into the backup row of traps with glass beads marking the safe walking spots.
Tunnel King: Their one natural talent is that they excel at digging, to the point of being able to burrow through solid walls as an ambush maneuver.
Uncleanliness Is Next to Ungodliness: Goblins are near universally unhygenic, splattering blood, waste, and spoiled food all over their homes, possessions, and bodies with no care for upkeep or maintenance.
Underestimating Badassery: Played With. For all intents and purposes, most of the things that adventurers believe about goblins are true; they're small, weak, cowardly, stupid, go down easily, and even a child could be seen as an even match for one in combat, which a lot of village children who decided to become adventurers can attest to. The problem is that people tend to focus solely on these aspects of them while ignoring their strengths, such as how deadly they can be in a group, or god forbid as an army, and how their use of traps and trickery can more than make up for these weaknesses. There's also the fact that these traits only really apply to basic Mooks, while largely ignoring the stronger and deadlier variants such as hobgoblins or goblin champions, who are at least stronger than your average human and and in some cases have lived long enough to gain something resembling combat skill.
Ungrateful Bastard: A goblin whose life is spared thinks only two thoughts: “what a soft-hearted fool that human is,” and “how painfully should I kill them for making me actually fear for my life?” In volume 11 a horde is literally given everything they ever wanted; a human patron supplies them with shelter, equipment, food, women, and opportunities for raiding complete with backup, and the goblins are just more dissatisfied than ever because they don't get to abuse their handouts as much as they want, have to obey a regiment, and assume the soldiers in the fort above their cave have better things and just lay around all day and night.
Villainous Crush: Due to their Mars Needs Women nature, most goblins tends to lust after many of the attractive heroines within the cast.
Villains Want Mercy: Goblins have no genuine warrior's pride or consideration for anything other than their own material well-being. A goblin that finds itself about to die will beg shamelessly to be allowed to live, and if granted will feel no gratitude and will not hesitate to turn the tables; that damn adventurer should have known its place and been the one getting struck down to begin with.
Weak, but Skilled: Downplayed. Regular goblins are not only weak, but they are very lacking in any real fighting skill, being more reliant of swarm tactics than anything else. That being said, they are also fast learners, as shown when one survives a modified arrow designed to leave the point in there and they reverse-engineer it, and they're able to use traps, poisons and deception to make up for the gap in strength.
Would Hurt a Child: This alone would be bad enough, but they specifically seek out young girls to kidnap for their complete defenselessness.
Womb Horror: The things literally exist to rape and sexually torture anyone they get their hands on, and it is not abstracted in anyway. On top of that, goblin mothers have a tendency towards Death by Childbirth and getting mauled to death by their own infants.
Yellow Eyes of Sneakiness: Most goblins have gleaming gold eyes.
Zerg Rush: Goblins alone are weak, and dumb as a brick; but most low-level adventurers underestimate them due to the low reward of the quest. Thus, they can find themselves subject to this when they're ill-prepared. Even when adventurers aren't ill-prepared, they often succumb to this tactic because, no matter how easily they die, when it's one against a hundred, the odds are against the adventurers. It's mentioned that part of the reason adventurers who are high-leveled don't go after them is because it's high-risk and low-reward, and goblin-related deaths are downright nasty.

Hobgoblins

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/goblinslayerhob.png

Goblins that have grown larger and put on more muscle. They act as bodyguards for nests.

The Brute: Of the goblin race, easily big enough to single-handedly manhandle the average young adult adventurer in-universe.
Elite Mooks: Rarely become leaders of hordes, shown instead to mostly become the top enforcers of the actual leaders or remain solitary wanderers.
Evolutionary Levels: Clearest cut example among the goblin sub-types; while all goblins become bigger and stronger continuously throughout their lives, hobgoblins develop radically different physical frames and more than double in body mass. They're also the only ones so far to be shown to have a third tier, with a rare few hobgoblins growing even further, enough to become the legendary, ogre-like goblin champions. In Year One Arc Mage theorizes at length that they are an atavistic throwback to plains-roaming Ice Age ancestors.
Groin Attack: When a hobgoblin in Year One holds up a captive woman bond to his forearm, Goblin Slayer aims low. 'Thrown sword straight to the junk' low. And then he kicks the knife deeper into the groin.
Gutted Like a Fish: In Year One, Goblin Slayer stabs a hob through the stomach and it causes a ragged hole through which its intestines start coiling out. The hob continues running and swinging at him. Goblin Slayer feels the need to pulp its skull after getting it down and afterwards starts aiming for the head on them.
High-Pressure Blood: The first hob Goblin Slayer ever fought was finally downed by a stab through the throat which caused a veritable explosion of blood to jet out of both the front and back of his neck.
Human Shield:
- One hobgoblin in Volume 4 (and in Brand New Day) attempted to get Goblin Slayer to back down by holding a captive adventurer hostage. Goblin Slayer did drop his sword... and then punted the hob hard enough to crack his pelvis as it watched the weapon hit the ground.
- This happens twice in Year One. Both times, Goblin Slayer immediately defuses the situation by throwing a knife in the crotch or stabbing it directly in the crotch.
Kevlard: One hobgoblin in Year One Volume 2 is able to harmlessly absorb the young Martial Artist's gut punches thanks to its sheer girth.
Made of Iron: The hobgoblin Goblin Slayer fought in his first quest in Year One could power through a broken sword lodged in its throat, electrocution, and getting an arm chopped off. The second one he fights in Volume 2 of the spin-off continues swinging even with a sword stuck in its gut.
Magical Defibrillator: The hob from Goblin Slayer’s first quest seemed to die from getting stabbed through the throat, but then it was accidentally resuscitated after being used as a shield against a shaman’s Thunderbolt.
Metronomic Man Mashing: Hobs seems to like grabbing adventurers by the foot and swinging them into cave walls.
Our Orcs Are Different: Hobs look the Tolkien-esque part, they behave the Tolkien-esque part, so they are the closest you're ever gonna get to having orcs in this setting.
Punch Catch: Hobgoblins, despite their lumbering appearances, have deceptively quick reflexes and are able catch blunt attacks with relative ease. It's probably best to avoid performing high kicks around these guys, just ask Fighter and Martial Artist.
Rasputinian Death: Because of how strong and bulky they are, it’s almost impossible for Goblin Slayer to kill them in one hit, especially in Year One. So to ascertain they stay down, he tends to lay well into them. The first one he ever fought was shocked, dismembered, and throat-stabbed twice. The second was stabbed in the stomach, hit on the head with a club five times (its brains were exposed on the second hit) and then disemboweled just to make sure.
Stout Strength: They tend to be rather corpulent.

Goblin Shamans

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/shaman.jpg

Goblins that have gained the ability to use magic. They often lead nests.

Arc Villain: One serves as this during Goblin Slayer's first mission in Year One. A different, more powerful Shaman would later serve as the main antagonist in Volume 7.
Born Lucky: The goblin shaman of Volume 7 would love to claim that his amassing a major horde, claiming the ancient fortress, gaining control of Mokele Mbembe, and poisoning the river was all the result of his skill and foresight, but in actuality it was all just freakish good fortune and the subtle manipulations of demons.
Charm Person: Volume 7 of the light novel has the ultimate threat be a Shaman with such potent magic that he can tame and command a giant hydra to do his bidding.
Evil Genius: They are not quite smart enough, but in terms of overall goblin intelligence they qualify. They display leadership skills, integral to an effective horde, and have the capacity to learn basic spells and build sophisticated traps.
Forced Sleep: The one spell the Volume 7 shaman gets to cast is Sleep Cloud. That spell alone incapacitates the entire party and nearly spells their doom.
Glass Cannon: They are at most moderately more durable than ordinary goblins, but they can cast devastating spells, which is why Goblin Slayer often advises a Shoot the Mage First approach when it comes to them.
Made of Iron: Less so than hobs or champions, but Goblin Slayer does note that shamans are deceptively resilient and able to survive an extra few blows despite remaining the same size as normal goblins, fully averting Squishy Wizard.
Magic Missile Storm: The shaman fought at the end of Volume 6 knows Magic Arrow, and can fire so many energy bolts that not even Witch's Counterspell can get rid them all.
Playing Possum: The brand of goblin most likely to pull this trick when injured, not that Goblin Slayer ever falls for it.
Shock and Awe: Shamans during the raid of the farm are capable of using lightning magic. The first shaman Goblin Slayer faces in Year One also has the magic capacity to liberally spam Thunderbolt spells during their fight. The first Shaman seen in the series also seemed to have been preparing to cast a lightning spell before being interrupted by a thrown sword. It is fairly safe to say this sort of magic seems to be the shamans' favorite. It's easy to see why, a lightning bolt is less lethal than a fireball to the face, but equally painful and debilitating, the perfect type of magic for a race of sadists who like to play with their prey. This can be quite versatile, as one shaman showed Year One when it accidentally recuscitated a fallen hobgoblin with a Thunderbolt spell.
Surrounded by Idiots: Tend to express this sentiment; particularly the chronologically first one faced by GS, who liberally whacks all his surviving followers with his staff when he discovers that his entire horde put together couldn't put down a solitary greenhorn adventurer.
Too Important to Walk: The first shaman Goblin Slayer ever faces forces his underlings to carry him into battle on a small, bone-constructed litter.
Trap Master: Goblin Slayer credits them as the primary architects of den defenses.
The Usual Adversaries: Due to the fact that baseline goblins aren't a substantial threat to the Main Characters without a leader, and the noted extreme rarity of champions, lords, and people able or willing to collaborate with their kind, shamans appear with increased frequency in the later light novels and spin-offs, and are by far the most often seen "evolved" goblins and the go-to target of small, secondary hunts that take up only a few pages.

Goblin Riders

Goblins that have tamed captured wolves to the point they can use them as mounts.

Beast of Battle: Well-stocked hordes would already use a wolf as an Angry Guard Dog, but the riders lead them directly into battle.
Crippling Overspecialization: Having the mental faculties to train a wolf to this extent shows a level of maturity well ahead of the curve of a bog-standard goblin, but the pay-out is these specimens never acquire the magic potential of shamans or increased stature of hobgoblins. Goblin Slayer also notes that they only ever develop in hordes that are extremely large and with easy access to resources, making the practice seem almost like a status-symbol for well-off raiders.
Giant Spider: Though mostly only seen using various kinds of wolves as mounts, Goblin Slayer in Volume 10 does state that they also can tame dog-sized monstrous arachnid.
Horse Archer: In volume 11, riders finally become skilled enough to shoot from warg-back.
Horse of a Different Color: Use wolves as this, serving as a bona fide cavalry unit for particularly numerous and aggressive hordes.

Goblin Champions

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/goblin_champion.png

Heroes of the goblin race, those that have become large enough to even be seen as ogres in terms of strength. One serves as the main antagonist of Volume 2 of the light novel.

Adaptation Species Change: The anime changed the goblin lord's pack of champions into hobgoblins during the farm raid arc. Only two of the goblins are identified as champions among the Elite Mooks. This is likely done to downplay goblin champions being seen as Degraded Bosses (see below).
Arc Villain: One serves as the main antagonist of Volume 2/the Water Town arc.
Asskicking Leads to Leadership: In contrast to shamans and lords, self-grown champions have almost no capacity for effective leadership or planning, becoming leaders of hordes by feat of physical dominance.
Ax-Crazy: The Water Town goblin champion loses what little composure he had after his first fight against Goblin Slayer, and rips apart his own men in a blind fury to try and kill him.
Bad Boss: The leader of Water Town barely qualifies as a boss. His horde only follows him because he's the biggest, he himself has no plans or sophisticated set-up, and he mostly fights by himself and sees his subordinates as meat shields, if he acknowledges their presence in the midst of battle at all. In the manga he attempts to punch through Priestess' Protection by throwing one of his own minions at the barrier, splattering him to no avail. He's even worse in his reappearance, stomping on a peon who runs from Goblin Slayer, and slicing through his own men like sheet paper just to get at him.
The Berserker: The Water Town champion in its second fight goes into a blood frenzy at the mere sight of Goblin Slayer, striking at him with absolutely no care how many of its minions get caught in the crossfire.
Blinded by Rage: The first time it fought Goblin Slayer, the Water Town champion was a cautious and deadly opponent that could counter him and nearly kill him in one hit. The second time, it is so enraged by its injuries it rushes into battle and swings its club willy-nilly, and Goblin Slayer can corral it with contemptuous ease.
Boss in Mook Clothing: These things are strong enough that only Silver-ranked adventurers can stand up to them when they come out en masse during the raid of the farm.
Boxing Lessons for Superman: The distinction between hobgoblins and champions has less to do with build (seeing as the former can already exceed average humans in size and strength) as the phenomenon of champions living through enough battles to pick up decent, durable gear and at least some inkling of proper martial arts.
Heavy Warrior: I thought they were just really big goblins, but this thing knows how to fight!
Bulletproof Human Shield: Goblin Shield actually, but the Water Town champion blocked Goblin Slayer's sneak attack by picking up a little goblin and making him take the blade to the ribs.
Carry a Big Stick: They often carry clubs.
Cross-Popping Veins: The Water Town champion has veins standing out all across its face when it sees Goblin Slayer again after getting an eye ripped out.
Degraded Boss: Play out effectively like this in the anime due to a reshuffling of the major battles of Volumes 1 and 2; the Water Town chief is a particularly strong and well-equipped champion that comes the closest to killing Goblin Slayer and friends of any monster yet and has to be taken on twice and cheesed through environmental warfare to finally put down, and this time is fought before the goblin lord and his pack of ten or so rank-and-file champions that get put down with little difficulty by a squad of properly kitted Silver adventurers. The anime tries to downplay this by changing all but two of the pack from champions to hobgoblins.
The Dragon: These kinds of goblins tend to be this. During the farm raid arc, a pack of champions (they were reduced to two champions in the anime) served as this to a goblin lord. The Water Town goblin champion was implied to have been one for Dark Elf.
Dumb Muscle: In spite of likely being the heaviest hitters of the horde, champions evidently don't have much in ways of brainpower. Goblin Slayer was able to easily rodeo one and trick it into swinging several times, killing countless goblins in droves.
Epic Flail: One champion during the battle for the farm in the manga fashions one out of a net tightly packed with large stones swung on a rope.
Eyepatch of Power: The Water Town champion has to wrap a large swath of bandages around his face to cover the hole where Goblin Slayer ripped out his eye. He is not appreciative of the new look, nor the persistent phantom pain.
Eye Scream: Goblin Slayer rips the eye out of the champion leading the horde in the Water Town.
Giant Mook: Their base size utterly dwarfs even the very biggest and most muscular of human fighters seen and they edge out Lizard Priest in height and breadth. Ones allowed to monopolize horde resources can grow even further until they rival ogres in size, as demonstrated by the Water Town boss.
Grievous Harm with a Body: During the battle of the farm, one champion gets a hold of an adventurer and throws him halfway across the valley with enough force to bounce, leave a crater, and hit a boulder with a splat. Several other fighters are sent sprawling to avoid the human missile, and one rookie that sees the mangled corpse left behind vomits in horror.
His Own Worst Enemy: The Water Town champion would go on a berserk rampage when experiencing the slightest bit of panic or rage, mowing down dozens of his own troops as he flailed at his actual enemy, succeeding only in creating an opening for them to press a counterattack. This combined with his incredibly simplistic thinking and cowardice in the face any resistance at all lead him to slink away in defeat from a battle he still had a near-assured chance of winning, giving his prey a chance to regroup with his own forces greatly diminished.
Hungry Menace: Despite displaying lust for Priestess, the Water Town champion would rather feast on her flesh than violate or torture her. A monster that size probably would place first priority on its appetite.
It's Personal: The Water Town champion has a rabid grudge against Goblin Slayer after getting its eye ripped out, having its lackeys make banners of it to show his thirst for revenge and flying into a berserk rage at the sight of the man who did it.
King Mook: A particularly large champion leads his own horde in the sewers of the Water Town. Most of his page-space just shows how bad an idea it is to let The Brute set his own rules, as this particular horde has no organization, no base defenses, and the champion ends up killing most of his horde himself through friendly fire.
Kung-Shui: In the second fight with the party the Water Town champion becomes so indiscriminate with its swings that it begins bringing down the walls of the chamber they're in, which is exactly what Goblin Slayer wanted.
Large and in Charge: The goblin champion leading the horde beneath the Water Town is a towering brute, easily rivaling Volume 1's ogre in both height and physical power.
Lecherous Licking: In the manga, the Water Town champion drags his tongue across Priestess' face with a sneer in between taking bites out of her shoulder.
Moral Myopia: In Goblin Slayer's rematch with the champion in Volume 2, he lures it into pancaking goblins several times in a row. The champion becomes angrier and angrier with every failed attack and blames Goblin Slayer for his companions' deaths, when perhaps the lug should have stopped after the first swing. That's not counting an earlier moment when he used a fellow goblin as a meat shield without hesitation.
Red Eyes, Take Warning: The Water Town champion's remaining eye gets a bloody-looking red cast over it in the manga as it lashes out at goblin slayer in a mad rush for vengeance.
Roaring Rampage of Revenge: The Water Town Champion doesn't care if it kills its entire horde in collateral damage. It doesn't care if it collapses the labyrinth on top of itself. What it cares about is if it can beat Goblin Slayer into a paste for tearing out its eye.
To Serve Man: Volume 2's champion was in the middle of eating Priestess before Goblin Slayer strangles him into stopping.
Unstoppable Rage: When it sees Goblin Slayer again, the Water Town champion charges and starts swinging and doesn't slow down for anything in its way, be it large debris or its own goblin lackeys.
Villainous Breakdown: First being strangled by the hair garrote, then the pain of losing its eye to Goblin Slayer drives the Water Town champion almost feral, and encountering him again incites a blind fury that quickly brings the chamber they are fighting in down.
Water Town Goblin Champion: What…?! What is this thing? Die! Get off of me…! Die! Why won't it let go? Why doesn't it die? What in hell is it?! Die! Hurry and die! Die die die!
What the Hell Are You?: Mixed alongside Why Won't You Die?, the Water Town champion asks both these questions repeatedly in an increasingly panicked tone as it tries and fails to shake Goblin Slayer off after he gets up from being knocked across the room and starts strangling it.

Goblin Lords

Voiced by: Kazuhiko Inoue (Japanese), Jacob Browning (English)

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/goblin_lord.jpg

Kings of the goblin race, these goblins have gained intellect and ambition, allowing them to command hordes to great effectiveness.

Adaptation Distillation: Most of the goblin lord's past that was shown from the manga was omitted out in the anime.
Adaptational Curves: The light novel illustrations for the third Year One story arc depict the fat goblin lord as several times the height of regular goblins, and with more than enough muscle to offset his blubber.
All-Encompassing Mantle: The goblin lord leading the assault on the farm wears a rough, voluminous cloak with a fur collar.
Arc Villain: Of Volume 1, particular during the farm raid arc, while another recently evolved goblin lord serves as the main villain for the third arc of Year One.
Armor-Piercing Attack: The goblin lord is strong enough and his battleaxe well-made enough to cave in Goblin Slayer's buckler in one hit, cut through it in two, and sunder it completely and break Goblin Slayer's wrist in three.
Bad Boss: Beheads his scout and personal aide out of hand for criticizing him, sends the remainder of his forward army out against the adventurers despite being outmatched to cover his retreat while they die, considers his troops worthless, and his flashbacks reveal he had a habit of literally shoving his fellows at adventurers as a distraction technique while still a grunt.
Beard of Evil: A short fringe of ratty black hair framing his jawline.
Carpet of Virility: His flashbacks show he has a large patch of greasy back hair across his chest. Being a goblin (with all the traits that implies) it's an indicator of his repulsiveness.
Conservation of Ninjutsu: Justified; Goblin Slayer has an exceptionally difficult time as he's used to fighting multiple weak opponents in an enclosed space. Here's he's fighting a single opponent with far more powerful weapons and armor than he has in an open clearing with plenty of room for the Goblin Lord to get around him.
Cool Crown: Befitting the acquired title of lord, the one we see wears a helmet-like winged crown, with antlers outfitting as the wings. He gets extra pissed when Goblin Slayer knocks it off with a slash of his sword.
Crocodile Tears: The goblin lord in the climax of the first volume could make himself cry on command. He evidently used this trick to great effect, getting at least a half-dozen adventuresses to spare him out of pity, until Priestess and Goblin Slayer crossed his path and could see right through his waterworks.
Cross-Popping Veins: His veins bulge with adrenaline and frustration when he is confronted by Goblin Slayer, and as the fight between them drags on, they just throb worse and extend across more of his face like Doflamingo.
Dare to Be Badass: Weirdly enough. The goblin lord in the first light novel presents a Rousing Speech to drive its horde up in an excited fervor, while simultaneously displaying its eloquence (at least in its own tongue).
Disc-One Final Boss: The goblin lord in the first light novel. Given the premise of the story, you would assume he would be the final or a late stage antagonist. Instead, he is defeated very early in the overall story. At least the anime went out of its way to change up the sequence of advents from the light novels so that he would be the final villain of Season 1. This is lampshaded in-series where Goblin Slayer and many of the other characters have pointed out that the next couple of Arc Villains after the goblin lord actually have a lower threat level than this particular monster and the massive army he had under his command.
The Dreaded: Goblin Slayer doubts his chances of surviving a fight against a lord by himself, and evidence of one near the farm sends him booking to tell Cow Girl Don't Ask, Just Run immediately. News of a horde on the march with a lord at the helm has the veteran adventurers, quick to brush goblins off and disparage Goblin Slayer any other time, regard each other with genuine sobriety and worry. That should tell you all you need to know about the threat they represent.
Eloquent in My Native Tongue: Particularly in the manga, where his speech when commanding other goblins or thinking of his next move can become almost flowery at points.
Evil Counterpart: The sole survivor of its family, giving birth to a vehement grudge against its attackers that lasts a lifetime. It gets stronger from its encounters, gets more cunning, cycling through different weapons and methods until it ascends to the top rank among its contemporaries. And Goblin Slayer has been aware of that since the very beginning.
Evil Genius: To the point where they can form strategies and match wits with humans when push comes to shove. Although, it says something about both them and goblins in general that it takes a dedicated Evolution Power-Up on par with gaining Super-Strength or magical prowess simply to make a goblin capable of long-term planning.
Evil Gloating: Wasted so much time lord over Goblin Slayer's beaten down body that Priestess could block his final blow with a barrier, when he turns and sees her, he just stood around some more and mused about how he'd like to kill her until she cast the second Protection and trapped him.
Exotic Eye Designs: In the manga the goblin lord that attacks the farm seems to have multiple misshapen pupils in each eye.
Fat Bastard: The goblin lord encountered in Year One is shorter and plumper than Volume 1's goblin lord.
Fearsome Foot: The goblin lord in the end of Volume 1 is given extremely long, muscled, dinosaur-like digitigrade legs in the manga adaptation, which are shown off prominently when he crushes the severed head of his servant while fleeing the battlefield. It is worth noting that not only is this feature unique to him (or at least not nearly as pronounced in other goblins), but his flashback shows that his foot configuration became more warped and animalistic with age and development of his eventual lordly cunning.
From Nobody to Nightmare: Started as just another goblin whelp, pitiable-looking enough that an adventurer didn't even want to kill him, but grew to be a ruthless and bloodthirsty Monster Lord with enough power at his command that Goblin Slayer himself needed to buy the services of the entire rest of the Adventurers Guild to oppose him.
General Ripper: The one that attacks the farm leads a horde of over one hundred goblins with uncommon discipline, and his capacity for deferred gratification has refined, not restrained, his natural goblin bloodlust.
Goal-Oriented Evolution: Discussed in Year One. Its been theorized by Arc Mage that these types of goblins will come to be when a horde of goblins have enough resources to start a campaign to establish a "goblin kingdom" and thus a form of strong leadership is needed among them. Arc Mage has pointed out that it is very unlikely for a horde to ever get to that point, as most of the time a goblin nest would be wiped out by adventurers before then, which is likely meant to explain the rarity of this particular type of goblin.
Godzilla Threshold: He is first villain that required the help of nearly every member of the Adventurer's Guild in order for Goblin Slayer to defeat him.
Good Scars, Evil Scars: Has a large slash across his face and a chunk taken out of the right corner of his mouth.
Hope Crusher: Is disappointed and disgusted when Goblin Slayer stoically bears his beatings and threats of torture, saying that killing adventurers is no fun if they do not show fear.
Human Shield: The goblin lord that attacks the farm once bested an adventurer by holding a woman hostage, then running them both through with a flamberge. During said attack on the farm, it literally tied several female slaves no longer able to bear young to large shields for use by its army's vanguard and shaman escort to trip up and demoralize human attackers. Fortunately, Goblin Slayer had the know-how and resources to safely knockout the wielders and recover the girls.
Ironic Echo: Nonverbal, meta variant; The composition of the panels where he finally strikes down Goblin Slayer, gives a triumphant battle-high grin over his body, then recoils as he registers the sword in his gut, are near shot-for-shot repeats of how Warrior from Chapter 1 gets the tables turned on him just before he is swarmed and killed.
I Surrender, Suckers: The lord leading the raid of the farm has a tendency of doing this. It performed this on an adventurer as a child, braining her with a rock once her back was turned. It retreated from battle the moment its horde was being pushed back, intending to try again after replenishing numbers with its stock of captured women. It tried to prostrate while under Priestess' mercy, lying through its teeth as it begged to be let go. Goblin Slayer saw to make certain it never surrenders again.
It Can Think: All goblins display this trope to some extent, but Lords express it the best with near-human levels of intelligence and cognition.
Karma Houdini Warranty: The fact that Volume 1's goblin lord achieved his status in the first place means that he's been screwing over people and fellow goblins alike for a long, long time. His backstory only offers a glimpse of the many atrocities he's committed and gotten away with. Naturally, Goblin Slayer is there to finally punch his overdue ticket.
Kick Them While They're Down: Repeatedly stomps on Goblin Slayer with relish when he collapse from their fight, though he gets bored quickly when the adventurer fails to display sufficient pain or despair.
The Killer Becomes the Killed: Applies to all goblins, but this one in particular gets it good: After Priestess ensnares it between two Protection walls like a pressed cockroach, Goblin Slayer slips in his broken sword and crushes the lord's windpipe.
Know When to Fold Them: Is perfectly able and willing to abandon a fight and a horde that he knows he is about to lose. His inner monologue while running away implies that the farm raid isn't the first time he has cut his losses to start over from scratch. Too bad for him that Goblin Slayer is the one adventurer that leaves no survivors.
The Leader: They play this role to their goblin hordes, with Goblin Slayer remarking that they have exceptional leadership abilities. It's the very reason they're called "lords" in the first place.
Lean and Mean: The lord from the Farm Raid Arc stands almost twice as tall as his baseline grunts, and though he's packed on quite a bit of muscle throughout his violent life, it's almost all in his legs, a feature he has no qualms of utilizing to cut a hasty dash away from the first sign of danger.
Made of Iron: Laughs off Goblin Slayer's sword breaking off between his lower ribs as a "minor wound", and proves it's not just bravado talking by liberally stomping on him without agitating the injury, and when Priestess presses the blade in deeper with her barriers, it barely causes any additional damage and he still keeps struggling. Goblins must have very small and/or resilient lungs.
Monster Lord: Exactly What It Says on the Tin. Goblin lords are considered the pinnacle form of their kind, and their capacity for uniting and organizing scores of other goblins under their direction is viewed as just as much of a special power/characteristic as a shaman's spellcasting or a champion's quintupled muscle mass.
Offhand Backhand: When the assault on the farm starts to visibly be pushed back, his Mook Lieutenant standing directly beside him turns and starts screaming at him angrily in gobbledygook. The lord just swings his arm back without even a twitch of warning, neatly decapitating him with his axe before sending in the goblin champions to attack...and then turning tail and fleeing into the woods.
Out-Gambitted: The goblin lord encountered at the end of Volume 1 has lived his life in preparation to leading a march through the human frontier. He has spent years amassing a horde of over a hundred strong, about half of whom are specialized ranks, including no less than ten specimens of the near-mythic goblin champion. He leads smart, he has all his ducks in a row, he uses legitimate tactical maneuvers such as cavalry charges on the enemy's flanks and a vanguard with a Human Shield wall to provide cover for his spellcasters. By all measures he was poised to steamroll the outlying farmland. It's merely his misfortune that his march brought him immediately up against Goblin Slayer, a man with near-psychic understanding of goblin thinking and fighting, and Guild Girl, a girl that understands the true danger of goblins and has access to the funds to bribe veteran adventurers into finally taking his kind on seriously.
Properly Paranoid: When you're a goblin, there's never a situation where you're wrong to run away. When you're a goblin in Goblin Slayer's sights, there's nowhere you can run that will save your hide.
Rank Scales with Asskicking: A dedicated thinker he may be, but no goblin ever got to the top of the pile by being easy to put down. He can even fight toe-to-toe with Goblin Slayer, a specialized Silver-ranked veteran adventurer who has spent half his life preparing to find and kill goblins just like him. The powerful enchanted weapon he looted from a victim might have something to do with it, not to mention simply having enough intelligence to actually learn fighting techniques instead of just flailing like a child the way most goblins do.
Reminiscing About Your Victims: Thinks back smugly on the many, many female adventurers he tricked into letting their guard down and then killed while attempting the same stunt on Priestess. She isn't fooled for a second.
Slasher Smile: Grins maniacally at the sight of humans falling before him.
Smug Snake: As detailed above, he is legitimately a high-level threat physically, intellectually, and resources-wise, but is simply edged-out by Goblin Slayer and friends. Also helping his case is that his Dirty Coward nature mitigates his arrogance and lets him recognize when it's best to just give up, but it's still not enough to prevent him from assuming he holds the upper-hand when entering a fight or gloating if it looks like fortune has turned in his favor.
The Strategist: According to Goblin Slayer, a lord has to forgo achieving magic potential like a shaman or building the extreme bulk of a hob in order to develop the analytical, problem-solving mindset needed to discipline a horde to the extent they do. Again, it says a lot about goblins that instilling halfway-decent long-term planning and large-scale organizational skills takes as much dedication and resources as extreme body-building or learning how to cast spells.
Surrounded by Idiots: Writes off the failure of his attempted assault as a result of the uselessness of his rank troops.
This Cannot Be!: As he gives up the battle for lost and flees through the woods, he's left impotently asking the air why and how so many adventurers mustered against him and knew exactly how to counter every single tactical maneuver he made. Enter Goblin Slayer.
Thwarted Coup de Grâce: Had Goblin Slayer knocked out on the ground and dead to rights, battle-ax lifted high and ready to come down on his head... until Priestess came out of the bushes and cast her Protection miracles.
To the Pain: Spends pages at a time describing the kind of graphic tortures and violations he has in mind for Goblin Slayer and Priestess. They don't react due to how hardened they are against goblin cruelty (and maybe also because they don't actually understand goblin-tongue).
Wardrobe Wound: Bites out a curse at Goblin Slayer under his breath for knocking his helmet-crown from his head with a sword-slash to the face.
We Will Meet Again: His attempted retreat was predicted and cut off from the beginning, but the main story goblin lord does have to sense to fall back and collect his reserve forces and personal captives while the adventurers mop up his main attack force with the goal of rebuilding, and gives a quite sinister mission statement to capstone his flashback in the manga.
Goblin Lord: If I survive... another moment will come. I will learn, and I will improve. I have the cunning. I will rise again.
Wounded Gazelle Gambit:
- Killed an adventurer while still just a toddler-equivalent by playing up his defenselessness and fear until she turned her back.
- Tried doing it once more to Priestess the moment he realized his arrestor wouldn't be intimidated into releasing him. He plays his pitiful groveling for all its worth. This time around, it ends in abject failure.
You No Take Candle: Downplayed to the point of being Averted — him using the Common Tongue when pleading for Priestess to release him comes out mostly in complete, grammatically correct sentences, and the parts where he swallows his words or has stilted diction can be ascribed to him being pressed for breath and trying to play up how pathetic he was.

Goblin Paladins

WARNING: Due to the nature of this character, spoilers relating to Volume 5 are unmarked.

Goblin Paladins

Voiced by: Toshiyuki Morikawa (Japanese), Jacob Browning (English)

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/goblinpaladin.jpg

An utterly new breed of goblin encountered and fought by Goblin Slayer's party in Volume 5. Even smarter than a lord, as well equipped and martially skilled as a veteran adventurer — the new pinnacle of goblinkind and heralded as the "hero" of the goblin race.

Adaptational Ugliness: The goblin paladin becomes substantially squatter or bulkier in each new medium he is depicted in. In the light novel illustrations he has the bodily proportions of a short and slim young man, the movie makes him half-a-head taller and broader at the shoulders than Goblin Slayer but still slender around the middle, and finally the manga makes him broad as a metal-plated pigeon.
Arc Villain: Of Volume 5 and its movie adaptation Goblin Slayer: Goblin's Crown.
Armor-Piercing Attack: His stolen silvered sword can easily cut through Goblin Slayer's shield and armor. Goblin Slayer is able and willing enough to allow such an attack to punch through so he can catch hold of it, stealing back the sword as the original owner requested.
Bishōnen Line: Downplayed; the paladin still has the face of a setting-typical goblin, but he is of completely human stature and body type, as opposed to the hunched or animalistic stances of his lesser kin, and his way of carrying himself is likewise almost noble.
The Blacksmith: At least intended to become one; his ultimate goal was for him and his horde to learn how to craft iron weapons and armor for themselves.
Bling of War: His helmet and shield have gold accents, and then there's the jeweled sword he took from a noblegirl.
Bright Is Not Good: His armor is boldly painted and his silvered sword cuts a white line through the air, and he is probably the most dangerous goblin to ever exist.
Butter Face: Rare Male Example, at least in the light novel; the goblin paladin is just below average height for a human, has the profile of a fit and lithe fighter under his armor, and has no noticeable hunch or other major anatomical deviance (such as the goblin lord's digitigrade quasi-talons). Such a pity that his head is wholly untouched by his Bishounen Line, and remains as heavy and outsize-featured as a normal goblin, if anything even more incongruous than most with the clash of his body.
The Chosen One: Basically this of the goblin race; certainly, few if any of the others of his kind have ever received divine favor, and the cult most of his followers were a part of got it in their heads to coronate him as the great leader of their race.
Counterspell: Can whip this out on the fly to disable a Snare that Dwarf Shaman had set directly in front of his charging army.
Dark Messiah: Was to be crowned this to goblinkind after completing his metamorphosis into this new class of higher goblin. Sadly for the goblins, Goblin Slayer showed up that very day to crash the ceremony and put him down before he could live up to expectations.
Evil Counterpart: Even more so than the goblin lord, the paladin is the closest any goblin has yet come to being an "anti-Goblin Slayer"; he counters many of Goblin Slayer's assumptions about goblin capabilities at construction and teamwork, they match blow for blow physically, and in the light novel he even has a similar build to the human and wears armor and helmet nearly identical to his.
Evil Genius: Goblin Slayer credits him with a divinely boosted learning capacity. He's learned combat techniques from observing adventurers well enough to give Goblin Slayer a run for his money, can devise counters to an opponent's fighting style just from seeing any of their moves once, and instills enough discipline in his ranks to get them to actively build complex structures and perform sophisticated religious rituals. Goblin Slayer twists this against him, reusing a maneuver that he knew the Paladin would have learned from and would counter in a specific way in order to trap his sword and leave him open to attack.
Evil Virtues: Half of the threat he poses lies in his unprecedented ability to instill these in the Goblin masses he controls.
Glowing Eyes of Doom: The manga gives him a blazing light trail waving of the edge of one pupil, exactly the same as Goblin Slayer.
Inferiority Superiority Complex: While outwardly self-possessed, his brief point-of-view segment exposes him as painfully fearful for his status before launching into a suicidal charge after Goblin Slayer's party when they manage to humiliate him, both because he's well aware how ready and quick his minions would be to lose respect for him if they fully get away, and also because he personally cannot bear the thought of a group of adventurers reducing him back down to "just a mere goblin."
Knightly Sword and Shield: Weilds a jeweled ovular shield with a pointed bottom and Noble Fencer's stolen sword.
Light Is Not Good: Beyond his white armor, the goblin paladin is explicitly a "Holy Knight" and in a major twist, he is not a blackguard of some generic God of Evil, despite his affiliation with an evil cult. He is instead the devotee of the God of Wisdom and Knowledge.
Luckily, My Shield Will Protect Me: Makes enough use of his shield to actually survive trading blows with Goblin Slayer twice.
Magic Knight: Comes with being a paladin of the God of Wisdom. A skilled spellcaster specializing in healing and reinforcement magic who is also a skilled warrior, he's one of Goblin Slayer's most dangerous foes to date.
Monster Knight: The illustration depicting his fight with Goblin Slayer shows him in brightly painted plate armor and wielding a kite shield alongside his stolen silvered sword.
No Cure for Evil: Averted; the biggest red flag to Goblin Slayer that something unprecedented is behind the Snow Mountain horde is when he sees a goblin he had shot with a poisoned arrow back on the battlefield with a magically-healed scar.
Paladin: Epithets don't lie — his power and intellect are bolstered by his making a pact of devotion to the divine.
Pious Monster: In a novel twist, here is a religious fantasy villain who worships one of his setting's non-evil deities.
Religion of Evil: In an odd twist, he has teamed up with one (specifically the "Cult of the Green Crescent Moon" that worships his kind's home) but is himself inducted in a different, not-necessarily-evil faith.
Royal Rapier: Noble Fencer's Ancestral Weapon is even more ornate than the goblin lord's axe, befitting the goblin that can be seen as an evolution on what was the pinnacle of their kind's prestige.
Spikes of Villainy: His helmet contains a trio angled spikes on top, forming an arc with the horns at the sides.
This Cannot Be!: Cannot abide by the idea that a group of adventurers destroyed his fort, freed his captives, and got away, for if they could best and humiliate him so handily that would make him "just a mere goblin."
Top-Heavy Guy: The manga depiction of the paladin renders him as almost cartoonishly barrel-chested, with limbs ever-so-slightly too stubby for such a solid trunk.
Unstoppable Rage: Uses the spell "Lunacy" to drive his subjects into a fearless berserker frenzy to run down Goblin Slayer's party.
Villainous Valour: All traces of goblin cowardliness have long since been burned out of him. He doesn't hesitate for an instant to leap through fire and collapsing walkways to pounce on his foes. He can even instill this in his lowly subjects, who display an unheard of level of camaraderie and competence for a goblin horde, with one even willingly laying down his life and jumping in front of an arrow for him.
Walking Spoiler: Its entire existence is a major reveal for the plot of the fifth volume.
Weak, but Skilled: The goblin paladin is one of the series' most dangerous combatants, but that comes more from its boosted intelligence and swordplay than its actual physical strength; it's an especially strong goblin, but it's no hob or champion. Goblin Slayer was able to wrestle a weapon out of its hands once he manages to get a good grip.

Goblin Priest

Another new class of goblin, one with divinely gifted powers, encountered in Volume 8.

Blood Magic: Priestess is initially stumped at how he can maintain a Protection spell without exerting any energy or focus against their assault, then realizes that the barrier is feeding upon the blood on the floor of the dungeon.
Body Motifs: The boss priest of the Volume 8 dungeon nest has covered every available inch of exposed skin with tattoos of red, clawed hands as a sign of his devotion, and forced each member of his horde to get one to match.
Deflector Shield: His principle spell is an extremely powerful Protection that can withstand the concentrated offense of the whole party combined, until Priestess cuts off its material component by turning the blood on the floor to water.
Excuse Me While I Multitask: His magic is fuelled entirely by physical components, namely blood, so he feels no physical or mental strain when casting and can freely berate his lackeys while keeping his shields up as an afterthought.
Sinister Minister: They lead their fellow goblins in organized religious rituals, but are no less narcissistic or depraved than any of their wretched flock.
Taking You with Me: When his spells get cut off and he gets cut down, he pulls himself onto a demon's altar and commits ritual-suicide to bring the Demon Lord back to kill Goblin Slayer.
Tattooed Crook: The Volume 8 priest gave each of his horde-members a tattoo of a hand as a symbol of their cult. Princess notes that he himself has further covered every bit of his exposed skin in a rippling tapestry of them.

Dragon Riding Goblin

An unusual goblin that simply got on the back of a sleeping dragon, this Arc Villain appears in Volume 11.

Achievements in Ignorance: For the record, this goblin is not controlling a red dragon - he simply thinks he is as he jumped on the back of a sleeping dragon and was riding it while the dragon was grumpy with the sudden awakening.
Chain Pain: Initially wielded a chain, which he used to kill the goblin originally leading the riot. It’s replaced with a spear while armoring up though.
Dragon Rider: He wishes. The volume 11 rider was just disturbing a half-asleep dragon by kicking its neck, and it would have eaten him if it woke up all the way.
Evil Is Bigger: The biggest, nastiest member of the desert horde isn't quite hob-sized, but is too beefy to easily ride even an enhanced warg. The bulk helps keep him seated on a dragon's neck though.
Horns of Barbarism: Steals a helmet with horns as he suits up.
Large and in Charge: He's a moderately larger than average goblin, which allowed him to assert dominaince over his brethren.
Off with His Head!: Goblin Slayer finally kills him by throwing a magic sword through his neck and decapitating him after the dragon finally goes back to sleep.
Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Evidently glanced out a window and saw the giant mantas about to destroy the desert fort, and made haste to flee into the tunnels with the map to the sleeping dragon.
Too Dumb to Live: A goblin jumped on the back of a dragon - do the math.

Fire Goblin

Yet another run-of-the-mill goblin, but one who wields a fiery staff, seen during Volume 13.

Achievements in Ignorance: Goblin Slayer notes that this goblin is just an average one, not a shaman or priest, who simply got his hands on an overpowered magic wand.
Amulet of Concentrated Awesome: Not only was his wand the only reason he was a threat, but it seems it also was able to passively boost his intelligence to be able to wield it more effectively, as the narration states he became rapidly dumber when he lost his grip on it.
Arc Villain: Minor one for Volume 13, upon stealing the Fire Spirit's magic staff.
Evil Is Burning Hot: The only Magic it had access to was fire and energy blast spells.
Frickin' Laser Beams: Made liberal use of a spell that shot heat rays from its wand.
Magic Wand: Managed to loot the cursed sarcophagus of a wizard for a staff that had an indefinite number of fire spells sealed in it.
Meteor-Summoning Attack: Was confident it could copy the Star of Muala spell with its high-tier wand. Sadly for it, the wand was knocked out of its grasp by a Fumble spell before it could complete the attempt.
Playing with Fire: His plundered wand granted him access to a plethora of fire-based magic.

Other Antagonists

Ogre

Voiced by: Riki Kagami (Japanese), Marcus D. Stimac (English)

A minor antagonist occupying an ancient man-made fortress, he made his name in infamy for possessing both incredible strength and magical prowess. He was granted an army of goblins by one of the Demon Generals, which naturally draws the attention of Goblin Slayer and his team.

Accidental Misnaming: Not so much as "misnaming" as it is "forgetting"; Goblin Slayer never bothered to remember the ogre's name. The ogre took offense with that.
Archenemy: His brother calls Goblin Slayer this when he struggles to catch and kill him to get revenge for his family.
Arrow Catch: Grabs one of Elf's arrows out of the air when the party tries to rush him. Does it again when she tries to interrupt his spell-casting, though he's distracted enough that all he can do is let them pierce his free hand, to little real effect.
Brutish Character, Brutish Weapon: The two ogres seen are shown to favor crude giant blunt weapons that contrast their Genuis Bruiser status with their brutishly bloodthirsty personalities, such as the Ogre using a massive club or his brother using a giant metal warhammer.
Call a Pegasus a "Hippogriff": Referred to as an ogre, but functions more like an Oni, given its relative intelligence, iron club and powerful magic abilities.
Carry a Big Stick: As expected of Oni, he wields an iron club (specifically an Aribo, for those curious).
Cruel and Unusual Death: Yeah, he may be an evil sadist at heart, but getting bisected and repeatedly stabbed to finish the job is a nasty way to die.
Even Evil Can Be Loved: In Volume 9, it is revealed that he has a brother, who is recruited into the Evil Sect on the promise that he will get to lure in and kill Goblin Slayer if he helps Ice Witch seize control of the northern region.
Eye Scream: Elf shoots his eye out. He almost instantly grows it back when he pulls it out. She learns from this and in Volume 9 notches her arrow so it snaps in half and stays lodged in his brothers eye socket.
Genius Bruiser: Despite his massive, muscular appearance, he's no slouch in the mental departments either, as he's able to command a nest of goblins and possess mighty magical powers in addition to that.
Half the Man He Used to Be: A Gate scroll is a surprisingly devastating weapon with the right mindset and tons of sea water.
Healing Factor: It's bad enough that most attacks can't even draw much blood, but he also sports a powerful regenerative ability that can restore a destroyed eyeball within seconds. It's a shame for him that he can't regenerate his entire body from the torso down.
Hero Killer: Has personally killed at least a few high-profile Silver-ranked adventurers in his past. His infamy and strength is what leads a Demon General to ordain him a captain of the armies of chaos with a goblin army at his command.
Hostage Situation: The ogre's Brother in Volume 9 has two female adventurers held captive. When Goblin Slayer evades him for too long, he has them crucified in the middle of the abandoned village and loudly proclaims his intention to torture them to death if Goblin Slayer doesn't come out of hiding by noon.
Hot Skitty-on-Wailord Action: Threatened to make Priestess his "plaything" despite being roughly three times the size of a human with thighs bigger then her whole body.
Humiliation Conga: The ogre is put under this in the end. After proving himself to be capable of taking on the entire party single-handedly, Goblin Slayer simply one-shots him with an improvised water jet cutter. He is outraged that Goblin Slayer would reserve that kind of power just to massacre goblins, basically equating him to the mere mooks. In his final moments, he could only cry fearfully and curse Goblin Slayer for considering him beneath notice, as the latter stabs him repeatedly with a simple sword to finish him off. And just to add the final insult to injury, Goblin Slayer hardly recalls ogre's existence afterwards, much less his name. Only a couple days later, he had to be reminded by Priestess that they ever encountered one.
I Have You Now, My Pretty: Priestess stopping his Fireball brought as much of his attention to her as it did contempt. He takes sadistic pleasure in taunting her comrades on how, after he kills them, he will take her as food, a goblin bearer, or his personal toy.
Kill It with Water: How Goblin Slayer ultimately puts this monster down. No, not by drowning him. By bisecting him. His brother on the other hand does get conventionally drowned in Volume 9 when Goblin Slayer causes him to fall into a frozen lake and Dwarf Shaman uses magic to slow him so much he can't swim or jump out before he runs out of air.
Large and in Charge: Is easily twice the height of Lizard Priest if not more, who's no slouch when it comes to size himself. Then there is the case of his army, but Goblin Slayer had already taken care of that problem.
Mars Needs Women: Maybe not to the same extent as goblins, but he has stated that he intends to rape Priestess and High Elf Archer if he is able to capture them alive.
Oni: Is certainly this, rather than its other naming counterpart. The loincloth, characteristic iron club, and ability to cast magic gives it away.
Playing with Fire: It mainly uses a Fireball spell in its fight with the party. In the ogre's case, however, his fireball is akin to throwing a miniature sun.
Running Gag: He becomes one. At some point in a novel, Goblin Slayer will wonder what an ogre is, never mind the fact that he killed one.
Sorting Algorithm of Evil: Subverted. Orge is one of the strongest singular opponents that Goblin Slayer had to fight, and has more raw power than some of the Arc Villains, but he ends up being just a Starter Villain.
Starter Villain: The very first challenge the party faces together and the first significant non-goblin threat Goblin Slayer has faced since he became a veteran if not ever, the quest that ends with his demise marks the beginning of Goblin Slayer's road to becoming a "true" adventurer.
Super-Toughness: Part of the reason why he is such a challenge is because blades can't penetrate his skin. Even soft tissue like his eyes, which would be obvious weak points, is rendered fruitless due to his natural regeneration. Of course, as Goblin Slayer proves, there is a limit to his durability.
Talking Is a Free Action: Defied, then Double Subverted — he charges at the group with his club while Dwarf was chanting to cast an elemental spell, quipping at him if he really thought he'd let them just cast with impunity. Elf then shoots him in the eye, and Dwarf can just pick up where he left off in his chant while he's distracted to no ill effect.
There Is No Kill Like Overkill: He entertains this notion twice with his massive Fireball, intending to char the whole team into cinders in one fell swoop. The first time was stopped by Priestess casting Protection twice. The second has Goblin Slayer return the favor in kind.
This Cannot Be!: Recovers consciousness enough to furiously demand answers as to what happened to him after being bisected by Goblin Slayer's water jet, then spends his final moments screeching in outrage over Goblin Slayer continuing to dismiss him as a lesser threat than goblins.
Wake-Up Call Boss: He is introduced with a brief history detailing how he killed countless adventurers, many of them Silver-ranked, and it shows: No one in the party could inflict anything more than Scratch Damage on him, and he comes dangerously close to killing them all multiple times. Goblin Slayer is forced to change tactics after a single swing seriously injures him.
You Killed My Father: Nearly two years after his death, his brother partners with the Evil Sect and moves to the northern mountains for the chance to hunt the killer.

Giant Eye

A multi-eyed monster found in the sewer labyrinth of Water Town in Volume 2, guarding the Gate mirror.

Anti-Magic: Its main eye can fire a beam of Dispel Magic, which renders Priestess unable to cast miracles while she's ensnared within the eye's line of sight.
Counterspell: It’s worth noting that its Dispel Magic eyebeam takes out one of Priestess' daily spells before it was actually completed, when all the other times a spellcaster got interrupted through more mundane tactics they could later finish the incantation or switch to a different spell without using another charge.
Disintegrator Ray: The multiple eyes that stick out from its stalks can all fire beams that can melt rock like a hot knife through butter, which includes Dwarf Shaman's Spirit Wall.
Exactly What It Says on the Tin: Lampshaded by Dwarf Shaman when Goblin Slayer actually comes up with the name Giant Eyeball for it, because what’s a more concise descriptor for this thing?
Eye Scream: The second Giant Eye fought by Goblin Slayer, Heavy Warrior, and Spearman gets crushed under the bulk of its dead lackey, which partially pulps its main eye.
Flunky Boss: The second one in volume 12 summons a giant undead servant to fight for it.
Giant Eye of Doom: When encountered, this type of monster is always described as appearing from the darkness already staring at the heroes.
Half the Man He Used to Be: Goblin Slayer is saved from a Giant Eye in Year One by an elf picking up the magic sword he had passed over previously and bisecting the monster vertically as it charged its eye-beam.
Hoist by His Own Petard:
- The Disintegrate ability of its smaller eyes is ultimately what does the Giant Eye in, as Goblin Slayer devises a plan to make itself blow up by tricking it into firing its lasers at a decoy in an enclosed space filled with powder in the air, igniting a fire and creating a loud explosion that engulfs the entire room and kills the monster.
- The second one in the Chaos-ruined city is flattened by the body of the very minion it summoned to fight for it.
Ludicrous Gibs: A charred carcass stuck on the ceiling is all that remains of it once it's caught in the enclosed explosion that Goblin Slayer set up with flour acting as powder.
Make Them Rot: Goblin Slayer encounters a variant of Giant Eye monster in Year One with just the one main eye that it able to shoot a beam of decay, which kills a goblin and nearly melts his own armor.
No Name Given: These monsters are never properly named, even by the narration. Supposedly, it's too eldritch to say. In volume 12, the second one just gets labeled B.E.M., or Big Evil Monster.
No-Sell: The Giant Eye that Goblin Slayer fights in Year One is apparently immune to mundane weapons, and was completely unbothered by him hitting it directly in the eye with a club. It was less immune to magical weapons.
Oculothorax: It's a giant eyeball with multiple stalks that each have a smaller eye on their end. True to the trope, it also floats in the air, and its powers revolve around Eye Beams that can either dispel magic (the main eye) or disintegrate anything (the smaller ones). Lizard Priest assumes that it's an agent of Chaos and one of the monsters whose name must not be spoken of.
The Scottish Trope: Parodied – Wizards of the Coast owns the rights to the term "Beholder". When encountered, Lizard Priest lampshades that it's a monster "whose name you're not supposed to speak", a reference to Wizards' strict product identity as they have not released the term for open Tabletop Game license.
Serial Numbers Filed Off: It behaves pretty much exactly like a Beholder from Dungeons & Dragons, down to protecting an Anti-Magic beam from its primary eye, but is not referred to as such (due to copyright issues). Parodied In-Universe, see The Scottish Trope above. The English dub of the anime gets an extra dig in with this, as Lizard Priest shows the party the creature while saying, "Behold!"
Smug Snake: The one in volume 12 speaks common, and spends most of it's page time gloating at the adventurers about to cut it down.
Writing Around Trademarks: These things are clearly meant to be Beholders. They can't be called that, but the author will make it obvious in every other way; from the description, to the method of attack, to garbling the name in Pokémon Speak, to having Spear Man and Heavy Warrior rate it's power at 13, "14 in its home" (which is precisely the Challenge Rating and caveat applied to the Beholder in D&D 5e.)
You Wanna Get Sued?: When discussing it with the party, Lizard Priest describes it as "one of those creatures whose name you are never supposed to speak" - because it's obviously a beholder, but that term is copyrighted by Wizards of the Coast.

Rhea Scout

Voiced by: Mutsuki Iwanaka (Japanese), Garret Storms (English)

A former Steel-ranked adventurer who was disgraced after it was discovered he was hoarding loot for himself from his party.

Agent Peacock: Hoarded money from his team to buy a fresh set of armor he thought would make him look good, but beneath his callous foppishness is a decently competent and highly vicious fighter.
Agonizing Stomach Wound: How Goblin Slayer puts him down in the manga.
Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: He puts on an air of charm and agreeableness to disarm people, but underneath he's a cowardly, greedy, cutthroat scammer who'll pull a knife on anyone who catches on to his schemes.
Cross-Popping Veins: One stands out on his cheek as he gets dressed down by Guild Girl for filching treasure and trying to cover it up.
Daydream Surprise: Guild Girl’s call-out session on his crimes gets cut short by him attempting to stab her in fury, only to be countered by Goblin Slayer grabbing him before he connects and caving in his cheek with one punch, at which point it’s revealed the exchange of blows was a hallucination playing out in Rhea Scout's head as he seethed on the couch.
Dies Differently in Adaptation: Rhea Scout dies differently in both the manga and the light novel. In the latter, Goblin Slayer guts him like a fish, while in the manga, Goblin Slayer still kills him, but with a knife to the lung while crushing his throat.
Dirty Coward: Admits in his internal monologue that he actually doesn't care about being promoted because he hates putting himself in dangerous situations and is content to take easy quests and hoard any loot he lucks into for profit.
The Dragon: To Dark Elf in Volume 3, after the elf lost his previous dragon in Volume 2, the Water Town goblin champion.
Dual Wielding: While jumping Goblin Slayer and attempting to slash him, he pulls a second dagger out with his off-hand to parry an incoming hack from his opponent's short sword.
Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: Is so self-centered and mercenary in his outlook that he sees Goblin Slayer’s fixation on killing goblins as him merely sticking with small fry to minimize his chances of dying, like he himself does.
Evil Is Petty: He doesn't even bother to follow Dark Elf's orders during the Harvest Festival, opting to instead ambush Goblin Slayer and Guild Girl to take revenge on them.
Evil Makes You Ugly: By the night of his death, his fall from grace and vengeful rampage have left him with a haggard figure, bulging eyes, green-painted face, and frothing mouth, making him very, very goblin-like in appearance.
Fatal Flaw: Wrath. When Guild Girl points out his crimes and her reasons for demoting him, he seriously considers threatening and hurting her, were it not for Goblin Slayer, who would bash his skull in if he tried. Blaming his shame on Goblin Slayer for not vouching for him, Rhea Scout later joins Dark Elf and his goblin army in a bid to kill Goblin Slayer as painfully and as slowly as possible, showing that he can hold grudges for a long time. At this point, consumed by vengeance and using any means necessary to achieve it, he's little different from a goblin. In the end, Goblin Slayer uses this against him, pretending to fall to his poisoned darts and then, then Rhea Scout is distracted with gloating over his victory, hits him with a sneak attack and guts him like a fish.
Faux Affably Evil: He's quite civil when things go his way, but doing anything to him that makes him look bad to others will enrage him.
Flechette Storm: Pulls out some darts and quite a few throwing knives in his fight with Goblin Slayer.
Fragile Speedster: Can run rings around Goblin Slayer when he ambushed him and Guild Girl, with Goblin Slayer admitting he can't get a lock on him, let alone land a hit. But then once he lets his guard down he gets grabbed and put down like a scrub.
Green-Eyed Monster: On top of the demotion incident that sparked his rampage, he claims to also hate Goblin Slayer for being so popular with women, and for how his friendship with Guild Girl seems to have eased his rise through the ranks.
Gutted Like a Fish: Dies when he gets slashed in the stomach by Goblin Slayer after a failed attempt at killing the latter. In the manga it's a punctured lung and a crushed windpipe.
Handsome Lech: Fairly bishie-looking for a Hobbit expy, and the first hint we get that the guy is scum is when he starts having sleazy thoughts about Guild Girl.
Hate at First Sight: Feels repulsed by Goblin Slayer the first time they actually come face to face, before they even come into conflict.
Hate Sink: Unlike other Adventurers, he's clearly made to be as unlikeable as possible. From stealing his fellow squadmate's equipment and income to teaming up with the Dark Elf to leching on Guild Girl, you're unlikely to find another non-goblin this venal in the setting.
Hobbits: Here called "rheas". He's a fairly stereotypical specimen of an Eastern-style not-Halfling - a spoon-eared Token Mini-Moe whose kind is the designated rogues of the fantasy setting in question, though he takes the negative implications of such traits to their extreme conclusion, his Ninja Looting habits in particular making him more in common with a Kender^note than a Hobbit.
I Have You Now, My Pretty: Turned to Guild Girl and threatened to make her "suffer" before killing her once he thought he'd killed Goblin Slayer. Goblin Slayer takes that as his cue to get up and backstab the little shit.
In a Single Bound: Leaps from the balcony at the far end of the quite long guild hall to come down squarely on top of Goblin Slayer standing right against the entryway.
In the Hood: Wears a cloak and keeps the hood up while wandering the festival to keep anyone from recognizing him.
It's Personal: Joins the side of the Unpraying and helps Dark Elf's attempt to sack the frontier town and summon Hetaconcheir, solely out of his grudges against Guild Girl for kicking him out of town and Goblin Slayer for standing by and defending her in that decision.
Know When to Fold 'Em: When he's just been demoted and banned, he pulls his knife and tries to attack Guild Girl. He's immediately punched in the face by Goblin Slayer... only for it to be revealed that his failed attack was all played out in his head, and instead storms off, vowing revenge.
Mad Eye: In the manga, the only facial feature distinguishable from under his hood when attacking Goblin Slayer and Guild Girl is one eye; one heavily cross-hatched, uneven, pinprick-pupiled, grotesquely oversized eye.
Motive Rant: Mixed with Evil Gloating. He beats Goblin Slayer's (seeming) corpse while crowing over his victory and lambasting the man as (in his view) a hypocritical coward profiting from nepotism and hoarding female admirers, all of which fueled his resentment.
Never My Fault: He blames Goblin Slayer entirely for his demotion and humiliation despite having made the choice of committing crimes that resulted in such.
Ninja Looting: His major crime that gets him demoted and banned from town. Evidence of how much he is scalping his fellows of money can be seen in just how shabby and ragged the rest of his party are in comparison to himself and the previous Steel-rank crew from Volume 1. And it just shows how callous he is, considering one of them is working as an adventurer to support his family.
Poisoned Weapons: The goblins provide him with a toxin to coat his blades with when he attacks Goblin Slayer and Guild Girl. It almost works too, except that he didn't know Goblin Slayer wore extra chainmail armor underneath his leather and metal breastplate, which stopped the poisoned darts from penetrating.
Prefers Going Barefoot: Inverted Trope; as Rheas are Hobbit-analogues, they are noted to typically prefer to go barefoot, except he is explicitly noted to have taken up wearing boots, a fashion statement he shows off with some vanity. It's one of the things that is noted as being not quite right about him.
Psychological Projection: Resents Goblin Slayer for (in his eyes) being a Dirty Coward who only takes "easy" tasks and gets ahead by seducing women. Rhea Scout is very clearly projecting.
Reverse Grip: Wields his off-hand dagger in an ice-pick grip to parry attacks.
Roaring Rampage of Revenge: Was fully willing to invade town with a goblin horde and help summon a God of Evil to the material plane, that's how much he wanted a chance to kill Goblin Slayer and Guild Girl.
Sadist: Nowhere near the extent of goblins, but the instant he lays eyes on Guild Girl, he starts fantasizing about engaging in Kinky Spanking "until she cries".
Suspicious Spending: How his theft eventually comes to light, being able to buy fancy new gear while his teammates are barely scraping by.
Stop Being Stereotypical: Guild Girl caps off her "The Reason You Suck" Speech by saying that the report of his behavior is just going to reinforce prejudices against rheas and scouts as untrustworthy natural thieves. Scout internally calls her out on being sanctimonious for going there.
Villainous Breakdown: When Guild Girl corners him on his Ninja Looting habit, he scrambles for an excuse before suddenly snapping and contemplating just stabbing her, only barely holding back because of Goblin Slayer’s silent counter-threat, and walking out looking visibly deranged from impotent rage. He then goes so far as to partner with the Evil Sect and a goblin horde to pursue revenge, and even months later can work himself up into a berserker frenzy at the memory, and dies with his face contorted with insane hate.
"What!? This doesn't make any sense! All I did was filch a treasure chest and you run me out of town?!"
Wide Eyes and Shrunken Irises: His eyes bulge grotesquely and his pupils become pinpricks whenever he's enraged, caught in a lie, or enraged at being caught in a lie.
Would Hit a Girl:
- He had thoughts of murdering Guild Girl as early as his first appearance, and attempts it during Volume 3.
- Even before that, the first thought he has when meeting Guild Girl is "She's so innocent... I want to spank her until she cries."

Dark Elf

A summoner and remnant of Evil Sect, the nebulous cult operating beneath Water Town until a Platinum-ranked hero took it down. He attacked Goblin Slayer's town on the night of the Harvest Festival in a bid to summon Hecatoncheir, the hundred-handed giant.

Adaptational Superpower Change: The arms he sprouts from calling upon Hecantocheir are much larger and grotesque-looking in the manga adaptation, enough to lift him into the air and serve as a set of legs (though the novel text described him doing that anyway, so it's really just buffing their appearance to match.)
An Arm and a Leg: A well-placed throw of a mambele slices off the arm carrying his magic artifact, disabling his arrow deflection.
Annoying Arrows: Due to Hecatoncheir's protection, he deflects piercing projectiles with ease. Once deprived of that protection though, he gets an arrow straight through his throat.
Arc Villain: Of Volume 3 and the The Man Behind the Man of Volume 2.
Black Eyes of Crazy: His eyes turn inky black with white rings when he mutates and charges at Goblin Slayer.
Body Motifs: His magic artifact, his transmutation spell, and his choice of demonic patron all evoke a lot of extra hands. On top of this, his cloak has several gold ornaments in the shape of eyes.
Card-Carrying Villain: He calls himself an apostle of anarchy and a servant of the gods of chaos.
Carry a Big Stick: Before he found his Hand of Glory Artifact he apparently wielded a flanged mace.
Disintegrator Ray: His strongest spell not part of a greater ritual.
Evil Is Hammy: This dude just simply won't shut up. An interlude title in the light novel even lampshades it: "Of The Mastermind, Quite Full Of Himself Behind The Scenes".
Exotic Eye Designs: His eyes gain white rings as a byproduct of his growth of additional arms.
Foreshadowing:
- The goblins Goblin Slayer had been exterminating lately were nested in odd locations such as faraway mines instead of dens, and take too long to touch their captives before they could be rescued. Additionally, the usual torrent of goblin-slaying quests flooding the bulletin boards have trickled to a complete stop. As Goblin Slayer notes, there is almost always an outside factor that could have goblins behaving so erratically and reserved.
- He was one of two cloaked figures seen lurking around town while everyone was preparing the Harvest Festival. His presence had been noted by both Goblin Slayer and High Elf Archer, but they went on with their business instead of investigating closer.
Hand of Glory: The dark artifact he is lead to by the Chaos Gods is a preserved severed arm. On top of serving as a Magic Focus Object and being the key to a summoning ritual for Hecatonchier, it gives him access to unique powers such as an arrow-proof shield and the ability to grow giant extra arms.
Hero Killer: He and his goblin underlings managed to wipe out an adventuring party that tried to stop him claiming his hand of glory artifact, and he claims to have fought and prevailed against dozens of adventurers of all stripes over his many centuries.
Hoist by His Own Petard: He was the one who supplied the rhea traitor with the goblins' stock of poisoned blades. Goblin Slayer, having already taken care of the rhea and filched a poisoned knife for himself, cuts the Dark Elf to seal his fate.
Hot Blooded Sideburns: The manga gives him small but noticeably bushy sideburns (which is more than most male elves ever get) and he is also notably more maniacal and irascible than the typical elf antagonist.
In the Hood: Wears a hood when in human towns to hide that he's a dark elf.
Loophole Abuse: How he's beaten. By Dark Elf, and High Elf Archer's account, the Arrow Deflection enchantment stops arrows; it does not guarantee the same degree of protection against Goblin Slayer's mambele.
Mad Eye: While his hoods up, one eye is always larger and brighter than the other, and will bug out greatly during fits of rage or in religious ecstasy at being granted a vision.
Magic Knight: Is a strong and skilled duelist on top of being a high-level caster.
The Man Behind the Man:
- He was a member of the sect conducting dark rituals within Water Town's labyrinth, and thus had a hand producing the goblin infestation. And, considering his fondness for human sacrifices, the vivisected girl whose discovery initiated the whole investigation into the sewers in the first place may very well be his handiwork.
- He was responsible for there being relatively quiet goblin activity before the Harvest Festival in Volume 3, seeing as he was preparing them for a march into town.
Mission from God: He received a vision from his Dark God that drove him to start the events of Volume 3.
Multi-Armed and Dangerous: Because he is an apostle of Hecatoncheir, he can cast a spell that grows five additional arms from his back, granting a total of seven. The spiritual arm granted as a protective enchantment would add to become eight.
Nightmare Face: Particularly after growing his giant arms, his face has a disturbing tendency to twist into a mask of grotesque, elongated features whenever he gets pissed at something Goblin Slayer did or said.
Nightmare Fetishist: Repeatedly calls the goblins under his command "adorable."
No Man of Woman Born: Because he is protected by Hecatoncheir's enchantment, arrows aimed at him are simply caught out of the air and nullified. This becomes a problem when he attempts a last-ditch spell at death's door and is too distant to be stopped by most other means. So Goblin Slayer chucks a unique throwing knife at him. Because it was designed to slash instead of pierce, the weapon successfully lops off the Dark Elf's arm.
Our Elves Are Different: One of the relatively rare examples of a Dark Elf from Japanese media that actually conforms to the classic Western idea of Dark Elves as wicked schemers instead of just being the usual Japanese Dark Elf (i.e. a Wood Elf with dark skin).
Pride: His interlude chapter title states that he's very full of himself. He also takes offense when Goblin Slayer considers him less troublesome than the goblin lord, since he takes himself seriously as a member of the Evil Sect.
Scary Teeth: He has very blocky and strong teeth, which become slightly pointed whenever he's expressing particularly savage intent.
Slasher Smile: Whenever his ego or bloodlust grow out of control, he pulls a huge, grotesquely maniacal grin full of sharp teeth.
Smug Snake: Is absolutely convinced that he is predestined by the dark gods to successfully bring about the apocalypse, and refuses to believe he could fail in his mission or even consider the need to fall back and regroup in the face of a mountain of setbacks and lost resources he himself lists off. In the light novel he boasts to himself about killing the Failed Heroine easily, only to have it shown in the manga that he barely survived their encounter.
Suicidal Overconfidence: While marching on the frontier town, he is forced to admit to himself that his schemes have been getting thwarted over and over in the last several months, but he angrily insists that the summoning of Hetaconcheir is still on schedule and he will succeed. Enter Goblin Slayer.
Summoning Artifact: The biggest factor that makes him a threat is an artifact resembling a Hand of Glory. Granted to him by the gods of chaos (implied to be Truth), it allows him to grow arms and manifest a ghostly limb of Hecatoncheir that plucks arrows straight out of the air. He intended to use it to summon the real deal during the events of Volume 3.
Tainted Veins: The capillaries of his eyelids turn black when he pures himself up with transformation magic.
Taking You with Me: He was already pissed off when Goblin Slayer managed to land a single strike on him, but when it turned out the wound was fatally poisoned, he mustered all of his reserves into a last spell that would have wiped the party out. An arrow through the neck prevented him from finishing the incantation.
Wave-Motion Gun: His Disintegrate spell in the manga is an absolutely massive laser that clean-burns a smoke cloud and fries several goblins and the Dragon-tooth Warriors to ash.
Whip Sword: His sword has an enchantment on it that causes the blade to extend and flex when it hits a shield to wrap around and lash an opponent from behind or above.
You Are Already Dead: Goblin Slayer manages to just graze him with a knife he rubbed with the poison of the special darts he gave Rhea Scout. It takes a few minutes to start taking its toll, but when it does and he's told what's happening to him he knows he's doomed and jumps to trying to pull a Taking You with Me in an instant.

Giant Vermin

Giant Rats and Giant Cockroaches in the sewers. The lowest missions available, below even goblin clearing, but still dangerous if not properly prepared for beforehand.

Airborne Mook: The extra-Giant Cockroach can also still easily take to the air,
Big Creepy-Crawlies: The Giant Cockroaches are as long as a man is tall.
Extreme Omnivore: One particularly large giant cockroach ate an entire sharp metal sword.
King Mook: The climatic fight of the Rookie Duo's Day in the Limelight as a cockroach that is twice the size of its already giant brethren.
Poisonous Person: The giant rats are such bad disease vectors that the Rookie Duo drink antidotes if they get too much of their blood on them (apparently it works on the plague too). Evidently less of a concern with Giant Cockroaches (somewhat of a Genius Bonus as cockroaches, despite their reputation for being gross and filthy, are actually known to almost compulsively groom themselves).
Rat Stomp: The easiest quest available at the adventurers guild. Hapless or underequipped rookies still die easily and gruesomely to these hog-sized, man-eating vermin.
Rodents of Unusual Size: The giant rats are at least the size of large hunting dogs.
To Serve Man: Adventurers that die to them get eaten.

Wolves

Wild canines that pose a constant threat to livestock and travelers. Goblins and other monster can occasionally tame them. Come in magically empowered or monstroiusly interbred varients, such as wargs.

Angry Guard Dog: Large and well-stocked goblin hordes will appoint these beasts alongside their lookouts.
Attack Animal: Goblin Slayer gets jumps by two at once in a goblin cave in Year One Volume 2.
Canis Major: A warg is described as being bigger than Priestess in Volume 10.
Dire Beast: Wargs are over twice the size and visciousness of garden variety wolves.
Emergency Food Supply Animal: According to Goblin Slayer, goblins have no qualms of slaughtering their dogs when resources get lean.
Hell Hound: Wargs are called this, and are showed to be tougher and more ferocious in a fight than normal wolves.
Moody Mount: The wolves goblins ride and "train" are usually just broken-in enough to not try to prey on goblins and go in the direction they are prodded. They flee back to the woods if their masters get killed or knocked off.
Savage Wolves: Usually drawn as feral, mangy, and blood-crazed, especially when leashed by goblins.

Evil Wizard

An evil wizard that Heavy Swordsman, Spearman, and Goblin Slayer team up to hunt down together in Volume 4.

Alien Blood: Stated to have "blue-black" blood in the light novel.
Arc Villain: Acts as one for Volume 4/Chapters 6-7 of the Brand New Day manga.
Bald of Evil: In the Brand New Day manga.
Caught Monologuing: He rises up before Goblin Slayer, Spearman, and Heavy Warrior to start a prepared speech on how futile it is to fight him. Goblin Slayer throws a sword into his chest two sentences in.
Destination Defenestration: Since he claims he cannot be killed by human hands, Goblin Slayer's party opts to simply drop him from the tower and let gravity do the work, with Heavy Warrior kicking him off while he's still gagged. An audible "plonk!" later, the Evil Wizard no longer moves.
Spearman: Huh. Dead as a doornail.
Evil Gloating: Starts a prepared speech when Spearman, Heavy Warrior, and Goblin Slayer make it to the top of his tower. He barely gets two lines out before Goblin Slayer chucks a sword through his lung, which only really shut him up for a little bit.
Exact Words: As Heavy Warrior notes, he says he can’t be killed, not that he can’t die.
Flaming Skulls: His face is noticeably gaunt to the point it can be mistaken for an actual skull, and when powering up, flames wreathe around his head.
Insult Backfire: Calls Heavy Warrior, Spearman, and Goblin Slayer "uncouth barbarians" as they charge into the midst of his gargoyles. Heavy Warrior counters by slashing through them and declaring they are "great barbarians".
Interim Villain: Is just a random evil spellcaster off to the side between Volume 3's Dark Elf (who was The Man Behind the Man to several high-power goblin nests and pawn of choice of the Greater-Scope Villain), and Volume 5's next evolution of the goblin threat. Hell, the hunt for him isn't even the central focus of the volume. His arc is used only as a side story in the manga, and he is defeated in the same chapter that he is introduced in.
Karmic Death: Spent weeks sending his gargoyles out to kill anyone one who approached his turf, and then Goblin Slayer and friends put an end to him the same way his creatures liked to kill; dropping him from on high. Being dropped by Goblin Slayer adds to the karma since one of his gargoyles' victims included a priestess like his own companion.
Mage Tower: Operates out of one, possibly gifted to him by a Chaos God. Its height is integral to Goblin Slayer's method of killing him, which leads his partners to quip they would have had a far more difficult trip if it had been an underground labyrinth instead.
No Ontological Inertia: Averted. One of the pre-made adventures in the tabletop game takes place in the aftermath of the boys killing him, with the premise that his mage tower is still around and the interior that was bypassed in volume 3 is full of magic tomes and items that goblins, brigands, and evil cultists are making off with, as well as magically enhanced beasts and malfunctioning golems that are escaping into the surrounding countryside.
Nightmare Face: In the Brand New Day manga, his face resembles a Flaming Skull, but with skin on it, which makes him look creepier.
No Man of Woman Born: He believes he is protected from harm by a prophecy that states he "cannot be slain by human hands." Goblin Slayer points out that all they need to do is use indirect means that leave nature as the direct killer to put an end to him.
Our Gargoyles Rock: Creates and controls these for defense to clear out the area around his base.
Our Liches Are Different: He is clearly meant to resemble a lich, with his Nightmare Face, Black Cloak, and ritual-fueled Resurrective Immortality. His Alien Blood make it clear that he is not human.
Resurrective Immortality: Due to his No Man of Woman Born magical protection, he can rise again from any fatal injury so long as it was caused by a direct mortal killer. He is not immune to small injuries as Goblin Slayer's tear gas clearly hurts him and Spearman breaks his teeth to stop him from casting spells.
Shock and Awe: Can empower his Lightning spell to be strong enough to conjure a complete thunderstorm.
Sorting Algorithm of Evil: Subverted. While the king ranks his threat level as above goblins (if still below demons,) Evil Wizard was defeated far more easily than the previous Arc Villains before him.
Squishy Wizard: While some of magical feats are impressive, it doesn't take Spearman much effort to bind him once the wizard was exposed to Goblin Slayer's tear gas. He also becomes completely helpless once Spearman gags him.
Summon Magic: How he gets new gargoyles as opposed to crafting them.
Talking Is a Free Action: Defied. Evil Wizard attempts to monologue about his ambitions and plans to Heavy Warrior's party when he is interrupted with a sword to the chest via Goblin Slayer. Spearman is not amused.
Spearman: Hey, hey, you could at least let him finish. Is this it?
Goblin Slayer: There is no need for us to confront him head-on.
Undignified Death: Spearman binds him in magic webbing, knocks out several teeth to make him incapable of talking or spellcasting, and then complains to Goblin Slayer and Heavy Warrior about how to get rid of him, to which the former suggests tossing him off the tower and the latter enacts by literally booting him over the railing. While all three make fun of how much of a non-threat he was.

Troll

An ugly monster found among the goblins in Volume 6.

Arc Villain: Of the first half of Volume 6.
Body Horror: It's absolutely covered in enormous boils and patches of its skin constantly slough off. After Goblin Slayer flash-freezes its petrified body, the still-alive troll became covered in cracks and gashes.
Diabolus ex Nihilo: The troll in Volume 6 had no reason to be sharing a den with goblins, and it is all but confirmed that Truth bent reality just to have a tough monster there to kill the Doomed Party. More humorously, Spy in Volume 10 can't tell for the life of him if the Troll in the Wine Merchant's house was a guard monster, sent by a conflicting run to destroy evidence, or what. It's just there to complicate his heist.
Dumb Muscle: Acts and is treated as a glorified hobgoblin, and if anything is even more brutish than the average one.
Healing Factor: Extremely dangerous for its ability to rapidly regenerate its wounds. Although its healing factor does have it limits as the wounds it receives from nearly being Literally Shattered Lives were unable to heal.
Literally Shattered Lives: Goblin Slayer induces thermal shock on its petrified skin, causes its body to explode. Although it managed to stay alive as its skin returned back to flesh, the troll was in no condition to defend itself from Goblin Slayer's party finishing it off.
Taken for Granite: It turns to stone when exposed to sunlight, or a Light miracle.
This Bear Was Framed: After the shadowrunners make their getaway, the Water Town guard decide to just blame the troll for the break-in, theft, and planting of evidence at the mansion, to save paperwork.
Weakened by the Light: As stated in Taken for Granite, however the troll will only be petrified if light continue to shine on it.
Weak to Fire: Its other known weakness. Although the one encounter in Volume 6 was able to keep fighting even after Goblin Slayer set it on fire.
Your Head A-Splode: A burst noggin from a heavy-caliber flintlock seems to be enough to put down a troll for good. Unless it fell in a canal and simply drowned as it regenerated.

Mokele Mbembe

A dinosaur-like entity found in the river of the Elves' Forest Kingdom.

Beast of Battle: A goblin shaman manages to put a saddle on it and hypnotize it into letting goblins on its back, though in practice the riders only aggravate it into stampeding and can barely steer it.
Call a Pegasus a "Hippogriff": It's a mix of Brontosaurus and Stegosaurus described as a single-headed juvenile hydra and named after the Congo Basin mythological creature Mokele Mbembe.
Dinosaurs Are Dragons: Described as a hydra or lesser dragon, and visually looks like a purple Brontosaurus.
Making a Splash: In reference to its mythological roots, the elves state that it has control over water and they refuse to fight it even when it attacks them for fear it will then stop the river in retaliation.
Mokele-Mbembe: A mokele-mbembe resembling a sauropod with pink-purple plates running down its neck and spine, which lives in the rivers around the elf kingdom. It's also stated to actually be a young hydra.
Our Hydras Are Different: It's stated to be a hydra, the extra heads just have yet to come with age.
Red Eyes, Take Warning: In the light novel illustration its eyes blaze red. Also counts as Mind-Control Eyes.
Semi-Divine: Lizard Priest hails it as a god-sired beast.
Time Abyss: Is older than High Elf Archer (2000 years) probably older than Shining Helm (8000 years, assuming he's comparable in age to his wife) and potentially older than their grandfather (back towards the dawn of the world). And it's apparently still a juvenile.

Sea Serpent

A giant serpentine fish that was disrupting fishing spots of a coastal village. Goblin Slayer's party mistakenly agree to hunt it in the beginning of Volume 8.

Mercy Kill: High Elf Archer shoots it in the eye to spare it a prolonged death by suffocation.
Non-Indicative Name: Though it is called a serpent, it's fully piscine, something Goblin Slayer exploits to kill it easily. Afterwards he prefers the more accurate moniker of "Long Fish" when referring back to it.
No-Sell: It secretes a thick mucus that blocks High Elf Archer's arrows.
Sea Monster: It was a giant fish shaped like a snake that threatened fishing boats directly and indirectly.
Supernatural Suffocation: Goblin Slayer has Dwarf Shaman cast Water Walk on it, making it flop around on the surface of the ocean. Because it is actually a fish, it can’t breathe out of water, and it slowly asphyxiated until High Elf Archer managed to put it down.

Sasquatches

A race of man-eating mountainous ape-men. A group appearing in Volume 9 in service of Ice Witch.

Agony of the Feet: Dwarf Shaman and Lizard Priest charge into their cave hacking off toes and feet in the climatic skirmish, and the poor off-guard Sasquatches are left flat on their backs crying over their mangled feet.
Bigfoot, Sasquatch, and Yeti: A variant that are sapient and capable of speech.
Decapitated Army: Once Priestess announces that the Ice Witch has fallen, they completely lose their nerves and head for the hills, leaving the cursed drums behind.
Dumb Muscle: Very easily played for fools.
The Family for the Whole Family: Borderline case; the yetis (and even Ice Witch) are noted to speak in overblown Yakuza slang (complete with referring to each other as brother all the time), would rather screw with their victims in mind games than attack outright, and can be routed quite easily. They're still savage ape-men that can and will eat people alive if they get their hands on them.
Hungry Menace: Are preying the harefolk, and racketeering them for hood. All they are motivated by is a chance to feed.
I Have You Now, My Pretty: When they believe they have Priestess in a trap, they gloat about how they intend to torture her and eat her alive.
Know When to Fold Them: The last sasquatch racketeer runs home when his fellows are cut down by Lizard Priest. The survivors of the final battle bolt for the hills when Priestess announces she killed Ice Witch.
Magic Music: Ice Witch gives them a set of enchanted drums that cause extended blizzards when played together.
Not Worth Killing: Priestess declined to give orders to hunt the remaining yetis down once the battle with the Ice Witch was over. She didn't see a need to; they weren't goblins.
Our Giants Are Bigger: The narration exposits that they are devolved descendents of giantkin, and they remain about ten feet tall.
To Serve Man: Volume 2's champion was in the middle of eating Priestess before Goblin Slayer strangles him into stopping. Little Bit Beastly people work too, as poor Bunny Boy can attest.
Villain Song: Twice sing a short marching song about how they'll kill and eat everyone during the Endless Winter they summoned.

Ice Witch

An evil sorceress in Volume 9 who launches a reign of terror in the northern mountains in winter.

Alien Blood: Her blood is rendered dark and viscous from foul, necromantic magic.
Anime Hair: Those spikes on her head aren’t a crown. She wears her hair piled in a Beehive Hairdo in three segments, that come to noticeable points. Presumably she freezes her hair in position to maintain the style.
Archenemy: Considers Priestess to be the primary threat of the party, and prioritizes confronting her.
Arc Villain: Of Volume 9.
Casts No Shadow: The first major hint that she more than just an evil enchantress.
Endless Winter: Was aiming for this with the rituals she and her yeti henchmen were doing with their Ice Drums.
Evil Is Deathly Cold: Very much her theme in power, appearance, and moniker.
Glowing Eyes of Doom: Her eyes shine in the gloom of her windowless cave hideout.
Hellish Pupils: Her eyes are slightly slitted.
Holy Burns Evil: The blessed silver arrow that seals her doom chars her fingers off when she tries to pull it out of her chest.
An Ice Person: Much of her magic evokes blizzards.
Improperly Paranoid: She doesn't quite trust her yeti henchmen enough to believe they won't stab her in the back one day. So she keeps the silver arrows needed to kill her (and various other spoils) inside a tunnel too small for the ape-men to ever squeeze through. Humans can enter just fine though, forcing her to confront them head-on and put herself at risk.
Lesbian Vampire: Muses to herself about how young human women are her favorite victims to drink from, with Lecherous Licking to punctuate the sentiment.
Light Is Not Good: Is near-completely white in skin and hair, along with having a heavy association with snow and ice, but is an utterly unrepentantant monster.
Lotus-Eater Machine: Puts Priestess in a trance where she sees Goblin Slayer asking her to hand over the magic Silver Arrow she took from the Ice Witch and come away with him on a different quest. She sees through it when she realizes that Goblin Slayer's warm attitude and casual praise is just an affectation of how she wishes he would act towards her.
Navel-Deep Neckline: Her outfit is off the shoulders with a plunging neckline.
Navel Window: Her outfit has Navel-Deep Neckline down to her waist, but is pinned closed at the solar plexus to frame her belly button.
No Body Left Behind: By the time everyone has taken a shot at her, the only thing left of her is a small pile of ash immediately blown away by the wind, and a tiny splash of blood spurted on Priestess' cheek.
There Is No Kill Like Overkill: A healing miracle cast by Priestess burns her body severely. Then Harefolk Hunter fires a silver arrow directly into her chest, sealing her fate, followed by Apprentice Cleric coming in with a Smite spell that hits the projectile like a lightning rod and reduces her to a bloodstain.
The Nose Knows: She smells Priestess before she sees her.
Our Vampires Are Different: High Elf Archer realizes she's not properly alive when she sees Ice Witch has no shadow, and when Priestess is hypnotized by her, she is dimly aware that her neck has been bitten.
Pest Controller: One of her abilities include summoning a horde of giant rats at her beck and call.
Pragmatic Villainy: While she thinks it would be nice if she and her circumstantial allies really could conquer the nation or even the world with the curse of Endless Winter, her private and far more realistic goal was to use the mobilization of ice monsters as cover to move to a good-sized human town and lay low for a couple hundred years of easy predation in a fresh blood bank.
Red Eyes, Take Warning: Her blood-red eyes are the only spot of color on her body.
Revive Kills Zombie: Priestess casts a Heal spell on her that causes her body to start disintegrating.
Silver Has Mystic Powers: It kills vampires too in this setting.
Stripperific: Priestess comments on the sheer brevity of her outfit.
Super Smoke: She can turn herself into a gust of living snowflakes that lets her slip by obstacles and ambush key targets.
Taking You with Me: Even as she burns to death, she tries to attack Priestess as final spiteful retaliation.
Undeathly Pallor: She's a vampire who is as pale as the snow she conjures.
Yuki-onna: She is An Ice Person that happens to have traits of a vampire/undead.
White Hair, Black Heart: Her hair is white as crystal, and she is a petty, sadistic, predatory undead.

Undead

Undead from Year One

Zombies, flesh golems, and sundry other necromantic things that Goblin Slayer's party and other end up fighting in Volume 10.

Body of Bodies: Some sort of "chimera" made of stitch-together bodies ends up being the main threat sent to despoil the Earth Mother temple by the forces of Chaos. Whatever it is, it's got multiple heads and sets of arms.
The Caligula: A high-level undead in Year One was in life a warrior-king who went insane and started massacring his own people, and raised them as a zombie army after being revived himself.
Clown-Car Grave: The goblin zombies Goblin Slayer and crew have to take out rise dozens at a time out of a small, muddy burial mound.
Feral Vampires: "Nightwalker" ghouls are a endgame-level monsters nearly or just as strong as proper vampires, they're just completely berserk.
Flesh Golem: The chimera-thing the Ragged Party have to take on is made of several fused bodies.
Our Banshees Are Louder: The enemy vampire in volume 16 offhandedly mentions he'll need to destroy High Elf Archer's body after he kills her because strong elvish woman exposed to necromantic magic are known to spontaneously rise again as banshees sometimes.
Our Ghouls Are Creepier: This setting's ghouls are of the rabid, "demi-vampire" kind.
Our Kobolds Are Different: Kobolds in this world are merely a specific type of skeleton construct made with the mixed and matched bones of animals, fossils, and beastfolk.
Our Zombies Are Different:
- In genral not really; slow, senseless, relentless, and can be destroyed be sanctifying a funeral place. Not much more to them then that.
- That being said, there are evidently different kinds of zombies that can be made. The Dungeon of the Dead in Daikatana causes a localized Zombie Apocalypse that is explicitly not restless dead. Sanctified corpses are still susceptible to rising, and Turn Undead has limited effect in destroying them.
Plague Zombie: According to the prologue of Daikatana, when the Dungeon of the Dead was opened and the demons began invading, a number of epidemics were also unleashed on the kingdom, including one that made zombies out of the victims. How the disease works is a mystery, as it evidently wasn't wholly necromantic in nature and typical counters to dark magic were of limited effect against the zombies it spawned.
Poisonous Person: The chimera that attacks the temple exudes a miasma that Half Elf Wizard needs to ward against so it can actually be approached and fought.
Red Eyes, Take Warning: Ghouls have burning crimson eyes even in the enchanted pitch of the Dungeon of the Dead.
Reduced to Dust: A killed ghoul will crumble to ash even from a strike with a mundane sword.
Removing the Head or Destroying the Brain: Without a cleric to break the necromancy ritual, this is the only way to stop a zombie for sure. In volume 12, it is noted that the arrows of the besieged soldiers are practically ineffective as they aren't causing enough damage to their craniums.
Sealed Evil in a Can: The crazy zombie king in Year One was contained only when his own surviving subjects performed a ritual to bury his city deep underground. Dark Elves mistakenly free him while trying to summon the Demon Lord.
Zombie Gait: The goblin zombies do not rush Goblin Slayer's team and cannot move faster than a laborious shuffle.

Manticore

Another sent by the forces of Chaos to attack the Earth Mother temple in Volume 10.

Beast with a Human Face: Described as having the head of an old man.
Beware My Stinger Tail: Has the tail of a giant scorpion.
It Can Think: Half Elf Wizard says it is capable of spellcasting, and it apparently reacts with shock when she seemingly starts killing her own fellow adventurers in the middle of a fight.
Our Manticores Are Spinier: Not really any different from the basic version, with the exception of it being stated that it can cast magic.
Panthera Awesome: Most of its body is that of a giant lion.
Poisonous Person: It's sting has an extremely potent venom.

Wine Merchant

A rich trader from Water Town who comes to Frontier Town in an effort to corner its wine market through shady means.

Conspicuous Consumption: He rides in such an absolutely massive and gaudily decorated carriage that even his chaffeur looks down condescendingly on passerby. He enormous riverside mansion was in the middle of renovations when he gets arrested and his family still takes pains to ensure the exterior looks immaculate.
Deal with the Devil: The forces of Chaos talk him into and help his aggressive takeover scheme to undermine the Earth Mother temple and buy up Cow Girl Uncle's farm, to deny the Adventurer's Guild fallback positions when their army attacks the town.
Fatal Flaw: Greed. He had a windfall a while before Volume 10 starts and invested all the money back into expanding the trade. When business slowed again he was in hock and desperate for anyway to increase his fortune again, no matter who else's lives he had to destroy to do it.
Framing the Guilty Party: Spy and Changeling get ahold of a contract made between Wine Merchant and his co-conspirators in Water Town and plant it in the house of the captain of the city watch, thus framing him for their burglary on top of exposing his collusion.
The Ghost: Never once seen by any of the primary cast, he operates and is disposed of entirely off-screen.
Les Collaborateurs: Sold out to the demon hordes over his business and renovation debts.
Malicious Slander: Is the one behind the rumors of Grape Nun being a "goblin daughter", which is obvious to everyone when he moves to town and starts muscling in on the wine market when said gossip has barely begun circulating, let alone left town or actually impacted the temple's wine business.
Pet the Dog: He gave a job in his vineyard to a disabled ex-soldier, and treated him and the rest of staff well enough that a good chunk of them stayed to defend his home when he was disgraced and arrested.

Prime Minister

The interim ruler of the Desert Kingdom after Desert Princess' parents were assassinated by his Number Two. He attempts to force her to give him the crown.

Even Evil Has Standards: The narration notes that he is just as disgusted as Desert Princess with his guard captain's schemes. Doesn't stop him from using them to his benefit.
Evil Chancellor: Is a medieval Arabic setting complete without one?
Half-Human Hybrid: Has bluish-black skin as a mark of dark elf ancesty.
Karma Houdini: Is not encountered by any of the adventurers in the Desert Kingdom and continues his tyranny and imprisonment of the rightful ruler. A more local hero takes up the cause to expire his Karma Houdini Warranty.
Les Collaborateurs: Uses goblins to terrorize the commoners of his nation. In fainess to him it wasn't his idea, but then if he actually cared he could put a stop to it at any time.
Not Me This Time: He wasnt the one to ally with goblins, nor did he assassinate the old king. That was entirely on his idiot second-in-command. Which isn't to say he's much better than him.
Puppet King: Used the old king as one, until his overeager guard captain got it in his head to dispose of him. The succeeding princess has been rather less malleable.
Sadist: Vents his frustrations by psychologically torturing Desert Princess, who believes he has the natural cruelty endemic to many pure dasrk elves.
Sinister Scimitar: Carries one at all times, mostly to brandish at an uppity Desert Princess.
Smug Snake: For all the power he currently holds over Desert Princess, she has no qualms calling him out as foolish, prideful, manipulative, shallow, and lacking in sincere knowledge or courage.
The Usurper: Attempting this with Desert Princess, though she's proving too strong-willed to publicly submit.

Guard Captain

The second-in-command of the Prime Minister. He's the one that is raising goblins and killed Desert Princess' father.

Agent Peacock: Takes excessive pride in his study of fine art, but is a competent enough fighter to cut his way through the goblin horde overrunning his garrison and reach his office by himself.
Didn't Think This Through: Never stopped to consider all the ramifications of his plan to harness goblins, such as how uncontrollably they really are or how much everyone around him considers it a disgusting idea. His plan to leverage a dragon is similarly poked holes in; the first victim of a sleeping dragon would almost certainly be the moron that woke it up.
Does This Remind You of Anything?: His internal monologue throughout his short point-of-view segment is full of exactly the same sort of narcissism, short-sightedness, responsibility-dodging, vindictiveness, and entitlement the narrative constantly describes as intrinsic to goblins. People who never met him personally can accurately peg him as essentially a goblin in the skin of a man.
Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: It can't even comprehend fellow villains being merely less evil. This man is completely unable to understand why everyone, from the Prime Minister to the Desert Princess to the soldiers under his command, reacts with disgust and contempt towards his attempted scheme of deliberately breeding a disposable army of goblins.
The Heavy: The Dragon to the Prime Minister, but the only one of the two currently actively doing evil stuff on more than a personal basis.
I Have You Now, My Pretty: Was intending to get Noble Fencer alone to seduce her, and everything else we know about him indicates he wouldn't take no for an answer. Thankfully he never gets the chance to get close to her.
Industrialized Evil: Set up an entire ranch-style operation to funnel female slaves into a goblin cave, even going so far as to stop the goblins from killing or pointlessly torturing any.
It's All About Me: Absolutely convinced that he is a brilliant, cultured, desirable paragon that everyone else is refusing to acknowledge the greatness of.
Guard Captain: Why doesn’t anyone see me for the jewel that I am?!
Killed Mid-Sentence: He was in the middle of yelling over his shoulder for Spy to help him look for his map when a bullet to his eye belatedly informed him that the other man was not one of his attendants.
Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: Worships the God of Wisdom, and thinks of his sudden idea to tame goblins as divine inspiration, though he's not sure, and the plan had... significantly more holes in it than previous confirmed cases.
More Despicable Minion: Is demonstrably more unhinged and sadistic than his benefactor the Prime Minister. They also provide a Deconstruction of the dynamic while they're at it; the Guard Captain feels hurt by and resentful of his boss's disgust at his methods to the point of planning betrayal, and the minister himself is abjectly unable to reel in his own right hand man's worst impulses, such as setting up a goblin breeding camp or prematurely assassinating the sultan, which only end up screwing with the time-table of his long-planned coup, demoralizing the rest of his lackeys, and steeling the resolve and contempt of the Desert Princess as she watches him enable the out-of-control atrocities and try to play them off as still part of his machinations.
Not-So-Well-Intentioned Extremist: Claims to have done what he did for the good of the country, but the more his internal monologue goes on the clearer it is that he cares about nothing but his own aggrandizement.
Screw This, I'm Outta Here: When Goblin Slayer's party causes his penned goblins to riot, his response is to cut his way through the wild melee between them and his garrison staff to his office so he can run off with the map to the dragon he discovered as possible leverage for his next power play. He finds a second group already in his space and gunning for his head personally.
The Starscream: Fully intended to kill the Prime Minister next and marry the Desert Princess to become the undisputed head of state. He dies in his fort with all his plans imploding around him.
Villainous Breakdown: He is frothing at the mouth as he wades his way through the goblin riot in his garrison and tears his office apart looking for his map to the dragon's lair, internally ranting about how he is going to declare war on the western Kingdom for what he is convinced was their sabotage and how he deserves to be ruler of the Desert Kingdom and subjugate all the women he desires.
Wicked Cultured: Internally brags about being "educated in the singing of ballads and the ways of etiquette", to the point of claiming those as some of the virtues that prove he is fit to be his country's next ruler.

Dragons

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/goblinslayerdragon.jpg

A large red dragon sleeping in the desert. Desert Regent and his goblins intended to provoke it to rampage as a last resort to conquer Desert Kingdom. Also a large green dragon fought by the Golden Party in Daikatana.

Breath Weapon: The red drgon shoot some fire, while the green dragon spits super-heated poison gas.
Feed It a Bomb: Samurai Captain kills the green dragon by exploding its gas in its throat with Firebolt.
Green and Mean: The Daikatana dragon is dark green and a far more active threat than the red one.
Mini-Boss: The green dragon was a rare and highly dangerous mob that sometimes showed in the dead-end of the fourth floor of the Dungeon of the Dead.
My Blood Runs Hot: Dragon blood can scald a melee fighter severely if they get splashed.
Non-Malicious Monster: This dragon was not involved with the plot of the Volume 11 baddies and only desires to sleep. When half-roused by a runaway goblin, it lashes out on instinct only.
No-Sell: Arrows bounce off even the red one's eyelids, magic ricochets from its enchanted scales, and almost everything else is buffetted back by its wingbeats.
Poisonous Person: The green dragon had a deadly axphisiating poison attack.
Red Eyes, Take Warning: The green dragon had dark red eyes and was one of the strongest challenges in the top half of the Dungeon of the Dead.
Sleepyhead: The young red dragon in the desert is hibernating, wishes to continue hibernating, and is easily sent back to hibernating when the goblin bothering it is taken care of.

Wyvern

Winged, Breath Weapon-lacking, lesser kin to true dragons, wyverns are still incredibly strong and vicious creatures.

Clip Its Wings: Female Knight downs at least one by leaping off a castle wall, severing a wing in midair, and allowing a mob of soldiers to stab it the rest of the way to death after it crashes in the courtyard.
Diabolus ex Nihilo: One shows up out of nowhere just to chase the Rookie party as soon as they mop up a goblin nest. Quite Literally, as it's an adventure-seed from the Gods' current campaign.
Evil Is Petty: Wants to violently kill the Rookie Party because they were in eyeshot while it was in a bad mood.
Eye Scream: The Rookie Party escape it by throwing a blanket laced with poisoned glass shards in its face. Shortly afterwards, High Elf Archer shoots a different one in the eye and through the brain, back out the other eye and down into its heart.
Hair-Trigger Temper: Merely encountering the Rookie Party was enough to make it want to kill them on principle.
It Can Think: It's sapient enough to get a point-of-view segment, as is actively malicious.
No-Sell: An arrow shot down its throat barely chokes it for a moment, and a Holy Smite just briefly dazzles its vision.
Super-Persistent Predator: It readily acknowledges eating the three members of the Rookie Party isn't worth the energy of killing them. It's willing to stake them out for hours or days out of spite.
Worf Effect: The immediate next chapter after the Rookie Party barely scratch and evade one opens with Female Knight hacking off the wing of another with one sword-swing, and High Elf Archer shooting one in the brain from afar.

Peryton

A monster that Priestess fights in Volume 12, on a quest with High Elf Archer, Witch, and Female Knight.

Bat Out of Hell: In the manga adaptation, its true form when Priestess burns away its illusionary defenses is a demon that looks like a bear-sized giant bat.
Deadly Gas: The smoke it forms from is lethally toxic for soldiers to come in contact with.
Hope Crusher: It's role during the seige is to demoralize the human troops inside the fort by showing off its invulnerability and proclaiming their immanent death.
Intangibility: Cannot by hit by weapons or most spells, until the shadows cloaking it are burnt away.
It Can Think: The fact it is intelligent and can speak is essential to the heroines' plan to take it down.
Living Shadow: Formed from smoke and shadow.
Paradox Person: Witch claims it is this, both existing and not existing, though there is a trick to making it one or the other, exposing the real monster behind the illusion.
Our Perytons Are Different: This one has the body of a giant bird and merely the head of a stag. It's also merely a Living Shadow guise or projection of a demon or warlock.
Riddle of the Sphinx: Wins a game a riddles against Priestess by asking it, and she becomes convinced it could only be some sort of shapeshifter. He actually becomes so affronted by her lack of education that he neglects to take her life as is now his right and tries to explain the correct answer to her.
Super Smoke: Turns into smoke to pass into the border fort unimpeded.

Giant Spider

A monstrous arachnid fought in the sewers of the Chaos-infested city of Volume 12. Several slightly smaller ones show in Year One as mounts for dark elves.

All Webbed Up: The territory of the Volume 12 specimen is of course absolutely festooned in giant webs that gum-up Heavy Warrior's sword.
Animalistic Abomination: The one in Volume 12 is possibly corrupted by Chaos magic and only vaguely looks like an actual spider.
Fragile Speedster: The Volume 12 one scurries through the gloom of its dungeon room like a dark wind, but when finally pinned it gets absolutely crushed in two hits.
Giant Spider: Called as such because they are as such.
Horse of a Different Color: Year One has a horde of hog-sized specimen being used as steeds by dark elves patrolling in the sunken city and surrounding caverns.
In a Single Bound: The one in Volume 12 is capable of impressively fast and far leaps, even for its size, to evade Spearman.
Poisonous Person: Their fangs drip venom.

Chaos Marine

A huge undead warrior that serves the Giant Eye of Volume 12.

Animated Armor: It's revealed to be just a shell kept moving with wires and rune-carved crystals.
Attack Its Weak Point: It's defeated by Goblin Slayer cutting its hand off through a chink at the wrist, then Spearman capitalizes by casting Magic Missile up the hole in its arm.
Fallen Hero: Was once a mighty champion of Order in the Age of the Gods, slaying countless demons and monsters, but now its dead body is desecrated and made to fight in the name of Chaos.
Headless Horseman: It's missing a head and enters the battlefield with the sound of hoofbeats. Spearman and Heavy Warrior initially think its a dullahan.
Literal Disarming: Goblin is the first to wound it by slicing off the hand holding its sword.
No-Sell: Its armor easily withstands Heavy Warrior's strongest blows and Spearman's enchanted polearm.
Our Centaurs Are Different: It's mistaken for a calvary unit, but doesn't have a mount and would be too big for one.

Rock Eater

A giant fifty meter long worm/centipede-like creature that serves as the main antagonist to a B-plot in Volume 1 of Goblin Slayer: Side Story Year One.

Arch-Enemy: To Newbie Swordsman after it killed his Implied Love Interest, Half-Elf Ranger.
Arc Villain: Serves as a Big Bad Ensemble with the goblins in Volume 1 of Side Story Year One.
Attack Its Weak Point: Its outer shell is hard to penetrate, even with magically enhanced weapons. However, Newbie Swordsman was able to injury it by attacking its inner mouth and Heavy Swordsman was able to inflict a deep cut on it by attacking between the plates. Spearman was able to give the killing blow by impaling it in the eye.
Big Bad Ensemble: With the goblins in Volume 1 of Year One. While Goblin Slayer is busy fighting goblins, the other adventurers like Newbie Swordsman and Spearman are dealing with this thing.
Big Creepy-Crawlies: This thing is a giant worm/centipede-like monster.
Call a Pegasus a "Hippogriff": Martial Artist is always confused when people talk about it because she personally refers to the beast as "Olgoi-Khorkhoi", which is the native name for the Mongolian Death Worm.
Cyclops: A giant fifty meter long monster with a single eye.
Extreme Omnivore: Rock, slimes, people, this monster eats just about anything.
Eye Scream: After a long, drawn out fight with the Adventurer's Guild, Spearman was able to kill it by impaling its single eye.
Flunky Boss: The Adventurer's Guild was forced to fight this monster and a horde of slimes that the rock eater seemed to be controlling. After the rock eater was killed, the slimes dispersed.
Godzilla Threshold: When the Guild learned about this creature, their first response was to send an entire army of adventurers after it, including the then Porcelain-ranked Spearman, Witch, Heavy Swordsman, and Female Knight. This clearly showed how much more dangerous this monster was compared to many of the other creatures shown.
More Teeth than the Osmond Family: This monster's mouth is full of multiple rings of teeth that tear any unfortunate prey it catches into ribbons, like poor Half-Elf Ranger and Steel-ranked Scout.
Non-Malicious Monster: Unlike most of the antagonists on this list, the rock eater is a giant feral monster that doesn't display any sadistic tendencies other than trying to survive.
Rock Monster: Its outer shell seems to be made out of rocks.
The Symbiote: Has a commensalistic relationship with the acidic blobs. Whenever it carved out new tunnels, blobs seeped through cracks into them to prey upon any outside creatures that came to investigate the new passages. It's worth noting that the huge and deadly swarm of slimes hanging over the adventuring troop's heads retreated back into their crevices the instant the rock eater died and went still.
The Worf Effect: A single rock eater in the prequel was a massive threat that swallowed low-to-mid ranked adventurers whole in a flash and needed an entire company of fighters led by a Bronze-rank to take it down. Chosen Heroine killed three fiendishly enhanced specimens with a single swing of her sword as a demonstration of her sheer combat ability.

Warlock

An evil mage commanding a small horde of goblins that was encountered by Young Warrior and Martial Artist's party in the abandoned mines. He later ends up killed by Spearman and Witch.

An Arm and a Leg: His hand gets chopped off by Young Warrior.
Bait-and-Switch Boss: For Spearman and Witch's B-plot. They quickly deal with him with little effort on their part, only to have to go against the more dangerous cockatrice.
Black Cloak: Wears an outfit similar to Evil Wizard.
Canon Foreigner: He doesn't actually appear in the light novel and was added in to the manga version of Year One Volume 2. Additionally, during Spearman and Witch's monster-hunting in the mines, while in the light novel they comment that there are signs of a wizard that was killed there, in the manga they meet and kill the Warlock himself.
Curb-Stomp Battle: While his encounter with Young Warrior and Martial Artist's party ended with the group barely making it out alive, his later encounter with Spearman and Witch results in his swift demise, through a combination of a Silence spell and Spearman slicing his head off.
Doppelgänger Spin: Creates illusory clones of himself to buy time to charge up a big spell, and is crafty enough to have the last clone left pretend to be about to cast a spell to keep attention on it.
An Ice Person: He casts a blizzard spell at the Misfit Party when he first encounters them.
Nightmare Face: It resembles a skull.
Off with His Head!: How he ends up dying, courtesy of Spearman cutting it off with a single spear blow.
Squishy Wizard: He's an incredibly skilled and powerful mage, capable of taking on an entire party with only some effort. However, after getting his magic silenced, he goes down with great ease.
Suspiciously Similar Substitute: He seems very similar to Evil Wizard, whom Goblin Slayer encountered in Volume 4/Brand New Day.
The Worf Effect: He was able to overwhelm Young Warrior and Martial Artist's party and they were forced to retreat, establishing himself as a big threat. However, Spearman and Witch make quick work of him later on to show their effectiveness as a team and that they are much stronger than normal adventurers.

Cockatrice

A cockatrice Spearman and Witch run into while on a quest in the abandoned mines.

Basilisk and Cockatrice: It's a cockatrice.
The Dragon: Apparently it was the Warlock's "guard dog" for his treasure.
Dragon Their Feet: Survives slightly longer than its master, before Spearman impales it's heart.
Mix And Match Creature: Has a giant rooster-like body, large bat wings, and a snake's head for a tail.
Taken for Granite: As can be expected from a cockatrice, it can turn things to stone. However, unlike most other cockatrices in fiction, this one can also turn non-living things such as the ground to stone as well, and does so by stabbing with its beak as opposed to eye-contact or its breath.

Dark Elf Cultists

A mob of demon-worshipping dark elves encountered in the B-plot of the third arc of Year One.

Cyanide Pill: One wounded survivor of the skirmish in the sunken city surreptitiously downs a poison vial before Barbarian starts interrogating him in earnest.
Gone Horribly Wrong: The ones in the sunken city attempt a ritual to bring the Demon Lord back to life. It goes off despite the interruption of the Barbarian with Young Warrior's party, only for their coffin to turn out to hold the body of some random human king that destroyed his own kingdom, who immediately starts chopping their heads off and calling up his personal zombie army when he gets up.
Horse Archer: The hunting party encountered in the sunken city all ride giant spiders, and most of them use bows.
Human Sacrifice: Their necromantic ritual involved buying dozens of human slaves to nail to a giant column after chopping their limbs off. When the ritual reaches its climax the sacrificed bodies scream and start melting.
Mage Marksman: One dark elf could cast Fire Bolt on his arrows to make his shots explosive.
Religion of Evil: They worship the Demon Lord as their god, and strive to help him destroy the world.

Slimes

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/goblinslayerslime.jpg

Living clumps of red or black gelationous matter. A frequent hazard to newbie adventurers in cave systems.

Ambushing Enemy: Their capacity to hide completely out of sight and lunge for people's heads (along with having no way to tell if one is poisonous or not) is what makes them considered a tougher foe than goblins in a straight fight.
Attack Its Weak Point: Seem to operate like the Delicious in Dungeon slimes in having a skin or central nerve that holds their liquid together that most be punctured to kill them. Half-Elf Scout must pull it partially off his teammate's face to slice through it enough to kill it.
Blob Monster: Your basic fantasy slime, considered only barely more dangerous to fight than a goblin.
Ceiling Cling: They are fond of oozing through ceilings to drop on top of prospective meals.
Giant Mook: Goblin Slayer, Heavy Warrior, and Spearman encounter a slime the size of a small hill in Volume 12. The latter two view it with withering contempt, as its sheer bulk prevents it from lunging at them with speed, and their own weapons are long enough to puncture its vital core with no issue.
Hollywood Acid: Certain slimes are capable of melting through metal and flesh in seconds. Fortunately for the Golden Party, the ones in Daikatana werern't toxic. Unfortunately for a background adventurer in Year One, the slimes in that story were.
It Can Think: Allegedly, certain varieties of slime are intelligent and can even use magic.
Kill It with Fire: Downplayed Trope. Sword Maiden uses fire magic to hurt a slime and loosen its grip enough for Half-Elf Scout to cut it off Female Warrior's face.
Poisonous Person: Certain slimes are poisonous to the touch, though those haven't been seen yet.
Red and Black and Evil All Over: All the slimes encountered so far as described as red, black, or mixed, with the color combined with their texture giving the impression of living, moving gore or organs.
Sinister Suffocation: They can drop down on an adventurer's head and envelop them, drowning them with their mass and then consuming them after they die.

"Scruffy Men"

Adventurers turned bushwhackers or highwaymen that compulsively murder weaker newbies for more loot.

Bandit Clan: Nearly a dozen of them form a group and set up a base camp in the Dungeon of the Dead that becomes a major enough hazard that parties set out to end them.
Demonic Possession: It's speculated that they are driven to the lengths they have gone by influence by the "spirit of Death" flowing out of the Dungeon.
For the Evulz: They have no way to spend their gold, squatting in the dungeon as they do. Its speculated they only continue their actions at this point because its all they remember and they think its fun.
Gold Fever: Adventurers who are Only in It for the Money are susceptile to having their greed magnified to the point that they start turning on their fellows just to be able to hoard more gold and gear.
Hero Killer: They set up a whole operation devoted to killing off any low-to-mid leveled adventurers they could get their hands on.
He Who Fights Monsters: They stopped fighting the Non-Prayer Races and have effectively become another kind of them.
I Have You Now, My Pretty: Are not above abusing any female newbies they get their hands on.
I'm a Humanitarian: The flesh of the rookies they prey on is the only fresh sustenance available in the Dungeon.
Large and in Charge: Their leader is a vicious bear of a man who is uncommonly tall and burly.
Serial Killer: By the time they made camp in the Dungeon, murdering newbies had become a compulsion for them.
I Surrender, Suckers: One faked penitence to Sword Maiden when his companions all bit it. She saw right through him.
Unfriendly Fire: Used to kill drunk newbies behind back of inns, then moved to ambushes in the Dungeon to better cover themselves, though it wasn't long before people caught on again and started to hunt them down.
Was Once a Man: No one considers them rightfully human after moving into the Dungeon and all they have done.
Your Head Asplode: Sword Maiden cracked apart the skull of one for trying to jump her after an attempt at mercy.

Ninjas

Black-clad, masked, and lightning-fast hand-to-hand-combatants in the Dungeon of the Dead of Daikatana.

Ambiguously Human: Samurai Captain isn't sure if they're corrupted adventurers or monstrous humanoids behind full-body covering combat attire.
Bare-Fisted Monk: Mostly fight with hands and feet, reinforced by steel guards.
Critical Hit Class: The strikes are precise, but have enough force to slash open flesh with bare hands.
Elite Mooks: Some of the deadliest regularly-encountered foes of the Dungeon mid-levels. Two of them act as auxilliaries for the Fallen Party.
Flechette Storm: Can fling caltrops and throwing stars in a pinch.
Highly-Visible Ninja: Their red and white masks are practically beacons in the dimness of the Dungeon, and their garb is a giveaway of their fighting style to those familiar with Eastern lands.
Impromptu Tracheotomy: Their favorite killing move is a spearhand blow that can slice of hands.
King Mook: One of the monsters that the Golden Party encounter in the bottom of the Dungeon of the Dead is a "Master Ninja", distinguished by wearing a stiff pointed kerchief instead of a tiger mask, and strong enough to fight alongside a trio of greater demons in the ninth floor.
Malevolent Masked Men: Most of them wear highly stylized, white-and-red tiger masks.
Razor-Sharp Hand: They can allegedly decapitate with a well-aimed barehand chop.
Smoke Out: In the party's first battle against them, Female Bishop and Female Mage try to burn them with a fireball, but they just use it as cover to slip out of the room.
Stock Ninja Weaponry: Though they prefer fisticuffs, they do have kunai and shuriken and such.
What Measure Is a Mook?: The Golden Party immediately and viciously move to slaughter the two ninjas that serve as back-up to the Fallen Party, yet go on to take extreme pains and risk to take out the Fallen Party itself nonlethally.

Demons

Water Town demon

Evil spirits from the pits of hell that seek to destroy the cities of Man and overthrow the gods. Every adventurer that isn't Goblin Slayer or his supporters considers these to be the principal threat in the setting.

Alien Blood: The greater demon Female Knight slays is stated to have blood "the color of muddy water". The ones the Golden Party fight have "brackish" blood the same blue-black as their bodies.
An Arm and a Leg: Lizard Priest tears a wing off of another lesser demon in Volume 10. The Chieftain also ripped the legs off a bee demon barehanded.
Bee Afraid: The viking Chieftain supposedly once wrestled a giant bee demon to death.
Big Red Devil: High Elf Archer, Dwarf Shaman, and Lizard Priest fought two lesser demons when they first partnered up that were described as red-skinned gargoyles.
Cold Iron: The group says that this metal and others are particularly effective as weapons against the demons, though not strictly necesssary at their power levels.
Conservation of Ninjutsu: Both times High Elf Archer, Dwarf Shaman, and Lizard Priest have to take on a single or pair of low-to-mid-rank demons, it's a lengthy and risky back and forth that requires a good bit of strategic maneuvering to pull off. Heavy Warrior and Female Knight are able to hack through entire bands of lower demons and bisect a greater demon respectively with one hit each. Possibly slightly Justified by them accompanying an apparently famous demon-hunting group during that fight (who would presumably be able to enchant their weapons or tell them the most effective way to hit them), but still.
Cute Monster Girl: A greater demon is described as resembling a beautiful blue-skinned drider.
Death by Irony: The flying demon of Volume 10 tried to divebomb the ground to kill Lizard Priest after being grabbed. Lizard Priest instead broke its wings and slammed it into the earth while leaping off it to cushion his fall.
Demon Lords and Archdevils: There is one Demon Lord over all others, who keeps threatening to destroy the world, getting killed by The Chosen One (or a particularly lucky Rag Tag Bunch Of Misfits) and coming back to do it all over again about once a decade. He has sixteen Demon Generals that serve directly under him and recruit/organize the mortal monsters, though it's unclear if they can resurrect as he does or if new ones are appointed when they get cut down.
Dragon Their Feet: At least one demon general survived the defeat of the Demon Lord by Chosen Heroine, hiding in the countryside and making plans to raze her hometown as revenge. Chosen Heroine finds him and puts him down with ease.
Dreamwalker: Succubi can usually only affect people by entering their dreams, though a location with strong demonic activity can allow them to partially manifest in the material world.
Evil Is Burning Hot: The demons the party are seen fighting have the ability to spit fire balls.
Gruesome Goat: One of the lesser demons Heavy Warrior cuts through at the end of Volume 10 has the head of a goat.
Holy Burns Evil: As would be expected, the godly light of Holy Smite can melt succubi into nothing.
King Mook: Greater Succubi are a stronger variant of the demon type that can fully materialized in the physical world independently, and is considered a probable hopeless endeavor to fight by a party that at the time had already successfully killed a dragon.
Living Shadow: Succubi usually can only manifest so far as an undulating bit of black smog in the waking world.
Magitek: One of the last major encounters the Golden Party has before destroying the Dungeon of the Dead is a wandering Mini Mech piloted by what they assume is a small slug demon.
Poisonous Person: The spider-demon has venomous spurs on its legs.
The Remnant: Even when the Demon Lord is killed, a number of demons of all ranks remain on the physical plane, guiding the Evil Sect and the mortal monsters in an effort to rebuild their strength and resurrect their leader.
Shapeshifter: One quest that Spearman, Witch, High Elf Archer, Dwarf Shaman, and Lizard Priest all go on together is to take out a demon disguised as a human that had started a cult in a farming village. The demon taking refuge in Water Town that Chosen Heroine kills also takes the form of a human warlock. Succubi can make themselves look like the women of their victims' dreams.
Shock and Awe: Succubi can cast a wider variety of spells, and the ones the Golden Party face use Lightning.
Shoot the Mage First: The first demon in Volume 10 guns straight for Priestess, and it is stated that killing clerics is always a demon's first priority, for reasons both pragmatic and of principle.
Sir Swears-a-Lot: The Water Town demon belts out a laundry list of cusses in the wake of Goblin Slayer killing his goblin minions and sealing his portal mirror, peppered generously with "fudge" and "fooey" and invoking Gary Gygax to send him to hell.
Smug Snake: The Water Town demon rants over how Goblin Slayer and friends could have foiled his "perfect" plan of just releasing a swarm of goblins into the city sewers to scare Sword Maiden. One of the Chaos Gods actually physically manifests just to call out his laziness and short-sightedness, before bluntly refusing to grant him any boons and leaving him for dead when Chosen Heroine bursts into his lair.
Spider People: One greater demon found in Volume 10 is has the top half of a woman and the body of a spider.
Stripperific: The drider-demon is described as having barely enough armor to cover its soft spots.
Succubi and Incubi: Incubi and Succubi exist, though they usually are just immaterial dream demons that at most induce mild euphoria as they drain their victims vitality.
Too Spicy for Yog-Sothoth: Succubi seem to be specialized to drink humans, to the point that being forced to link minds with Myrmidon Monk causes them substantial injury from the sheer incompatibility.
Vampiric Draining: Succubi absorb life energy even as they suffocate their victims.
Villain of Another Story: Pose a constant/cyclical existential threat to the entire world, but Goblin Slayer couldn't give a damn about them; that's what the rest of the Guild's adventurers are for.

The Demon Lord

The greatest, most powerful of all demons, who exists to bring about the destructive reign of the demon race. While he technically counts as the Big Bad of the world, Goblin Slayer's dedicated focus on goblins relegates him to being the Greater-Scope Villain instead.

Alien Blood: When cut, he has blood that is black as ink.
Animal Battle Aura: Is able to coalesce the gathered souls and energy of the adventurers and monsters he has absorbed into a black pheonix of death magic that he tries to attack Female Bishop with.
Artifact of Doom: The red katana that Black Hat Wizard wields is the focal point of the Dungeon of the Dead's curse, which allowed him to both possess the man and forcibly direct the rampant death magic of the place into feeding himself.
BFS: The Demon Lord in Daikatana fights with an odachi roughly as tall as he is, and he is tall.
Big Bad: Of the Daiakatana series, the first villain in the franchise to be an overarching threat that is journeyed towards rather than an incidental Arc Villain.
Blood Knight: Samurai Captain looks into his eyes and sees a thing twisted by its obsession with proving and adding to its strength by killing everything else.
Brought Down to Badass: Sword Maiden, while channeling the Supreme God, is able to destroy almost all of his shadow and death magic enhancements, but even without them he remains a superhumanly strong and skilled Magic Knight.
Casting a Shadow: Wraps himself in a cloak of magic darkness that bolster his size and presence.
Clipped-Wing Angel: A goblin priest sacrifices himself to bring the Demon Lord partly back to life to kill Goblin Slayer in Volume 8. He only comes back as an arm — a fully cognizant, ambulatory, spellcasting arm that is still strong enough that it could have killed the whole party in a straight fight.
Death from Above: Priestess destroys the Demon Lord's reconstructed arm by baiting it into an elevator shaft, then sealing it with Protection after calling the elevator down. The arm realizes her ploy and has just enough time to punch through her barrier... but not enough to climb back out before it gets pressed.
Devour the Dragon: It is stated that the life force of every monster killed in the Labyrinth of Death is absorbed by him to bolster his power. While one would assume this would be part-and-parcel of traditional demon powers, according to Sword Maiden in Memoria Freese this is actually a boon that the dungeon itself grants to the being it designates as its boss monster.
Dying Curse: Attempted to incant some malediction on Samurai Captain after being dealt a mortal blow. He was interrupted by Half Elf Scout literally punching his head off.
Eldritch Abomination: Though it might have been due to the dungeon operating under Call of Cthulhu-esque rules, the partially resurrected Demon Lord in Volume 8 is so grotesque that just looking at his disembodied arm is enough to fray High Elf Archer's sanity.
Evil Is Deathly Cold: The Demon Lord himself, in contrast to his flame-spitting minions, mostly just uses Blizzard spells during his battle against Goblin Slayer's party.
Evil Overlord: The overall master of demons, undead, and likely all other monsters in the setting.
Fantastic Nuke: The Demon Lord at full-strength can cast Fusion Blast by himself.
Faux Affably Evil: Is noted to speak to the Golden Party with the tone of an old acquaintance catching up on idle gossip, but is nothing but malevolent.
Flunky Boss: Summons a massive horde of ghouls to swarm the Golden Party when he gets bored in the first round of their fight.
Foil: Samurai Captain has a lengthy internal monologue comparing his Challenge Seeker ways to the Demon Lord's Blood Knight tendencies, and ultimately claims that where he sees fighting and monster-slaying as merely his physical feat of choice, is okay with failure, and doesn't particularly care if he lives or dies, the Demon Lord is a sadist that loves bloodshed for its own sake, can't accept or even believe in himself losing, and is utterly consumed by his desire to be the last thing alive after killing everyone else.
For the Evulz: Wants to make it very clear to the Golden party that he doesn't actually have some grand plan to take over the world; he fights and kills because he likes to fight and kill, and while he has amassed an army and cultivates his strength, that is in service of seeking more fights and bolstering his own ego.
From a Single Cell: The Demon Lord's arm contains his full spirit, which notes that it could eventually regenerate its whole body if it kills enough people, starting with Goblin Slayer's party.
God of Evil: The Demon Lord is noted to have power on par with the full-on Dark Gods, and can even grant miracles to the goblin priest of Volume 8.
Greater-Scope Villain: He is the greatest threat the world has ever known, with the danger inherent to his very existence bringing everybody across the globe to combine their efforts to make sure he dies and stays dead. However, since the story follows Goblin Slayer, he's mostly relegated to the background, with the most plot relevance being when his influence affects goblins and other foes that Goblin Slayer's party runs into. Well, except for that one time where a goblin priest managed to partially revive him to face Goblin Slayer's party in Volume 8.
Hijacked by Ganon: Who precisely Black Hat Wizard was and what his intentions were to begin with are forever a mystery, because he was enthralled by the Demon Lord from the moment he first encountered the red blade.
I Can Still Fight!: Insists he isn't done and tries to pry the spear pinning him to a wall out before he receives a double coup de grace.
Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: Female Warrior gets one for her dead sister by running him straight through with her spear and nailing him to a wall.
Just Toying with Them: He can fight 1-vs-6 against the Golden Party, some of the most powerful adventurers alive at that point in time, and be able to treat the fight mostly as a joke at least before Samurai Captain gets a Heroic Second Wind.
Katanas Are Just Better: Why precisely he has a Japanese-style greatsword as his principle weapon beyond Rule of Cool is never brought up.
Let's Get Dangerous!: When Samurai Captain somehow manages to break his red katana, he is forced to admit he underestimated them, needs to fight seriously, and activates a power-boosting Battle Aura.
Living Shadow: The second Daikatana manga depicts the Demon Lord as a two meter tall, humanoid figure made of a black smoky substance.
Load-Bearing Boss: The spatial warping within the Dungeon of the Dead is so bad that when the magic holding it together dies with him the lower floors immediately begin collapsing in on themselves.
Necromancer: On top of everything else he can do, he can also bring back dead adventurers as feral vampiric ghouls.
Not Me This Time: Makes a point to inform the Golden Party that he didn't actually create the curse within the Dungeon of the Dead, he just took it over when Black Hat Wizard brought him in.
Off with His Head!: What actually puts him down is Half-Elf Thief jumping in from the side and karate chopping his neck hard enough to send his head bouncing across the room.
Omnicidal Maniac: He wants to personally kill everyone and everything alive that can get through his armies and stand against him, just to prove he is the strongest and absorb their souls to add to his strength.
Orcus on His Throne: As far as has been shown, when he broke into the mortal world ten years ago it seems he just sent his armies out to wreck havoc at their own discretion while he hunkered down in the Labyrinth of Death, daring the humans to try to come kill him, and passively powering up from absorbing the souls of attempted challengers which fell to the monsters and traps guarding him.
Possessing a Dead Body: Black Hat Wizard's body gave up the ghost during the Golden Party's fight with Female Bishop's former team, which gave him complete control of it. He thanks them for arranging that for him.
Red and Black and Evil All Over: His body and clothes are pitch-black, his sword and smile are glowing red, and he is one of the greatest evils of this world.
Red Baron: When fought by the Golden Party in the Action Prologue of Daikatana, Samurai Captain refers to the Demon Lord as the "Red Blade" and "embodiment of Death".
Sarcastic Clapping: Gives a slow round of applause to the Golden Party for actually making it to his throne room.
Sealed Evil in a Can: Seems to have been entombed within the Dungeon of the Dead after his defeat.
Slouch of Villainy: One page in the second Daikatana manga features a striking shot of the Demon Lord fully stretched out lounging on an elevated throne in the Labyrinth of Death with his sword propped at his side.
Sword Beam: He can shoot bolts of death magic from his sword in a pinch.
This Cannot Be!: The moment he becomes most disbelieving and off-guard is when Female Bishops performs the Call God miracle and gets possessed by the Supreme God.
Villain Respect: Says that he considers the Golden Party to be the best in the crop of humanity, and praises them for being the ones to face him properly.
Wrecked Weapon: Samurai Captain breaks off the tip of the Daikatana, the cursed red blade that holds the power of the Dungeon of the Dead, in a clash of swords. It doesn't actually affect the magic, and the sword still has a lethal edge, but it limits the Demon Lord's reach and confidence in round 2.

The Shade

Some sort of cosmic shadow monster that enters the world riding on a meteor. Chosen Heroine kills it.

Almighty Idiot: It has no consciousness of its own initially, and when it tried to copy the thought patterns of another creature, the only ones available were goblins.
The Assimilator: It grows stronger and smarter by absorbing living creatures into itself, and probably was going to try to eat the entire world.
Attack! Attack! Attack!: It's only move against Chosen Heroine and her party was to lash out at them with tendrils, a consequence of basing its thoughts on a goblins simplistic sense of tactics.
Eldritch Abomination: Whatever this thing was, it's matter and nature was unknowable and indescribable, though far from undefeatable.
Evil Is Not a Toy: The local evil cult and their corrupt noble patrons had the idea that they could summon this thing, fuse it with the Demon Lord, and somehow control it for world conquest. It's a mercy to them that their plan failed before it began and they were put down.
Evil Is Visceral: The color and texture of its "skin" is described as like the innards of an animal turned inside-out.
Living Shadow: Described as a fleshy, amorphous darkness.
Villain of Another Story: Is only tangentially related to the offending goblins and demons of the A-plot, and is very much contained by Chosen Heroine and the King's actions without bothering the main characters.

Undead King

A lich of phenomenal power, bent on reshaping the very earth and killing thousands to complete a spell of grand design.

Anti-Magic: Can use Dispel to utterly strip away every one of Chosen Heroine's, Sword Saint's, and Sage's buffs.
The Archmage: Said by the narration to be one of the absolute strongest spellcasters in the world, opposite Sage.
Casting a Shadow: Much of his magic involves the animation and solidification of darkness.
Evil Is Deathly Cold: Said to keep his throneroom at a chill that could kill a normal human in short order.
Evil Wears Black: Said to be dressed in a robe as dark as a starless sky.
Giant Hands of Doom: Attempted and nearly succeeded in crushing Chosen Heroine to death in a big Force Hand spell.
Godhood Seeker: All his vile acts; the raising of an army of the dead, the unleashing of swarms of monsters on the countryside, the mass human sacrifices, the alliance with demons and forces of Chaos, it was all just part of a scheme to open a portal into the divine realm and ascend.
Human Architecture Horror: Part of his inner sanctum has an amalgamation of undead fused to the walls, evidently as part of his magic ritual to terraform his dungeon into one of the Four Corners.
Irony: Dismisses Chosen Heroine's victory over him as her being puppeted by the gods. He has no way of realizing that he himself only exists because the gods needed a big villain for their campaign.
Laser Blade: Can create a "force-sword" with magic as a last-ditch effort to cut down the heroes.
Make Them Rot: Tried to kill Chosen Heroine with a Withering spell, but Sage reversed the effects.
Necromancer: Made himself an undead, made a vast army of undead, and made part of his base is out of undead.
Occult Blue Eyes: His eyes are decribed as glowing pale-blue.
One-Hit Kill: Tried to hit Chosen Heroine with a spell of Instant Death, but Sword Saint interrupted it.
Our Liches Are Different: Has turned himself into a high-level undead.
Skull for a Head: His face has been nearly reduced to a dull white skull.
Storm of Blades: Can raise a tunnel of turning swords in an effort to stop the heroes from approaching him.
Taken for Granite: Cast a Petrify spell on Chosen Heroine, but her buffs and sheer vitality shook it off in a moment.
The Unfettered: Does not seek to conquer or destroy the world, but his devotion to his quest to ascend is strong enough that he cares not for ruining a country as fuel for his rituals.
Unskilled, but Strong: Has no learning in swordplay, but tries to compensate with his sheer might as a greater undead.
Villain Respect: Is genuinely (if condescendingly) impressed by Sword Saint just charging through his blade barrier.
We All Die Someday: Justifies his destructive and grotesque sacrifice of thousands of innocents by pointing out that humans are mortal, so their deaths may as well contribute to the rise of a new immortal.
You're Nothing Without Your Phlebotinum: While lying broken and beaten, he spitefully claims that the three heroines only defeated him because the gods were guiding their hands. Chosen Heroine counters by pointing out he’s the one trying to get on the gods’ level, so he should have been able to beat their champions.

Fire Spirit

The ghost of a powerful but arrogant pyromancer that was entombed in a cave connected to the ruins holding the practice dungeon in Volume 13, awoken when a goblin steals his staff from his coffin.

Caught Monologuing: He prattles on so much that the Scrawny Girl blindsides him twice.
Enhanced Archaic Weapon: Wields a whip woven of steel cables, and channels powerful fire magic through it.
Evil Gloating: Incessantly goes on about how the Scrawny Girl is beneath him and about to die.
Evil Is Burning Hot: In death his spirit is suffused with fire mana.
Evil Is Hammy: Loves the sound of his own voice. The Scrawny Girl considers him pompous.
Fat Bastard: Is repeatedly described as corpulent by the Scrawny Girl, and his interactions with her expose him as a bullying and egotistical thug with magic.
Not Enough to Bury: He incinerates a giant snake so thoroughly that literally nothing is left. No ashes, no smoke, not even a smell of anything having been burnt. As clean an immolation as possible.
Oh, Crap!: Dies desperately calling a time-out when the Scrawny Girl whips out the Star of Muala scroll.
Our Ghosts Are Different: He is not translucent or intangible, nor does he have any overt necromantic theme to his binding or manifestation.
Playing with Fire: A wizard of no small power and a specialty in flame magic in life, as a phantom he can incinerate a giant snake with a flick of his wrist.
Sealed Evil in a Can: He was entombed with his magic items in the dungeon for a reason.
Small Name, Big Ego: For all he's a decently strong and nasty pyromancer, he's a footnote in the story proper let alone the world at large. The Scrawny Girl is unimpressed by how he can't even guard his coffin from plundering goblins.
Was Once a Man: Though he's long dead and come back as a spirit, he is not the product of necromancy, and the narration continually refers to him as some sort of quasi-demon.

Jupiter's Ghost

What remains of an apprentice wizard that experimented with duplication magic to disastrous results.

Assimilation Plot: The thing is driven by an instinctive urge to spread through the entire world and consume anything and anyone enveloped in its mass.
Body Horror: It is almost literally a giant magic cancer on the world.
Body of Bodies: And its continually adding more bodies to grow.
Doom Magnet: Reputed to bring disaster, though Sage argues it's just as likely to be the byproduct of a deeper source of calamity hidden in the Western Frontier.
Eldritch Abomination: Vast and grotesque enough that beholding it causes sanity damage.
Gone Horribly Wrong: What was meant to be a clone army ended up being a potentially world-ending Flesh Golem.
Not the Intended Use: The technique of casting Other Self through Other self is explicitly an "errata" or "exploit" in the setting's magic system, though one that had disastrous consequences on the munchkin that discovered it.
Me's a Crowd: A mage tried to mass-produce clones of himself, they ended up making this thing.
Red Baron: "Jupiter's Ghost" is a proper nickname out of the characters' mouths for it, and a rather fancy one too.
Self-Duplication: The threat all began with erroneous application of the Other Self spell.
Sorcerer's Apprentice Plot: Tried to shortcut into more power by having his Other Self clones cast Other Self themselves. The result when the spell went fully out of control is this thing.
Was Once a Man: A simple apprentice wizard messed up a spell and became a world-threatening horror.

Sea-Devil

A giant sea monster that is the true killer of the Viking ships trying to root out the northern goblin nest.

Combat Tentacles: It is basically a giant head mounted on a writhing nest of scores of sharp-suckered tentacles.
The Dreaded: Sea monsters are basically the only creature Vikings will admit to fearing, and only suddenly surfacing while fighting goblins is enough to make most of them start panicking.
Holy Burns Evil: It is stated to be a Chaos-touched godbeast, and as such consecrated fire does extra damage when a burning ship hits it.
Hungry Menace: Its attacks are motivated by a desire to feed.
He existed to eat, and so long as he existed, he would eat.
The Juggernaut: Its size and strength is unparalleled by any monster before it, and even after dealing two mortal blows the Vikings and the party are unsure if it really died or just went back to its underwater stupor.
Kraken and Leviathan: It is not just a random sea-monster, but regarded as a god-beast, and it is so big and fearsome that looking at it out of water causes sanity damage.
Ramming Always Works: Is eventually brought down by Goblin Slayer driving a burning ship into its mouth, admittedly synchronized with an empowered Viking warchief landing a critical blow as well.
Red Baron: It's called a couple of things by the narration, but the most significant proper moniker is "The Greed".
Sleepyhead: It floats underwater in a half-asleep doze with no concept of time until something causes enough commotion on the surface to rouse it to try eating it.

Immortal Sorcerer

A random necromancer operating near Water Town during volume 15.

Arrogant Kung-Fu Guy: Is incredibly egotistical and convinced of the superiority of his dark magic, to the point that he smugly decides to not interfere with Priestess' attempts to undo his curse because he thinks she's that outclassed.
Bad Is Good and Good Is Bad: He is intensely disgusted by pretty or pleasant things. he had this trait back when he was a normal person, and black magic corruption has only exacerbated it.
Body of Bodies: His body is a shadowy mass holding the heads of every person whose life he has absorbed.
But for Me, It Was Tuesday: He is noted to have killed hundreds and have absolutely no appreciation for the damage he has caused in his wake.
Came Back Wrong: His emotions are noted to be muted and confused immediately following each resurrection.
Deal with the Devil: His trick of immortality is stated in passing to have come from a demon.
Deflector Shields: Can cast a Force Field spell against Goblin Slayer's assault.
Diabolus ex Nihilo: Shows up with practically no build-up. Goblin Slayer mentions that his contact in the Rogue's Guild was talking about how an "immortal sorcerer" was skulking around when the party goes looking for a goblin nest at his insistence, and suddenly this dude is the mastermind of everything.
Magical Gesture: He traces runes in the air to get around being Silenced by Priestess.
Never My Fault: He holds grudges over being ridiculed as a young man, which he feels justifies all his crimes since.
The Pawns Go First: He initially was just planning to let his goblins roadblock the party as he completed his sacrifice of Silver Blaze, but when they pushed through close enough he decided to turn around and deal with them himself first.
Not Quite Dead: Gets his brain crushed and is buried under rubble, but nobody in the party believes that was enough to wipe out his stored lifeforce and they all joke that in a century or two someone will accidentally unearth him.
Pride: His biggest flaw and indeed character trait is his giant, fragile ego.
Resurrective Immortality: If he gets cut down, he gets back up by consuming one of the lives sealed inside of him.
Shock and Awe: Knows a wide-range lightning spell.
Surrounded by Idiots: He has no respect for his goblin lackeys.
This Cannot Be!: Is floored by the realization that Priestess was able to counter his curse with Purify.
Vampiric Draining: How his immortality works; by splashing someone with his blood, he channels their lifeforce or soul into his body, which can then be burnt whenever he suffers lethal damage to restore his strength.
Who's Laughing Now?: He was mocked relentlessly for his ambitions as a novice wizard in his youth, which drove him to become a life-stealing monster.
Worthy Opponent: While condescending to her, Priestess is still the only member of the party he expresses anything other than disdain towards, and he genuinely wants to see if she can out-cast him and avoid being reduced to a goblin plaything.

Vampire

A vampire encountered in Volume 16 because he was sleeping in the same abandoned temple the staff of the Earth Mother was left in.

And I Must Scream: Goblin Slayer stuffs him in a Bag of Holding, which is described as a pitch-black, soundless void with nothing to touch or find purchase with. At least his time in it was short before Goblin Slayer let him out to torch to death.
Beat It by Compulsion: He has the oldschool vampire need to count small object being thrown at him. His internal monologue suggests that this not a true compulsion but rather a Geas that would kill him if he ever ignored it. Nonetheless, he freezes up to count whenever it happens, and that becomes instrumental in the party surviving and later triumphing in their short clashes with him.
Burn the Undead: The narration prevaricates on if the party release him out in the sunlight or just burn the bag with him still inside, but either way he meets his end in flames.
Evil Is Visceral: He is noted to wear dark-red armor that somehow resembles the flesh of an animal skinned alive or turned inside-out.
Healing Factor: He has high-speed regeneration, to the point of not being phased for even a second when Goblin Slayer throws a club at the back of his head hard enough to splatter his brains.
Innate Night Vision: When the party tries to use a cloud cover spell to throw him off, he internally brags that vampires have heat vision.
Irony: He complains that the goblins that have overrun his resting place are worthless as sentries and peons for fending off adventurers, only for the narration to wryly note that it is only thanks to the goblin horde making High Elf Archer use up all her personal stock of arrows clearing them out before he entered the fray that he avoided having a length of blessed wood buried in his chest immediately, a fact neither he nor the party he is fighting ever fully realize, or would appreciate if they found out.
Klingon Promotion: Brought up by him when he notes that in vampire circles, the only possible way to rise in rank is through this, as the elder generations do not die naturally or have reason to retire. He complains it's a barbaric and counterproductive system, but he still fully intends to "rise to the top" as it were.
The Minion Master: He produces an aura around him that causes monster corpses in his immediate presence to rise again as zombies. They collapse if he goes out of range from them.
Super-Senses: On top of heat-vision, he has an expanded field of view along with Hyper-Awareness, and that's just his sight enhancements.
Wolverine Claws: His nails can extend into rending knives.
Wooden Stake: They can be used to kill vampires, but only if the wood is consecrated or otherwise enchanted, as he gloats after a No-Sell of Goblin Slayer braining him with a plain wood club.

Characters / Goblin Slayer: Antagonists

Goblins

Voiced by: Kazuhiko Inoue (Japanese), Jacob Browning (English)

WARNING: Due to the nature of this character, spoilers relating to Volume 5 are unmarked.

Goblin Paladins

Voiced by: Toshiyuki Morikawa (Japanese), Jacob Browning (English)

Other Antagonists

Voiced by: Riki Kagami (Japanese), Marcus D. Stimac (English)

Voiced by: Mutsuki Iwanaka (Japanese), Garret Storms (English)

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Characters / Goblin Slayer: Antagonists

Edit Locked

Goblins

Voiced by: Kazuhiko Inoue (Japanese), Jacob Browning (English)

WARNING: Due to the nature of this character, spoilers relating to Volume 5 are unmarked.

Goblin Paladins

Voiced by: Toshiyuki Morikawa (Japanese), Jacob Browning (English)

Other Antagonists

Voiced by: Riki Kagami (Japanese), Marcus D. Stimac (English)

Voiced by: Mutsuki Iwanaka (Japanese), Garret Storms (English)

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Index

Next