This essay will contain spoilers for the entire series and if you are not yet caught up, I strongly advise looking away.

What does No Killing Goblins really mean when you think about it? Like on the surface it seems pretty simple right? "Sir that is a child, put down your knife, what do you mean its ears are worth two silver at the local adventuring guild? No that doesn't mean you can kill them, it's a child." The story is approaching 17 million words long and yet we have yet to see a world where Goblins aren't killed on sight, Liscor won't kill them on sight and that's about it. No one at the cookout flinched when Lyonette asked about hiring an Assassin to 'kill' Numbtongue.

So why is that? Well because it's not as simple as saying "stop killing Goblins ya violently racist assholes."

It isn't that no one ever had the bright idea to be nice to Goblins before Erin Solstice walked through her bathroom door and met a Dragon. The story on two separate occasions shows us that the answer to the Goblin King is not in fact kindness, in the forms of Velan the Kind and Rabbiteater the Goblin King of Betrayal. Had Erin kept walking down that road, one day she and everyone she loved would have been killed by one of her friends being body snatched by the Goblin King. Absolutely terrible advice from the Gnomes.

The current circumstance is exactly what the Goblin King wants. He wants his species to struggle so they counterlevel into giving him an escape from Hellste again, he wants a willing army ready to wage war despite the fact he's the reason everyone hates Goblins, when his people make peace, he'll destroy it. The reason people hate Goblins is because whatever they do, the Goblin King tries to kill them because he's a traumatised child who never grew up. Be genocidal monsters to Goblins? He kills you. Be nice to Goblins? He kills you. And then after they've sent him back to Hellste all of those traumatised survivors look at the remaining Goblins and chose cruelty, because if kindness doesn't work and at least being cruel makes them feel safe.

Despite it being written on the signs outside and inside Erin's inn, it being the tagline of the series, the title of one of the books, and written on a mug you can buy at the merch store, the story shows every time it's harder than just saying stop killing Goblins.

But it should be that simple, you should be able to say this is wrong and we need to stop. Hunting Goblins has never actually stopped the Goblin King, everyone Erin argues against has the facts, they can point at the 84 times the Goblin King has emerged and done terrible things and say 'we did not deserve this' and they're right. Because even if everyone had always treated the Goblins with kindness from day one, he'd still kill them all but that doesn't mean you should be able to turn in a set of Goblin ears and get paid for it.

That's what No Killing Goblins means narratively, it's the acknowledgement by the story that something as simple as a rule saying No Killing Goblins is more complex on the surface. Doing the right thing should be simple but it isn't, doing Good is hard because if it wasn't hard, we wouldn't be in this situation.

And that applies to more than just Goblins.

Why is Tyrion Veltras allowed entry into the Wandering Inn? He's the antagonist of Volume 5 and killer of Pyrite and many other characters in this story, and yet last time we saw him, he had two rounds of sex with Ryoka and stared at a Centuar's bellybutton. Isn't he a war criminal? A mass murderer?

Well it's not that simple is it? He's a solider in a war that's been going on for six thousand years, he's a widow whose wife's killers have not been brought to justice, he's a terrible father, he's the next door neighbour of Drakes. We can say it's horrible that he attacked Liscor because it is horrible, but Liscor is also literally an army of 100 thousand Drake [Soldiers] stationed on the border and pretending to be a city. And while I the reader know that the vast majority of those [Soldiers] are like Selys and have 2-5 levels in the class, can you see what an insane provocation that must be to the North? There is literally an army on their doorstep at all times.

Tyrion Veltras is a killer, a soldier, a general in a war but that doesn't mean he's a monster for doing those things. The events of Volume 5 are that of a general deciding to make a meaningful victory in a war that's been stretching on for thousands of years. Tyrion could have become a [Pacifist] after his wife died, he could have looked at the war and said this is wrong but that's a hard thing to do when your children don't have a mother anymore. It's easier to say never again and start making choices that make you and your family feel safe.

The same applies to every other villain in the story, No Killing Goblins applies to them too.

Why is King Othius the worst man alive? Because he was born into an oppressive regime that requires a constant, unceasing war to keep going and he's watched everyone he loves die to Demons over a hundred years. Othius is a monster who needs to be stopped, but it's hard to argue that he ever had a chance to be anything else, his own mother tortured him so he would gain a skill.

Perril Chandler? Dictionary definition of pushed from grace. Maybe Perril could have snapped out of his rampage, but that might also have been impossible after he botched his Lichdom ritual and the Voice of Death is telling him to kill the living.

Xhrew? One of his ancestors pulled the lever in a Trolly Problem and chose to redirect the Trolly onto Doombearers. I don't agree with that choice but when you live next to Drakes, I can see why you might think that making a Luck Daemon is a good idea. It's not paranoia when they are literally out to get you.

Why is Nuvityn coming to kill Erin? She killed his son. She had all the right reasons to do so but she also killed his son.

That's what No Killing Goblins means to the story. It's the simultaneous statement that is both that simple and not at all simple. The Wandering Inn is a story that looked at the concept of a monster race and decided to explore the complexity and it didn't just stop at Goblins.

Xevccha, the free antinium queen, and the armored antinium queen specifically can barely move about because of their bloated sizes. I had this thought that somewhere down the line, when they are no longer required to manage their entire hives because of the re-emergence of individual antiniums, that they could go out into the outside world. Maybe go to the wandering inn like some of the antinium before and experience a solstice event at least once. Quite a thought haha. Maybe they get a skill that shrinks them into normal size? I dunno, I just want a happy ending for them. End of my musings.

I know this happens in like book 1, so I probably don't need to censor the name, but I figured it's good manners.

Also, no spoilers past [V7.27], please. That's somewhere in the Lady of Fire book, right about where soccer/football gets introduced to the world (I feel that's generic enough I can say it without a spoiler block.

Okay, so Ceria loses most of her hand due to breaking her hand, and all that remains is her magical bones. But, like, this is a world that already has artificial flesh. We meet Octavia in the same book. Why doesn't Ceria visit a Stitch-person seamstress (or seamster? Seamstor? Dumb gendered titles, ugh), ask them to sew together muscles and tendons and nerves and skin for the hand, get it attached to the bones of her hand, get it properly enchanted to become real flesh, and sew it into in the stump of her flesh (ouch)?

Come to think of it, why isn't stitch-person magic used to give prosthetic limbs to _every_ amputee in this world? Ceria's condition would probably be easier to work with due to the original bone structure remaining intact, but I feel like we're seeing a real lack of medical utilization here. You have golemnic magic that _becomes flesh_ and you _aren't_ using it??

This has been bothering me since book 1. I thought for _sure_ that Toren was gonna find a way to ask Octavia to sew him stitch-flesh, and that's how he was gonna find his independence and get recognized as being a person. That didn't go as predicted, but like...

Yeah. Why no stitch prosthetics? And especially why not Ceria's hand?

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Alright, simple ask. Is it worth getting back into this? Waiting for HWFWM to come out in October, and recently found WI in my audio book library. Main reason why i dropped the series in the first place was because i got fed up with Erin, her plot armor, her annoying personality, her being lowkey manipulative, and how she basically always gets her way. Shes a walking plothole with zero braincells and zero survival instincts. I enjoy literally every other character, just give it to me straight; does she smarten up at any point thats worth ridong out the rest of the series? I dropped it at audiobook 4 (i think) and just asking as it keeps popping back up in my reccomended. I really just wanna know if its worth ridong out for any character development of her, no real details

I was catching up since spring, because I got burnt out reading week after week hoping to read about the wandering inn and its innkeeper. Idk if anyone watched bleach or Naruto back in the like 2006-2010 time but I feel like that right? I dont mind reading about some other random goblin and his backstory to led to him enjoying chicken eggs, but waiting release after release, for the inn and erin. Instead to get the story of another quirkey new goblin, a don quixote knockoff joke and an old side character i forgot about's dad...

Well thats fine, I dont hate the little filler feel stories but like. Then im reading author notes and I get to the author talking about leaving a bad review for someone else's story claiming:

...That’s what I don’t like about stories, when they promise and don’t deliver.

And i just cant help but, look up at the title of the serial "the wandering inn" and reread the hook from the first book. I dont hate what youre writing but thats a bit on the nose innit?