Schistostega is a luminous green moss that grows in caves. The elusive moss is also known as “dragon’s gold” or “goblin’s gold” since it can easily be mistaken for loose emeralds strewn across the cave floor or veins of sickly gold climbing up its walls. As much as I like the idea of glowing green moss, I think I like the idea of green goblin gold even more—so let’s explore! From now on, my goblins have green gold.
Being the quintessential fantasy miscreants, goblins mainly source their riches from other sapient creatures with decidedly non-green currency, so there must be something that transforms the gold. What if the gold slowly turned green merely from being around enough goblins, like fruit on an wicked vine? It follows that goblins wouldn’t just be ripening the gold to sit in their coffers. Once the gold is sufficiently green, they “feed” it to their deities, who could never be satiated with unripe gold!
As far as ripening mechanics go, I don’t think a transmutation ritual is necessary. Goblins are inherently magical creatures, so in my setting they’ll simply exude magic that turns their riches green. The more goblins, the quicker the process; with transmutation being further expedited if the goblins were focusing on the gold. Use the table below to estimate transmutation rates. The numbers in parens define the passive transmutation rate.
| Goblins Focusing on Transmutation | Transmutation Rate (gp/day) |
|---|---|
| Solo (1) | 2 (1) |
| Scouting party (~2-3) | 10 (5) |
| Patrol (~4-10) | 50 (25) |
| Raiding Party (~11-25) | 250 (125) |
| Small Horde (~26-50) | 1250 (625) |
| Horde (~51-100) | 6250 (3125) |
Per the above table, the rate of transformation is exponential: a sole goblin would need to covet and massage a necklace for days for it to gobbify, whereas a proper horde could ripen a monarch’s purse in an evening if they were intent on it. Additionally, the transformation is permanent, once it’s green, it’s green. Although in your setting you might include an adventure-worthy location that could cleanse the gold.
Now all that’s left is to mechanically devalue goblin gold, thereby encouraging decisive action to recover the riches before they ripen. This is easy enough, goblins imbibe their green gold with their wyrd magic, putting those who covet it at risk for a painful and socially outcasting mutation. In short, cursed green gold is extremely illiquid and more trouble than its worth. Use the table below as inspiration for wyrding effects resulting from sustained close proximity to green gold.
| 1d4 | Goblin Wyrding |
|---|---|
| 1 | Plague of Gnats. Your skin turns a sickly green and a swarm of gnats materializes whenever you eat, mingle, and sleep. They can be trained. |
| 2 | Your fingers on your left hand meld together and calcify, transforming your hand into a flat scooped hook. |
| 3 | You have an urge to steal from strangers, it causes your skin to itch and crawl. The longer you subdue the urge, the greater the theft must be to satisfy it. |
| 4 | Cave Creature. You are only able to sleep when underground. 1 in 4 chance to wake somewhere nearby with no memory of how you got there. |
With this kind of goblin magic at play, recovering stolen gold becomes a race against time; regents and nobles are willing to spend a good portion of their gold to avoid losing it all, which is where our first adventure begins.
Inciting incident: A tax collector’s caravan was ambushed by goblins en route to the regent’s keep from a nearby village. A handful of the guard outfit survived, but the strongbox was stolen in all the confusion. Reward: The crown will pay a tenth of the remaining “clean” gold for the strongbox’s return.
| 1d4 | Secrets & Clues |
|---|---|
| 1 | Trappers spotted shamanic markings near the ruined church in the woods to the east. |
| 2 | The church was devoted to an old god of trickery. |
| 3 | A surviving guardsmen claims he saw a horned human fighting alongside the goblins |
| 4 | Unknown to the adventurers and the crown, there is an unopened letter in the strongbox addressed to the regent. It contains incriminating information. |
The second adventure idea considers that without the telltale color, goblin gold is indistinguishable from unripe gold, which opens the door for some accursed counterfeit.
Inciting incident: A town has been plagued with wyrd mutations. Their villagers are having strange dreams and sprouting spines, hooves, and horns. None have it worse than the merchants.
| 1d4 | Secrets & Clues |
|---|---|
| 1 | Neighboring merchants are selling out whenever they travel to the wyrded town — they take it as a boon. |
| 2 | YSome townsfolk praise the gods for their town’s sudden fortune, while others lock themselves in their homes in fear of catching the wyrd “disease”. |
| 3 | The nearest regent discarded a large sum of goblin gold into a flooded quarry. |
| 4 | A family of rock gnomes are using the goblin gold as their honey pot. They are recovering the goblin gold from the quarry and coating it in a thin layer of pure gold to fool merchants. |
This is the maiden post on this blog, so I thought it would be fitting to write about it’s namesake. That’s all. Next posts will be about my fantasy setting: Catadaya and its pantheon, and its goblins, and their green gold.
published to SCHISTOSTEGA on: 8/26/2025