Xenoverse origins / R-040
The RuntsOrigin story
The smallest names on the casualty list
They were assigned the work nobody valued and the blame nobody wanted.
Read the origin ↓
Placeholder artworkThe Runts in this dossier are a particular crew of small adult goblins, not an account of how every runt goblin came into being. Their shared name begins as a dismissal. A raid leader uses it when assigning loads, rations, and the jobs too unrewarding to offer anyone with enough status to object.
Their Xenoverse origin follows the day they realize being overlooked can provide an exit as well as an injury. They do not become suddenly large or universally admired. They become organized enough to stop waiting for larger creatures to describe their value accurately.
Expendable is a word spoken most confidently from behind somebody else.
From the dossier
Chapter 01
The duties at the bottom
They carried water, fetched straps, cleared narrow passages, and collected equipment dropped by more celebrated raiders. The leader called this support work and treated support as something that should remain grateful for being included. When the crew succeeded, nobody remembered which pair of hands had fixed the problem.
The Runts remembered. They knew which buckle failed, which sack leaked, and which impressive fighter needed a step to mount the supply cart. These details accumulated into a private view of the raid’s supposed strength. They joked about it over small rations, careful to laugh quietly. Their first form of solidarity was an accurate account of everyone else’s dependence. That account did not feed them, but it weakened the belief that their low place reflected a natural order. A leader who could not find his own boots without assistance began looking less like destiny and more like a workload wearing a larger coat.
Placeholder artworkChapter 02
The assignment behind the column
The raid entered a ruined storehouse seeking metal and preserved supplies. The leader placed the Runts at the rear with the heaviest recovery sacks. They were to wait until the main group finished selecting valuable goods, then carry the rest through a service tunnel. Nobody explained why the tunnel had been marked unsafe.
One of the Runts noticed dust falling from a beam. Another found fresh cracks behind the stacked crates. They reported the danger. The leader told them to stop inventing reasons to work slowly. Soon the main group departed with the easiest prizes, leaving the crew beneath the failing roof. The order was to remain until the sacks were filled. For a long moment they obeyed because disobedience still felt more dangerous than the thing directly overhead. Then a support shifted, and the difference between an order and a useful instruction became difficult to ignore.
Placeholder artworkChapter 03
A route sized for the unwanted
The main doorway collapsed before they reached it. The service tunnel was blocked by the sacks they had been told to move. They could save the goods or clear a way out, but not both. The leader’s likely reaction occupied several valuable seconds of discussion.
They cut the sacks open. Metal scattered. Smaller objects rolled into gaps. With the load reduced, they pulled the empty fabric aside and squeezed through a drainage opening too narrow for the larger raiders. They passed tools hand to hand, checked each other’s progress, and left the heaviest prizes behind. The work used everything their ordinary duties had taught them, none of it visible in the leader’s speeches about courage. Outside, they found the main group arguing over shares. Nobody had yet noticed their absence. This should have been comforting after an escape. Instead it completed an insult that had been years in preparation.
Placeholder artworkChapter 04
The share they refused to carry
The leader demanded the missing supplies. The Runts described the collapse and were accused of cowardice. He ordered them back inside. They put down the recovered tools and refused together. Individually, each might have been bullied into moving. Together, they made the demand sound as absurd as it was.
The larger raiders needed those tools to repair the cart. They also needed someone who knew the service routes for the return journey. Negotiations followed, although the leader insisted on calling them revised instructions. The Runts received equal food and a stated share of usable salvage. It was not justice delivered by sudden enlightenment. It was leverage, applied by people who finally recognized what would stop working if they stopped supplying it. The leader remained insulting. The difference was that insults no longer settled the distribution. A useful little revolution can begin with an item counted correctly in front of witnesses who have eaten enough to remain stubborn.
Placeholder artworkChapter 05
Small is no longer a job description
The Runts kept travelling together. Their size still shaped the work they could do, but they became more selective about who benefited from it. Tight passages, overlooked exits, and repairs made beneath a cart became advantages rather than proof that they belonged beneath everything else.
Their origin gives the Toxic Goblin Xenoverse a creature crew defined by mutual notice. They count one another before leaving. They divide food before praising a leader. They can still be petty, frightened, greedy, and delighted by a larger rival’s embarrassing fall. Solidarity has not made them solemn. It has given their jokes room to become louder.
The old raid leader eventually asked them to join another expedition. They requested the route, the shares, and the exit plan before discussing enthusiasm. He said they had become difficult. The Runts agreed. Difficulty, they had discovered, was often the name given to a small creature that had stopped being conveniently disposable.
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