My cousin screams for help from between the jaws of a massive furry beast. The monster shakes him violently as I watch, helpless and on the verge of tears. I liked that cousin.

Eventually, the brown and black creature gets bored and tosses him into the air. He hits the ground in a wet splat before its furious golden brown eyes meet mine. This is the fifth dog I’ve had to run from this week. I take off as it barks furiously before loping after me. I would try to find some help, but everyone seems to be going through “raid-related bit trouble.”

What is a raid-related bit of trouble? Well, being a goblin raider, one of the hundreds of level 1 goblin raiders, our job is to scour the land for food, shinnies, and sometimes even personal glory. When we find a small settlement with a combination of one or all three, we initiate a raid. A glorious mass charge of green warriors, rolling down the hill into the belly of the enemy… and their pitchforks.

For we are GOBLINS! And you can’t spell “raid” without die, or dead, or dying in a horrible, nightmare-inducing manner as everything from chickens to human children take turns slaughtering us. So I run. I run really hard, harder than I did last time, which is harder than the time before, but it’s not enough, the dog will catch up, and I only have a rock to defend myself. Oh, my name is Rock, by the way; because I was holding on to a rock when I crawled from the Cave of Wonders.

I did have a sword. Or something in the shape of a sword. It was more a stick, which my uncle Flint carved into the form of something vaguely pointy. Real weapons are scavenged from human conflicts fought in the surrounding plains and empty fields below our mountain. But there are never enough human weapons to go around, and the ones we scavenge are often too big. I am only 4 feet tall, after all.

So I lost my sword during the last fight with these humans. I remember what happened like it was yesterday. I stabbed a cow, and the cow kicked me. I don’t know what happened after that, only that I woke up sometime later to my brother Dagger shouting, “No Eat,” over and over again to several of my cousins.

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So I’m stuck with a rock as the giant fur beast gains on my heels. I throw it in desperation and miss the animal by several feet as it swerves to avoid the flying projectile without losing momentum.

I’m going to die.

Then I remember what my cousin shouted over my unconscious body—

”NO EAT!”

But then I realize I said it in Goblin, and most likely this stupid animal speaks Common, so I force my brain to translate the words and scream “NO EAT!” at the dog, who proceeds to leap at me with a big stupid smile on its face.

Yup, I’m dead.

Dagger and a… god damn, a motherfucking pig… go crashing into the puppy, who proceeds to yelp in surprise and hopefully pain. Dagger has hog-tied the pig in one hand while keeping hold of his oversized dagger in the other. The combination of a dirty green Goblin covered in mud and dirt and a pig twice his size bucking in panic would have made me laugh if I hadn’t peed myself in the last-ditch attempt at self-defense.

I was going to die.

“Hey Rock,” the pig underneath him squeals in frustrated rage, “you think you can”—the pig bucks underneath him hard—“help?!”

I scramble over to Dagger, soaked loincloth and all, and attempt to help wrestle the giant pig until a human comes out of nowhere!

“My PEGGY!” the man screams at the top of his lungs. The human-animal is at least 6’2, probably well over 300 pounds, and puffing loudly in a red rage. He roars an epithet my brain can’t translate from Common before swinging a giant shovel at Dagger’s head. Dagger somehow doesn’t see him, but I do! So I do the only thing I can do. I tackle my brother off the pig just as the shovel swishes over our heads. The pig runs free, but the human still looms over us.

“Dagger, UNDERHAND MANEUVER!”

We goblins are hated for our tricks. The underhand maneuver is simple! I jump over the human while Dagger rolls underneath him, hopefully slashing at his ankles. It’s foolproof.

We both jump, collide with each other, and crash into the shovel the human was swinging down on us. For a brief moment, the only thing I hear is-

Rock has taken -13 damage from Farmer’s Shovel.

And then darkness.