u/BestAzlanEver

According to lore, Goblins became more “intelligent” and rebelled against the trolls due being exposed to Kajamite. I would love to see the culture and lifestyle of the proto-Goblins; what kind of society they actually had. Are they as wily and as cunning as today’s Goblins? Do they even look the same? Are there still any Proto Goblins left in Azeroth?

This is just my headcanon, but what if the pre-Kajamite Goblins, which I would refer to from this point as Proto-Goblins, are already intelligent? What if Kajamite just made them more organised and more materialistic?

It would be more interesting if the Proto-Goblins did try to rebel against the troll even before they found Kajamite; but they lack the ambition and drive to make it succeed, and most importantly, the right physical morphology or mutation to help them in defeating their enslavers on land.

Kajamite has been said to enhance their intelligence, but what if that is only half the truth or mere propaganda? What if Kajamite not only enhanced some of the very nature that makes the modern-day Goblin the ruthless opportunist we see today but also drastically mutated them from their previous forms, giving them the edge they needed to free themselves?

And most importantly, how many of them are related to modern-day Kelfins?

Or what if the pre-Kajamite Goblins are actually Kelfins/Gilgoblins?

The Kelfins themselves seem to be very different from modern-day land goblins. They seem to be more nuanced, mostly liberated enslaved people who just want to survive and are more than willing to help those in need; they seem to not use any Kajamite.

What if modern-day goblins are Kelfins corrupted by Kajamite? What if Kajamite doesn’t actually make them intelligent; it actually changes them morphologically and psychologically? I theorise that, due to exposure to Kajamite, the Kelfins became better suited to living on land, became more attracted to shiny things as a base of their society, and became more organised and ambitious, which led them to free themselves from the enslavement of the Zandalaris.

The Kelfins were already freedom fighters themselves, as we can see from the faction “unshackled” but maybe with the help of the mutation from Kajamite, making them more suitable to live on land help them to succeed in their liberation and rebellion.

So my theory is the Kelfins are the proto-goblins; the pre-Kajamite goblins.