I thought they started out that way.
On my way to the human town where I found a load of goodies, and a genial Lord and his pissy Lady, I got stopped in a hamlet by an event marker, telling me I felt uneasy. I thought maybe the town was under attack or was going to turn out to be an undead village. I was almost convinced when I saw a Goblin Bowman stroll up too, but using 'l'ook showed him as non-hostile. So I talked with him and he was rather nice, asked him where he was going, he said he had an important mission. Then I saw a human spearman walk up and I thought they were going to start fighting, they started yelling "you must yield!" at each other, at first. I think they "missed" their shout, because they were actually yelling at my maceman companion, who wasn't doing anything. He refused and told them to get stuffed but there was no fighting. Then the goblin walked up to him and, somehow, "pushed the copper morningstar" out of my maceman's hand. I thought "wTF is this?" and at first I thought they were soldiers from an enemy faction of the maceman's and they started spitting at him.
I got a bit pissed at the goblin and as I was going after him to "gain possession" of my friend's weapon, which the goblin stole off the ground, he started demanding my dude's bag. I looked at my dude, and the one the goblin wanted was his coin purse. I was being robbed and I didn't know it, and I just watched my friend get bullied. Well I had enough of that. I didn't want to get pegged for murder so I just wrenched the morningstar away from the goblin, traded it back with my maceman, punched the goblin in the lower body and somehow turned his spleen into jam, and then turned around and punched the human spearman in the face hard enough that he was stunned.
So now we were in a brawl but even though he'd been robbed, my maceman wasn't yet involved in the violence. Still not sure if killing them was justified, I started demanding the goblin yield, since the spearman was punchdrunk and I think he tipped over at that point. Goblin got feisty and started chasing my maceman out into a field. Well at some point the goblin had stolen the maceman's purse and then dropped it, and I noticed he was chasing my dude while I was collecting his money back into his purse.
I jogged, I love the visual of jogging by the way, towards them a bit and noticed the goblin was exceptionally fast and was catching up to my dude, and had drawn his bow. Well enough of that shit, I thought, and threw the coin purse full of money at the goblin's neck. BAM paralyzed by bruising the muscle and tearing the upper spine's nervous tissue and the goblin collapsed. Still conscious though, still swinging and now in "lethal" combat. After asking him to stop fighting a couple times, my maceman got tired of being the nice guy, told the goblin to drop his shield and then started kicking him.
Feisty bugger was going down swinging, so I granted his wish. The maceman punched and kicked the goblin while I tried to strangle him, I haven't gotten strangle to work right in .42, I must be grabbing with the wrong part. In the end I ended up kind of clawing at him and then smashing his skull in with my silver mace.
It's not over, because by the time the bowman died I noticed the spearman was gone. He recovered after I gave the goblin a spleen-ectomy and started screaming about how he didn't want to die. Apparently I had actually punched the spearman in the face first, and then the goblin.
Well I decided not to bother, so I was about to go on my way, until I noticed the asterisk event marker was still there. I hovered over it, pressed stop and behold the spearman and a goblin hammerman travelling together, and they started screaming and sprinting away when they saw us.
I decided "screw it" and chased them down, rather uneventfully, and killed them both. I did have to sprint until I was very tired to catch the goblin, and then the spearman. After I had bashed the spearman to pulp a bard walked up. He was on a merry stroll and unconcerned that I was covered in blood. Pretty cool guy.
That goblin hammerman though, in hindsight I should've let live because he is the funniest thing I've seen so far. While his comrades were bullying my companion and I, he was chatting with the locals, arguing about...something with two different people at the same time, and never once got involved in the fight. He ran screaming along with the spearman after the spearman recovered, leaving their bowman to die alone.
I love this stupid game so much.