Things moved much quicker after that. Once Sneppit started giving orders, goblins scurried off in every direction and we found ourselves swept along with the tide. Just minutes after the confrontation on the tram platform, Yoshi and I were being seated at a low (for us, everything here was goblin-sized) table in an obvious conference room, with Sneppit, Rizz, and several others I hadn’t met yet.

“Sorry about the furniture, boys,” said Sneppit as the two of us seated ourselves on the floor since fitting into goblin chairs wasn’t really in the cards. “Nobody involved in building this place ever expected to be entertaining talls. We need to keep this meeting as efficient as possible anyway, so hopefully you won’t be down there long.”

“Oh, this is fine, we’re perfectly comfortable,” Yoshi said hastily, then gave me an awkward grin. “Actually it’s sorta nostalgic, y’know?”

“Sitting on the floor is common where we’re from,” I explained in response to Sneppit’s raised eyebrows. “In fact, this works way better than what I was trying to do. I had a goblin-sized chair built to human height for my conference room but it was always sort of awkward. Yeah, a low table, goblins in their own chairs and humans on the ground—this works much better. I should implement this myself.”

“Well, glad to help, I guess.”

“People might not like that,” said Yoshi. “Fflyr aren’t Japanese, Omura-san. The legs cramp up if you’re not used to it.”

“Well, they don’t have to kneel.”

“Plannin’ to have a lot of goblins at your conference table, are ya?” Rizz drawled.

“Of course. If I’m going to be dealing with goblins, they should have a voice.”

The conference room door swung open and Zui bustled in, kicking it shut behind herself without slowing. Sneppit shot her a grimace by way of greeting, and barked, “Well?”

I hadn’t seen what, if any, comeuppance had been dispensed for Zui’s unauthorized mission of mercy, but there was clearly some tension there still. Not that you’d know it from Zui’s brisk response as she strode across the room to position herself at a little free-standing desk behind and to one side of Sneppit, who sat at the head of the long table.

“I set the butts up in the third level receiving bays, Snep. You know the one, the two warehouse spaces are connected enough they can mingle if they want but have those dividers so we can separate the villain and hero parties and hopefully not have any more screaming matches. Plus, each has got an attached office so the Hero and Dark Lord can have a private sleeping space. Both for prestige, and because they both brought all-female entourages and something tells me otherworlder humans aren’t gonna be any less weird than the Fflyr about mixed-gender sleeping arrangements.”

“As I recall,” said Sneppit, “those bays were out of use because they were full of storage.”

“Yeah, but that works out in our favor. What was being stored was spare lengths of track and fittings. I went ahead and authorized having those moved to the active bays on the first level, since it’s a good bet Jadrak’s assholes are gonna wreck whatever sections of track they can get to and we’ll need to do major repairs as soon as he’s gone.”

“Ugh, that motherfucker,” Sneppit growled. “He would, too. That’s gonna mean a lot of cargo needs to get shifted before we can get our guests settled in.”

“That’s actually underway, and going much faster than usual,” Zui reported. “The butts all chipped in to help carry, without even being asked. Even that horrible elf; she was the last to start working, and I think only out of embarrassment at being the only holdout, but even so. They’re not any stronger than our own people but that height gives ‘em great leverage. At the rate they were movin’ when I left, the space will be cleared before the engineers cobble together something for ‘em to sleep on.”

“We’re good with blankets on the floor,” I offered.

“I’m guessing you don’t see a lot of stone floors,” Sneppit said dryly. “Even akorthist blocks have more give. Besides, you don’t think we’ve got human-sized blankets just sitting around, do you?”

“Which elf is the horrible one?” Yoshi asked with a somewhat sickly attempt at a grin.

Everyone turned to stare at him. After a moment he sighed and lowered his head to stare glumly at the tabletop.

“…yeah, I know.”

“Right,” Sneppit said more briskly. “We’re all here, then. For a quick round of intros: I’m Sneppit and this is my place, I think all of you know that. This is Zui,” she added, jerking a thumb over her shoulder at the so-called hairstylist, who was now scribbling rapidly in a ledger. “She helps me keep organized and will be taking minutes. These four mooks are the union reps for my company: Zazoe from the general Sneppit Company union, Skadl from the custodial and sanitation workers, Minzgit from the security guards and Kzagk representing the engineers’ union. And this is Judge Rizz, who’s just…here. As usual.”

Each of the four union reps greeted me with a cheerful word while I sat there growing more and more confused.

“Wait, hang on. Sorry if this is a derailment, but… Why do you have four different labor unions within just one company?”

I immediately knew I had transgressed. One of those awkward pauses ensued, the ones that follow somebody ignorantly flouting a social rule so commonplace it shouldn’t need explanation. The kind full of cringing glances and suddenly stiff postures as the whole room froze up from sheer discomfort. Everybody was embarrassed on my behalf and I was immediately annoyed by it.

“Well, he knows what a labor union is,” Rizz finally said, “which is more’n I expected from a surface dweller. To answer your question, the function of a union is to distribute power laterally among workers to counter the top-down power of the company and its boss. Just having one is barely better than not having any; that just creates a new power structure within the old one, just as prone to corruption and the reps and admins getting a big head. If you want fairness, you gotta have competition.”

“I…huh.” I blinked rapidly, trying to follow that. “I guess I can see the logic in it, intellectually. In real world terms I gotta wonder how you people ever get anything done.”

“The answer is we only sometimes do,” Sneppit muttered. “Look, you don’t need to worry about them, Lord Seiji, the unions don’t matter for any purposes under discussion. They’re only here because their contracts entitle them to have a representative present at all top-level company business. That is not a complaint,” she added balefully as Zazoe opened her mouth. “I am explaining what I’m sure is an unfamiliar concept to people who aren’t accustomed to workers having any say in anything.”

“We understand,” Yoshi said hastily. “Japan is very different from Fflyr Dlemathlys.”

“Oh, right, you’re a high schooler,” I muttered. “Someone’s never hunted for a job in Tokyo.”

“If introductions are done, let me get my biases out of the way,” said Rizz, causing Sneppit to roll her eyes so hard she actually slumped backward in her chair, letting her head loll over the backrest. Rizz ignored this, just speaking evenly to the room at large. “I have adjudicated disputes involving Sneppit and/or her company on nine occasions, finding in her favor six times and three times against. I also purchased my bladestaff and that of my apprentice Rhoka from her engineers, paying what I believe to have been fair value with no discount. And presently, with the active danger in Kzidnak, my husbands are among the refugees taking advantage of Sneppit’s offer to shelter civilians from the fighting.”

“H-husbands?” Yoshi stuttered. “Plural? You mean…”

“You really wanna stop proceedings and discuss my love life, kid?” Rizz asked him pointedly.

He flushed bright pink and stammered for another second before finding a topic onto which to deflect. “So, uh, biases? I’m not sure I understand… Are you, um, officiating here?”

“No, she is not!” Sneppit exclaimed in exasperation. “Look, Judges are… Well, we don’t have what you’d recognize as priests, and Kzidnak doesn’t have any organized governing body. Or police. Judges are the interpreters of Virya’s example as goblins understand it. They arbitrate disputes, and end up taking care of most of those other functions I mentioned.”

“We keep things competitive,” Rizz said, nodding.

“Rizz is only here,” Sneppit continued, shooting her a disgruntled look, “because telling a Judge they can’t attend a meeting just makes ‘em think you’re up to something relevant to their mandate, and I got enough bullshit to deal with today without Rizz and a bunch of her heavily-armed friends rifling through my lingerie drawer. Judges are big on fairness and impartiality, so they start anything by airing out whatever relevant biases they might have. Just think of it like a religious practice. In this particular case it does not matter.”

Behind her, Zui was shaking with silent laughter as she continued to record all this in shorthand.

I could sympathize both with Sneppit’s obvious frustration and Zui’s amusement at it. So far this “urgent strategy meeting” had been a farce of wasted time and waffling explanations. But more to the point, I suddenly felt I’d gained my first major insight into goblin culture, and one which accounted for something that had been increasingly bothering me since we first came underground.

I’d already known the goblins had better alchemy than the Fflyr; down here I’d seen that their engineering was significantly ahead. Between that and their artistic skills, it was really starting to look like Kzidnak was a notably more advanced civilization than Dlemathlys, to the point I found myself wondering how they were the underclass, even with the disparity in population. Now, I understood it: capabilities don’t mean much if you can’t organize and deploy them effectively. What had just been described to me was a kind of capitalist anarchy with—somehow—disproportionately powerful organized labor, overseen only by…cowboy Jedi inquisitors? It was like they’d taken all the worst parts from several mutually incompatible political systems and mashed them together into some shambling Frankensteinian corpse of a governance that couldn’t possibly work.

No wonder even the hilariously inept Clans were kicking them around.

And also: just think what I could accomplish if I got all these goblins organized and pointed in the right direction…

“If we’re all about done faffing around,” Sneppit continued after a couple of seconds in which there were no further interruptions, “let’s talk about what we’re actually here to talk about: Jadrak.”

“We’re pretty in the dark regarding him,” I admitted, glancing over at Yoshi, who nodded agreement. “I didn’t know much more about the basic political situation than you explained a few minutes ago, Sneppit. Jadrak is whipping the normally passive populace of Kzidnak into a destructive mob, and only some of them are willingly going along with it, but it’s enough to scare a lot of others into compliance or kill them if they won’t. Obviously, what we need is to get rid of Jadrak, but that leaves a lot of room for detail. Yoshi and I have both been following a strategy of flailing around in the dark and would both be utterly boned already without your help. And by the way, in case I forgot to say it, thanks.”

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“You are welcome,” she said with a wry little smile. “Yeah, that’s the long and the short of it. Until you showed up, my chosen strategy was to shell down and try to wait him out. I’ve been shoring up defenses and giving shelter to refugees in the hope that when he got around to attacking me I could fend him off. Ultimately I wouldn’t even have to win that, just…not lose. A Goblin King requires momentum; if he got stalled out, unable to to take out one of his rivals, he’d lose a lot of his followers. Most would abandon him and some might even try to remove him themselves. That was always a gamble, though. In terms of assets and personnel, I don’t have anything Jadrak doesn’t, and he’s got several advantages I don’t, and that’s before we consider the bigger numbers he can deploy. In tunnels, defensive fighting is usually stronger than offensive, and I’ve been preparing for this ever since the first rumblings started—well before either of you landed on Dount, as I understand it—but I was not excited about the odds.”

“So offense is still the best bet,” Yoshi murmured. “It’s good of you to give shelter to those fleeing the fighting.”

“Don’t talk like it’s some grand compassionate gesture,” Sneppit grunted, grimacing. “A moral choice is one you make when the alternative would better serve your interests. In this case? More people in my complex means more warm bodies to man the barricades. Under other circumstances I’d quickly run out of food and medicine for this kinda crowd, but like I said, I have been preparing for this. Lord Seiji already knows I’ve been storing alchemicals away, and we’ve got decent stockpiles of food. Since Jadrak can’t afford to besiege us, we only have to survive long enough to push back a few major attacks. Hopefully.”

“Tell us about Jadrak,” I said. “What exactly are we dealing with, here?”

“Jadrak runs—well, I guess ran, I doubt he’s still in business as such—a mining company. Biggest in Kzidnak; he’s been the go-to guy for ore on all of Dount. We have limited dealings with the Fflyr, obviously, but I know he’s supplied surface contacts with metal. Most of his business was here in Kzidnak, though. Obviously we weren’t in direct competition, and I’ve been an indirect customer of his for years.”

“Indirect customer?” I asked.

Sneppit grinned. “Raw ore is only so much use to me. Refining it requires proprietary asauthec blends that my alchemist hasn’t cracked yet. I have some smelting capability, but quality workable metal has been the domain of another, somewhat smaller business that quickly got absorbed once Jadrak declared himself Goblin King. There’s a trick to getting asauthec forges to burn hot enough and long enough to produce quality alloys. Zircko was the big name in refining, and he’s been in Jadrak’s pocket forever, because their businesses were too interconnected and Jadrak came out on top in their power struggle years ago. Zircko was either the willing first to join up or his ass is dead and his assets confiscated by now.”

“So Jadrak has basically bottomless access to raw metal and the ability to refine as much as he needs,” I mused. “Hmm… What else?”

“The good news with regard to that is that Zircko’s smithing was mostly producing base materials, not sophisticated tools, but then again there are other engineering companies than mine and soon enough some will join Jadrak, willingly or not. But for now, they won’t have much in the way of complex machinery. Jadrak’s other major asset, apart from the loyalty of his followers, is his lieutenant Hoy. A sorcerer, and the only goblin in Kzidnak who’s Blessed.”

“Not even,” Yoshi’s familiar suddenly interjected. “We fought multiple sorcerers on the way here! Three separate goblins who were able to cast Fire Lance and Force Barrier.”

“Yeah, we ran into one of those, too,” I said. “It wasn’t too hard to shut him down. I let him live, since I’ve been trying not to be any more destructive down here than I absolutely have to. Bastard turned right around and attacked us again, and Nazralind shot him through the head. So that’s one less.”

Yoshi grimaced. “Unfortunately we weren’t able to kill any of the ones who attacked us. We’ve been pressed hard since we got down here, and it seemed like the sorcerers would always fall back if the fight turned against them.”

“And that is the issue exactly,” Rizz interjected. “The most immediate concern about Jadrak, the thing that’s most significant about his sudden rise and the thing everybody understands the least. See, for years Hoy was the only Blessed goblin on this island. There are only a few Spirits underground on Dount, and none of them give Blessings. Actually Jadrak’s headquarters is built around one, but it just gives directions to fresh ore veins and is very hard to please. Valuable, but not something that could help him do all this. For a goblin to get Blessed would mean they managed to access one of the Clan-controlled surface Spirits that can do it, or managed to get across one or several landbridges to a more wild island or dungeon that has them. Both those are prohibitive barriers for a goblin, and I dunno which Hoy did, but he came back Blessed and with a decent little kit of spells. He’s been Jadrak’s top enforcer for a long time.”

She paused, scowling deeply.

“Hoy has been a major pain in the ass for Judges and made Jadrak the same as long as he’s been backing him. The kinds of aggressive…business tactics they’ve pulled are exactly what Judges exist to put a stop to, but none of us are Blessed. Keeping that company under a semblance of control has required us to do a lot of careful maneuvering with other companies and smaller businesspeople. Arranging boycotts and commercial sanctions against Jadrak has been the only way to prevent him from just forcibly taking over other businesses.”

I leaned forward over the table. “Does that mean we can count on the Judges to side with us?”

“I would not base any plans around that,” Rizz said firmly. “This is…complicated. Ordinarily, what Jadrak is doing is the very definition of violent, anti-competitive action that Judges would shut down with maximum prejudice. But, a formally declared Goblin King is a recognized thing in our culture, and the exception to a lot of normal rules. On the other hand…so is a Dark Lord.”

She paused, tilting her head back to give me a long, appraising look from under the wide brim of that hat.

“Having the both of you here, active, and at cross purposes creates…dilemmas, from a Judge’s perspective. Most of ‘em already don’t like Jadrak; if you present a good faith effort toward dealing fairly and gently with the goblins you meet, odds are good at least some Judges will fall into your camp. But I’m not gonna sit here and promise you anything on their behalf.”

“And what about you?” I asked, grinning. “Are you impressed, yet?”

“Not yet,” Rizz stated tonelessly. “I’ll be watching you, boy.”

“That’s interesting and all,” the pixie chimed in, zipping back and forth above Yoshi’s head in frustration, “but it’s not answering the issue at hand! Why are you people so insistent that Jadrak only has the one sorcerer when we clearly know he has more?”

“Easy, Radatina,” Yoshi urged. “I think they’re still in the process of explaining that. Right?”

Radatina? Where had he come up with that? It wasn’t a Japanese name… Oh, of course, probably taken from one of his animes.

“Right,” Sneppit agreed, giving the familiar a long look. “Rizz, feel free to jump in if I miss anything, but I’m pretty sure I know the basics here. It’s been the big buzz all over Kzidnak for at least the last week. For years Hoy was the only Blessed down here, like she said, but now, suddenly, Jadrak has a whole handful. Starting just a few days ago, he’s had them out rallying people and making shows of force, popularizing those green scarves and armbands and whatnot. I’ve had my people looking into it and so far we know of seven individuals who suddenly have the Blessing of Magic. There are a few others, not entirely sure how many. The ones I’ve been able to dig up any info about were all ordinary goblins who worked for him. Couple miners, a clerk, a counter girl at his tool shop.”

“And the spells are consistent, too, which is really rare among sorcerers, even organized ones,” Rizz added. “Fire Lance and Force Barrier. Basic offense and defense. They all have those two specific spells and no others.”

A short silence fell. Yoshi and I glanced quizzically at each other.

“Are you…sure about that?” Biribo finally asked.

“Yeah, synchronized spells…that’s pushing likelihood,” Radatina agreed. “If I hadn’t personally seen three of them with exactly those I wouldn’t believe you.”

“I didn’t bring everybody here to trade gossip,” Sneppit said irritably. “The tactical data itself is useful, but what matters is what it means.”

One of the union reps—Skadl from the janitors, that was it—tentatively raised his hand. “Uh, for those of us totally outta our depth here, what does it mean?”

“Biribo?” I murmured.

“Usually,” he explained, “when a bunch of people suddenly turn up Blessed and with the spells or artifacts they’d need to use the new Blessing, and those people are all dedicated members of one political faction, and a major political upheaval immediately ensues, what you’re looking at is a large outside power seeding them there for the purpose of causing that disruption.”

“Exactly,” said Sneppit, pointing at him.

“Wait, but…” Yoshi frowned, glancing around the table as if for answer. “Who would do that to goblins? I mean, um, no offense, but…”

“No, you’ve hit the right question exactly,” Sneppit agreed. “This is what makes this such a head-twister. There’s only one simple explanation for how Jadrak suddenly has all these Blessed working for him, except that in this specific situation it makes no sense.”

I was reluctant to admit ignorance, but the goblins were just staring expectantly now and Yoshi was floudering in visible confusion.

“Okay,” I said, “let’s say for the sake of argument that two of us are from an entirely different planet and not very familiar with the political nuances on Ephemera. Walk us through why exactly this doesn’t make sense?”

“That’s a fair point,” Sneppit acknowledged with an amused little quirk of her lips. “It comes down to resources. I trust you boys have a general sense of the international powers that bother to keep a presence on Dount?”

I glanced up at Biribo, who for once seemed to have nothing to say now that somebody else was narrating. “I’ve been told about the Lancor Empire’s aggressive operations throughout Dlemathlys.”

“That’s the big one,” Sneppit nodded. “Well, the biggest. Dlemathlys is a relatively lawless border country on a major trade route so almost every significant power in the archipelago keeps a few listeners here at least, but of the forces that bother to actually do anything? We’re just looking at Lancor, Godspire, Shylverrael, and Savindar. And if we assume Jardak’s being propped up as a foreign power to disrupt the Fflyr, this doesn’t make sense for any of ‘em.”

I nodded, as did Yoshi. “Okay, go on?”

“At issue is the massive investment an operation like this is. Your familiars have probably told you, but the kind of power that can grant Blessings is…rare. And collecting matched sets of scrolls like this is prohibitively hard. Even if you control multiple Spirits that give the right rewards, trying to farm them for consistent results usually makes them shut down.”

Shit. Biribo had not seen fit to mention that last bit to me, and I wasn’t pleased to hear it. Clan Yviredh’s Spirit was difficult enough that I hadn’t expected great results from sending my people to that (and indeed, Head Start had yet to reward anybody from my organization after myself), but there was that Spirit the nearby cat tribe had; I’d hoped to start getting goodies out of that once I’d brought them into the fold.

It figured, though. I was in a giant gacha game that’d been running for hundreds if not thousands of years under the direct (meddling) supervision of its designers. Obviously all the easy exploits had been patched long since.

“So in this hypothetical, we’re looking at a major nation,” Sneppit continued, oblivious to my inner frustration, “an empire that can pull in resources from across vast swaths of people and territory. That rules out Shylverrael and Godspire, which are lone city-states and isolationists besides.”

“Leaving Savindar and Lancor,” Yoshi nodded.

“And this doesn’t suit the agenda of either,” she said. “Savindar has nothing to gain by disrupting the Fflyr. Their only interests on Dount are maintaining some surreptitious contact with Shylverrael and keeping the trade routes through Godspire clear. Stirring up trouble here would harm their interests, not help them.”

“Lancor does take an aggressive stance on the Fflyr,” I said, “and they’ve had active agents on Dount as recently as a few weeks ago, some of my people encountered them. Why would they not stir up dissidents here?”

“That is, broadly, their agenda,” she agreed, “but the details are all wrong. Like I said, Lord Seiji, seeding Blessings and spell scrolls is an absolutely massive investment. Spies have much more economical ways of causing trouble. This kinda gambit would be the harbinger of an invasion and conquest, and that’s not Lancor’s policy toward Dlemathlys. Besides, if they were planning to do that, it would be down on Dlemath, which is both closest to them and holds the central government. Dount is as far as possible from the Lancor border.”

“Mmmm.” I folded my arms, frowning at the wall above Mingzit’s head. “I see the dilemma, then.”

“That means…we’re not just dealing with a Goblin King,” Yoshi said slowly. “Somebody representing a huge amount of power is backing him, and we have no idea who. Or why. Or how.”

“Which is less mysterious now than yesterday,” Rizz commented. “Strikes me it is not a coincidence to find fingers that big in our pie, now that there’s a Dark Lord and a Hero in Kzidnak.”

Fuck. Nothing could ever be simple, could it?

“Hence, strategy meeting,” said Sneppit, shrugging. “If it wasn’t for that, I’d say hey, we got a Hero and Dark Lord here and Jadrak’s only impressive by the standards of Kzidnak. Even the great Hoy would be at best a middling King’s Guild adventurer in strength; either of you could plow right over him, let alone both. If things were simple, you two could just make a straight line right for Jadrak, smash anybody in your way, and take him out.”

Rizz gave her a long, displeased stare, which Sneppit affected not to notice.

“As someone who’s done it recently,” Yoshi murmured, “cutting through an angry mob is not as easy as you’re making it sound, even with the massive difference in power.”

“And even if it weren’t, I would rather not do that,” I added. “I’m not here to slaughter goblins. Jadrak’s followers are just fed up and angry and mostly have good reason to be. I have no interest in massacring anybody who doesn’t absolutely have to die.”

Sneppit sighed irritably, swatting away our objections with a brusque gesture. “Right, well, my point is, things are not that simple. We don’t know exactly what’s behind Jadrak, but there’s at least a chance it’s something that could be a threat even to the two of you. In this situation, just smashing into Jadrak’s headquarters to kill him is too risky. We need to gain information before making an aggressive move.”

A glum silence fell, in which Rizz scowled at Sneppit, Sneppit gazed expectantly at us, Zui’s pen stopped scratching as she waited for the next speaker, the four union reps stared in wide-eyed bemusement at everybody, and Yoshi chewed his lip.

“Well, hey,” I said finally, putting on a cocky smile. “Who says we can’t do both?”