We would be glad to tell you the secrets of Goblin magic, if only we knew them.
We asked a very powerful Goblin shaman for her secrets, and spent less than a week as tadpoles in her goldfish pond before she turned us back. Both times she mumbled something we couldn’t make out, except in the part where you would apparently say a name, she said, very distinctly, “These two idiots”.
We have no idea whom those idiots are, but we’re grateful for the week we spent swimming around, even if we did have to do a certain amount of fleeing from her giant carp, which apparently though we were food or toys or both—it’s hard to ask a carp questions, seeing as how they have essentially no brains (not unusual among humanoids either)—but also didn’t PRETEND to have any brains, which made any communication other than rapid flight impractical, as well as dangerous.
We are told that true Goblin Magic is based on the Jewish Kaballah. The few Goblin Mages we spoke to agreed with this, but pointed out that Hebrew doesn’t exist in our world, so they’ve never actually seen or studied the Kaballah; we asked them what they used for power and they drained our souls so dry that the Devil, who appeared a night later asking to trade our souls for the secret of writing the perfect Goblincore book, took a look at the contract, took a look at our signatures, and took a look at our anemic souls, and tore up the contract and left us with a disgusted look and a spare pitchfork, which will come in handy the next time we encounter a mob and have to pretend to be part of it. (Although this is much more of a danger for Jeff than A. Goblin; Goblin mobs are a hivemind of pure chaos, whereas Human mobs contain a fascinating mixture of purpose, misdirection, and regret-in-waiting. If you can’t beat them, join them, at least until you can duck into a convenient alley and avoid the upcoming slaughter (you didn’t REALLY think someone who can make life out of corpses via lightning would leave their tower undefended by thousands of little zaps from Zeus, did you?)
We can tell you this: whereas most Human groups stand in a circle, to contain and focus the energy, Goblin mages stand any way they please; thus the Power they direct goes in all manner of unpredictable directions. “It’s weird, but it works” seems to be the one thing they all agree on.
If you want to learn how to cast Goblin spells: Go ask the Necromancer. She’ll slay you first, but after you’re dead and raised into her eternal service, she will TALK YOUR EAR OFF. Assuming it doesn’t get removed during the slaying process, which sometimes happens.
Sometimes we make great sacrifices unto the Gods and they come forth to do our bidding. We tell them our bidding, and they MAY do it, if they can stop laughing long enough to make the proper declarations, which is rare.
You should probably ask a Human about this. They give much more straightforward answers; on the other hand, if you end up a tadpole, they seldom turn you back.
___________
From “A Goblincore Guide To Life”. This is one of the last previews of the book that we’re going to post; we hope you enjoyed it! If you didn’t…well, at least it was short, right?
Comments are closed.