as my senses returned the taste of goblin hit me,
and let me tell you, the taste of goblin is VILE…
especially when you don’t just taste their physical aspect but their spiritual aspect as well.
As I tasted goblin I began to know about how the goblin body and soul work
oh I wish it would stop already.
my wish was sort of granted as the goblin taste gave way to something way better.
The taste of emotions
the spine chilling fear my statue had invoked in the goblin troupe as well (to a lesser degree) as the humans.
the binding hope of having found the perfect hiding spot.
the anger and determination of a mother protecting her cub.
goblin despair at having nowhere to go but death now that a bigger predator had found it.
there where more than those but all were overpowered by the raw unschooled emotions of a child, it was like premium beef cooked to mouthwatering perfection.
both the child’s fear and despair, its feelings of hope and safety was fine wine and caviar.
I could feel my cor grow with this well of emotions
THIS, I needed MORE.
Almost unconsciously I had spawned a dozen or so goblins, but when I looked at Teddy as he sat behind the screen I remembered how he had taken me on rollercoasters like trips through storytelling.
and then I thought of all the other things I had done in my life where I had felt strongly
movies I had seen
amusement parks
both playing and seeing sport events
a wide grin started forming. Yes, I would let them come to ME I would make them Feel ALL of the emotions and then I would let them go to spread the word, so they and more could come back and give me MORE Emotions.
now where to start.
my high faded as I looked at the dozen of goblins before me
all where naked their skin was warted their eyes glowing ever so slightly red.
their droll fell from crooked and sharp fangs somewhere between those of a wolf and those of a shark. hunched over with potbellies and arms that reached down to their knees, they looked… stupid.
I instinctively knew that only that which had become part of me was what I could recreate.
in other words, I would have to ‘taste’ more creatures.
it also seemed like they were missing something, a purpose? a job?
sigh, I selected a random goblin to see if I could at least modify the goblins, I mean I had modified rock to make a statue of teddy so this should be easy right.
no, it isn’t.
turns out flesh is not the same as rock and the first goblin died as his skin which had resisted my meddling was suddenly ripped from his body
and I mean ALL of his skin.
little bugger died screaming to all hell
the next goblin I was a lot gentler towards and while I couldn’t remove the warts entirely, I did manage to reduce them enough so that they could pass for birthmarks. Close enough.
the original goblins who had come into my cave had all been wearing a patchwork of different cloths chains and metal bits and since I could make as much of each of those patches it took little effort to dress a goblin in a white linen shirt and soft black leather pants. now that gave me an idea
I formed a leather vest on the goblin and started to pull on its straps.
pull for pull the goblins hunched over form straightened and the goblin now looked halfway decent
as if it could sense the pride in my cosmetic enhancements the little bugger smiled at me.
which broke any respectable image I had just crafted.
so I after some moulding, I managed to make a mouth guard out of iron
the goblin got a bowler and some high strapped boots and the bugger could almost pass for a wild western cowboy. looking at the other goblins and I the altered one was unrecognisable
the cowboy goblin made me think of a saloon and how there would always be someone there, to strip you of all your hard-earned gold through games of chance and skill.
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I floated over to the spot behind the screen and a plan for the first floor started to form.
a desk formed behind the screen, here visitor could exchange their anything for to get the essential item of my dungeon, The Jeton.
carved from goblin thighbone with intricate carvings also of goblins doing goblin things. the 3 jetons of lovest value took form in my dungeon, all where an 8th of an inch thick at the rim. all 3 had green paint in its deepest crevices almost like a background to the carving in their centre was their chosen denominations 1, 2 and 5.
the visitors would drop their offer into a deep hole, in which a trapdoor would make it difficult to retrieve to objects when placed within. then a goblin would hand over the jetons so that the visitors could start gambling away.
one of the undressed goblins came over and crawled over the counter, so I dressed him as I had dressed the first one, then I thought better of it and replaced the bowler with a topless cap and gave the goblin a monocle.
why? because I thought it was funny, that’s why.
now I needed a reason for people to want the jetons.
the exchange so far only took up half of the desk, so the other half should be what you could buy with you hard-won jetons. this time I made shute where the items could spawn out of sight and be delivered. now for a visual display, I decided to mimic the carnival lotteries. and while there were a few teddy bears and the like it was mostly ingots of iron, copper and silver, beneath them where their corespondent coins, no people would just steal them, so I hollowed out all of the items and filled them with stone, that I fused to the wall for good measure. bolts of linen in different colours joined the prices on the wall alongside pelts from rabbit’s, wolves and a bear.
no way the goblins had killed one themselves. it was more likely the little thieves had stolen the scraps of fur I had made the pelt them out of.
another goblin must have sensed that there was a job to do, cuz another one had jumped the bar and I dressed it as I had the others. I added a slip of leather underneath each item with its value in jetons pressed my will upon this shop to be fair and left it at that.
there would probably be those that would just go in, exchange what they didn’t need for that which they did. but that would be fine too, as I could probably get a lot of patterns that way.
the giant statue of teddy would do nicely as a doorway into what would eventually become a casino prober.
for now, it was just a plain featureless room 8 feet tall, 20 feet wide and 30 feet deep
my core had moved along as I had carved the room and it now rested on the far wall across from the door
I made a couple of tables with 6 chairs for each and a fireplace for ambience
I had thought magically making a fire would have been a limit but apperently not.
though at first, it was more like a spark that just caught on really well.
the fire was smokeless and as I investigated why it seemed as if the wood was just too pure to make smoke, so I went back to the shop to add a few logs of the pure wood.
who knew the sort of people that would enjoy that kind of fire.
I wrought a chain and connected it to a wheel of wood and hung one over each of the 3 tables. several lights were put on the wheels so that the tables would have light.
then each table got a deck of card, 52 cards split into 4 colours, red, blue, green, and black
the backside where all a plain white so as to avoid marked cards if I were to start something new I would try to set the trend to discourage cheaters
the jack of red showed a knight starting a war, the queen of red showed a queen directing a war and the king of red showed a king triumphant in war
the jack of blue showed a man with black boils, the queen of blue, showed a woman grieving her sick family. and the king of blue showed a man on a sick horse with a crowned plague mask riding through streets of plague.
the jack of green showed a farmer on dead fields, the queen of green showed a thin woman eating her own leg and the king of blue showed a king riding on a painfully thin horse, to fields aplenty leaving dead and wasted crops behind
the jack of black showed a nobleman and peasant dead in graves side by side, the queen of black showed a queen and a Whore dead in graves side by side and the king of black showed a skeleton clad in black holding a scythe over fields dead people, no crown on it head. but plenty at the horse’s hooves.
my goal was to have people react to the horseman cards as reaction equals emotions. and in a game of cards, shoving emotion is dangerous.
the room looked fine for now and I dressed the rest of the goblins as I had the first. it was far from done, but it would do for now