It's funny, you muse as you poke around the goblin village, letting yourself ruminate on exactly how you're going to expand the place. Mercy will barely recognise the place when she gets back. And we've had so much stone come in from other things we barely needed to send her away at all.

A large room, the size of your arena, is only fifty stone after all. And you have well over four hundred now. You know from experience how quickly that can change, how fast you can burn through your resources, but four hundred is still enough to make some serious modifications. Let alone all the other materials you have now – enough wood and hide to fill the entire dungeon with furniture manually rather than using the 'clutter' command.

You shake yourself out of your reverie as the smoke that roils along the ceiling of the goblin cave makes faces at you – the strange magic at play harmless, but distracting.

What does a goblin town need?

It would be easy to just throw down a large room, fill it with tents and call it a day but something in you rebels at the thought. This is your lair, gods damn it. You want it to look good, to work, to pose a challenge to adventurers. You already have ideas for the larder, including a kind of remote hunting camp in its depths and linking it up to the kobold village to give Sapphire the option of some beast support once you all level up a few times. But the village escapes you.

What do villages even have?

You've never really spent much time in villages, apart from that brief visit where you met Mercy and Amanda again. It had... houses. A road?

You're still paralysed by indecision when you hear them approach. The noise that twenty goblins are capable of putting out is truly staggering. You can just about hear Amanda, shouting over their hollering voices.

“This is the workshop. Most of you probably won't spend much time here, it's usually Jack's domain, and sometimes Notch-ear when she wants to make something. It's not off limits, but be careful, and obviously only a few of you can go in at once.”

Then they're upon you. A tide of green flesh, pushing Amanda along like a cork on a wave. A moment of panic overcomes you before you force yourself to remember that they are on your side, but even with that assurance the village becomes very crowded very quickly as the curious greenskins clamber up barricades, cluster around fires and the well, and investigate the simple art tables. Thankfully, they don't attempt to enter any tents, or Feathers may have castrated another one of them.

You note with some amusement the line that forms next to the art table, as every piece of armour that bares the four white lines of the longteeth are painted over with a simple red shape, like a triangle with two of the sides bowing out. A very goblin depiction of a red scale.

And then they're all looking at you, and silence has fallen.

Even Amanda looks somewhat spooked by the sudden change from manic energy to deathly seriousness.

You fight the urge to cough.

“Welcome to your new home. I was just about to expand it.”

Your voice is swallowed by the shifting crowd.

Ah fuck it

It's not like you'll ever be one of those super big bosses. You don't need to shock and awe them by being all knowing.

“But I'm not a goblin, and I don't know what you want in a village. Any suggestions?”

The silence, if anything, thickens, as the noise of twenty goblin brains furiously thinking cuts away even the slight noises they'd made as they shifted foot to foot.

Eventually, one of them raises a hand.

“This... nice. Is nice for five goblin, or ten goblin, but...”

He trails off, a troubled look on his face, and another goblin takes up the slack.

If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.

“Is no village. Is... is war camp.”

The crowd murmurs and nods, and she presses on.

“Little tribe, live like this.”

She gestures around you.

“Tent. Small fire. Easy to make, easy to move. Good for running, or hunt. But not for live.”

You're slightly taken aback. Non of your goblins have ever complained about it but... now you think about it you have mostly just been dropping furs and wood into the cave and letting them work it out. The camp you visited oh so long ago, where Feathers was from, they were trying to make an actual building from wood, weren't they? And Feathers said she was locked in a building that was set on fire around her when she was betrayed.

Just... somewhere, the idea of goblins living in actual buildings hadn't really registered with you, and you've been making them live in tents.

“That's fair enough. What do you suggest?”

The female approaches you, hesitant. A few others come too, while the rest back away. You open your build menu.

“Space. We live in forest. Strange, walls so close,” says one.

“More art place, place for shop too.”

“Place for guards to keep weapons.”

“Place for relax.”

“Huts, lots. No need to be big, we no hoard things like human or elf. But many. Am pregnant, others come soon.”

“River better than well, maybe?”

“Place for pig.”

That one brings you up short.

“You have a pig?”

The goblin who suggested it, short and thick set, although no goblin in the ex-longteeth could really be said to be fat, shakes his head and draws back from your attention, but he is adamant.

“Place for pig.”

You add it to your mental list anyway.

“Place to see outside?”

You pause again, about to refuse – you don't want adventurer's sneaking in without using your front door after all... but then, now you have so many goblins, you're not going to be able to get everyone into the entrance hall. And really, it's been a moot point since before you got the doors. A canny adventure with enough rope could have rappelled down into your larder cave since you connected it to the surface. Those trap holes occasionally bear fruit, bringing in fresh meat, so you don't want to get rid of them.

“I suppose so. But I don't want to make it easy for people to use as a way in.”

“No, just see out. See forest. Maybe... maybe down? Below path? People ignore hard to see cave when door so close.”

“Oh! Bridge, like kobolds! Hero struggle to fight on bridge!”

“Idiot! Bridge need big fall! No big fall here!”

“Then build big fall!”

More and more goblins are finding the bravery to throw their ideas forward, and you start to work, keeping half an ear open.

First things first, you spend a hundred and fifty stone one three large rooms, choosing the rough cave option. The first cuts across the back wall of the current goblin caves in a rough teardrop shape and lowering the floor by half a dozen feet. The next stretches mostly downwards, the idea of a village across a ravine tickling your fancy, as well as making tactical sense. You extrude the room out underneath the path to your lair, although it's only lower by a foot. The final room goes on the other side, an inverse tear drop to the first, making a very rough rectangle split by the chasm. Another chunk of stone will bring the currently tiered cliffs of the old goblin village down to the new, lower floor level, and evens out some of the walls. You're going to have to deconstruct much of the village before the blueprint is completed.

A narrow staircase cut into the wall will allow traversal down into the new goblin town, and a squat wooden tower in the middle of the current village to act as a guard house will give your goblins a nice vantage point to shoot arrows and throw stones at any hero attempting to traverse the staircase.

A river, recycling the well, bubbles from a small spring before falling into the ravine. You're not actually sure how goblins build buildings, so you set a place in the middle of the room for two hundred wood, one hundred furs and a hundred scrap metal, and resolve to let them do it themselves. A second later, you add a hundred bones. You have no idea what goblin architecture looks like. Another fifty wood, and forty foot of rope you looted from an adventurer, for numerous thin bridges across the chasm – plenty wide enough for a goblin to use with ease, but terrifyingly weak for any adventurer in heavy armour.

After a moment's hesitation, you use a chunk of your clay to make a muddy pig pen, underneath where Feathers' room currently is. It's out of the way, and that guy was pretty sure he needed a place for a pig.

Finally, the suggestions peter out as the goblins watch you work.

“You'll be able to build your own buildings,. If you need more wood or anything, we have plenty, just ask,” you say, as you finish the blueprint. The goblins startle as the floor under their feet starts registering their tiny shifts as miniscule progress towards opening the cavern.

“We'll need to deconstruct the tents and barricades before we-”

The oread kneels down beside you, and you change direction mid word.

“COVER YOUR EARS, NOW!”

You just follow your own directions in time, as a tremendous bang shears the air. The goblins shriek as they fall a dozen feet, the ground under them vanishing. Several of them vanish into the tower that's appeared, the rest land on the stone floor with curses and wails. A second clatter marks the barricades, tables and tents crashing to the new floor, splintering on impact. A split second later, there's a splat.

You turn, very slowly, to the splat.

In the mud, a bundle of furs several feet across is wriggling. You recognise the furs. You've slept on them often enough. After a second, Sapphire's head emerges. She blinks owlishly at the huge cavern, the pile of moaning goblins, and the mud. Then she turns to you.

“No sex! For! A! Week!”