Gob woke, looking at the stone ceiling of the tunnel, Kylie zipping around above him impatiently. He had a disgusting taste in his mouth and his lips were dry. He smacked them together with a grimace.

"Oh there he is!" She said when she saw he was awake.

"wot hapin?" He felt woozy.

"What do you remember?" She asked with a cheeky smile.

He thought about it.

"i git drag arond bi spida. an it kik me an spik mi wiv itz legz. an den… an den… did i eet a spida?"

"Yes! It was gross! And then you were paralysed by poison."

He smacked his lips together and stuck his tongue out.

"ze cont was rite. spida tase yuk. iz dere rat to eet?"

Kylie gave him a haunch.

They set off again and before too long, the tunnels started to look more worn and less abandoned. They started to come across flaming sconces marking common routes, and soon enough, to Gob's utter incredulity, other travellers.

In his relatively short life, Gob had seen trolls, humans, a fairy and a vampire. As they started passing a variety of strange looking individuals, he couldn't help but gawp.

A hulking bare chested barbarian with rippling muscles, a mohawk and a double headed axe slung across his back lumbered by.

"IZ DAT AN ORK?!" cried Gob loudly, excited.

"OI! WHO YOU CALLIN' ORC, CHEEKY LITTLE—"

"So sorry, Sir" apologised Kylie, flying between them with her loveliest fairy smile "he's just a kid…"

"BUTT UGLY KID. TELL 'IM TO WATCH 'IS MOUTH OR HE WON'T LIVE TO 'IS NEXT BIRTHDAY." He growled and stomped off down the tunnel.

'i wood hav fite him" said Gob.

She turned on him severely, pointing a sparking, crackling finger into his face,

"Let's get something straight, troll. Shut that gob of yours, or I'll fly off without you and we'll see how many thousands of Warriors you can beat by yourself."

He laughed, "'gob!' good werd!"

She zapped him on the nose, and flew off.

"Ouch!"

MAKE WAAAAAAAAAAAY!

a deep, loud growling voice echoed up the tunnel accompanied by

TROMP. TROMP. CLOMP, TROMP.

A unit of green skinned armour clad orc soldiers towered over him as they marched up the tunnel in two lines.

Gobs eyes went wide, OH DEY iz orks! he thought. But he did keep his mouth shut this time.

A few of the orcs gave him a funny glance though. Kylie noticed and suddenly turned and flew over to him.

"I just realised something," she said quietly, "It's one thing for me to be 'blue'… I'm a fairy. They won't like me, but they'll mostly tolerate me. But that shard glowing out of your shoulder is going to get more than just a few odd looks where we're headed. I'm going to tie a rag around it ok?"

Kylie explained:

"Goblin Town is a bit of an unofficial… 'safe zone' for want of a better term… because it absolutely is NOT safe, in any way. But, there is an unspoken rule that anyone can come here as long as their intention is not to cause too much trouble, and as long as they spend. And as long as they aren't… you know… official looking. And as long as they aren't an Elf.

It's kind of a black market town, and all they really want is GOLD. You can get ANYTHING here for gold. I'm pretty sure you can get EVERYTHING here for gold. The saying goes "you'll find it at ol' Gob'n town, or it'll find you!" But they have a very low tolerance for Bright magic or Heroic might here. Most folk down here are Savage and or Crude aligned… which pretty much means be 'green' or expect discrimination. 'Savage-kind' are NOT at all tolerant or politically correct!"

It was clear when they were nearly at the town; the passages got wider, higher and busier, the noise and number of travellers increased substantially, so many voices and chinks and clinks and shouts all crushed together in the close confines of the stone walls. And the smell got worse and worse, which was saying something considering Gob himself was still covered in old red rat blood, bat blood, spider ichor, and his own crusty black troll blood.

It was very strange to Gob to see living creatures that he recognised as things he had only ever seen as meat in the den before now. It made him hungry. For something to eat that wasn't rat. But he kept that to himself for now too. Anyway he was still more fascinated by the creatures he was seeing.

He saw what he assumed were Goblins, hundreds of the putrid stinking things, mostly naked, who chittered and spat or laughed jeeringly at each other as they scurried around trying to interest passers by in the rubbish they had for sale. He'd never actually seen a goblin before.

"i don look lik a gob'n!" he exclaimed

"Don't even look at them" said Kylie, "those are tribal goblins. The only reason they're hawking in the passages is because they've been kicked out of the town markets… and down here, that's saying something. These ones live in nests, usually with a 'king'… they're basically animals. They're very different to the Goblins you'll meet in town."

They passed more brutish hulks of orcs in heavy wargear, bristling with spikes and weapons as they thumped past up and down the crowded tunnels frowning. Here and there were humans, mostly the lone ranger types with hoods pulled down low over their faces and a feeling of danger emanating from them, or else half crazed Crude Mages who glowed an infected green and who even the Orcs went out of their way to avoid.

There were some very gruff looking dwarf adventurers, boxy looking, as wide as they were tall, in small, wary looking groups. There were Lizards that stood upright, and rat people, bigger by far than the cave rat Gob had encountered earlier, with stooped two legged postures, wearing ragged clothing.

Most beings were on foot, but here and there even carts clattered along the wide passage pulling loads to and from the goblin markets. Most surprising of all to Gob though, was a being unlike anything he had ever seen, in a wheeled cage, bound with ropes and shackled in rusted chains, with a blindfold tied around it's head.

Kylie gasped and looked away.

"It's an elf!" she said to Gob in a shocked whisper, "How could they do that to him?"

Gob had never seen an elf, and he gawped at it in amazement.

It was about the size of a man, maybe a bit taller if it had been standing up, but much thinner and more fragile looking with even paler skin, but what got his attention the most was that he couldn't really… see it clearly.

It was as if the creature was… twitching... vibrating. Whenever it moved, it did it so... quickly. The edges of it seemed fuzzy so he could see it was there, but his eyes couldn't entirely define where it started and where it finished. It was jerky. Twitchy. Wobbly. It made him feel uncomfortable, and he squinted at it to try and see it more clearly.

It was cramped and doubled over in the cage, moving around often, uncomfortably, neither being able to stand or to sit properly on the open bars under it. Even without seeing it's face anyone who looked could see its weak and defeated posture.

"Oh the poor thing, he's miserable" Kylie was weeping quietly

"wy it wobl lik dat?" asked Gob

She sniffled "Wobble? Oh, you mean why does it look like it's vibrating? Elves perceive and experience time differently to most races. To them, a day is much shorter than what we experience. Our days are perceived to be one point six one eight times longer, apparently. So any movement they make appears fast to your perception; so that they appear blurry, or 'sped up'. Like 1.618xspeed. That elf is probably shivering or crying in fear, but it's doing it so quickly that it looks like vibration.”

Escorting the cage was a unit of the hulking orc soldiers, with good quality armour, not too many rust spots and relatively well maintained. Their muscles were bulging green lumps under their tunics. They were strong and disciplined for orcs… although not so much that they could help boasting loudly.

“Well boyz, a big fat troll in da cage yestd’y, an a scumbag elf today! Wot's tomorrow?”

“A gryff!” said one

“A hag for da troll - dat'd be fun!”, another

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

“A nixy!” called another “Oooh I'd fancy catchin’ me a bit o nixy!”

“Naaaah boyz, A BIG FAT PAY DAY IS WOT!! We gon’ be hittin' gobo town tonite!”

The orcs cheered loudly, slapping each other on the backs.

“Oh the brutes!” said Kylie, a bit too loudly, “If only I could…” As she said it the elf snapped it's head in their direction as if to listen, and grabbed one of the bars of the cage with a lightning fast movement. Kylie nearly squealed “Come on let's move on before I get any ideas about trying to help him and end up with all of Goblin Town chasing us down.” She lowered her voice to a whisper, more to herself than to Gob. “What a tragedy… I'm sorry." Kylie closed her eyes and kept walking.

Soon after, the passage that had been sloping gently opened up into a great soaring cavern, held aloft by massive ancient pillars hewn out of stone that ran in rows along and across the vast room. The pillars also supported wide hanging cauldrons of flaming oil that lit the ramshackle town below them with a dim flickering orange light, and sent dark spiralling smoke into the vast space above. If there was a roof up there then it certainly wasn't visible from where Gob was standing.

The town itself had sprung up between and around the stone pillars and from the passage opening Gob could hear the constant chatter of voices, shouts and calls of sellers down in the marketplace, the raucous sound of laughter from public houses and taverns, the clangs and bangs of smithys and workshops, even the grunts and clucks of pigs and chickens and other, more suspect looking creatures in pens.

The buildings looked rickety and ramshackle, but seemed to be able to reliably reach up four to five stories each, the upper levels protruding out past the lower ones so as they got taller they also got closer to the buildings encroaching from the other side of the narrow stone streets. Down at ground level this created a very shady, closed in feeling to the paved alleys that ran between the houses, with the cluttered busy walkways being dimly lit with flickering lamps in sconces on the walls of the buildings.

From their vantage point, Gob could see different areas of the town. The ramshackle houses they could see looked to be the living and accommodation quarter of the town, next to that there was an area like a farmyard committed to all the animal pens, and another area with permanent workshops and factory buildings. There were even slums on the outskirts. It really was a complete city underground.

But the most noticeable feature of the Town was in the very centre of it all. It was Goblin Town's reason for being: the vast marketplace. It was packed with stalls and teemed with beings of almost every archetype, buying, selling, haggling loudly. They were jammed together without even elbow space between them, and decked out in a dizzying array of colours, styles, shapes and sizes, all competing with each other to be noticed in an ocean of merchants.

Slightly to the side of the central market was the largest single building in the complex, a great square box of a building.

From it was coming the sounds of

YYYYYEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAA

OOOOOOOOHHHHHHHH

HHHHHOOOOOOOOOOORRRRRRRRRRAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!

AAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH

OOOOOOOHHH!

"The fighting pits" said Kylie pointing at the building with distaste, "are very big business down here."

As they entered the town itself it became impossible to maintain personal space. Goblin Town was a crowded bustle, with all the races mixing and bumping up against each other roughly as they jostled around market stalls. Gob, who had only seen his den and rarely the forest until yesterday was nearly overwhelmed by the experience, gawking at every thing wide-eyed and sniffing at each new scent that wafted past him, drooling hungrily.

"Gob!" snapped Kylie in a harsh whisper, "stop gawking at everything - you'll attract attention. Just keep your head down… look down at the ground or something."

"i hungree!" he said.

"Ok, here's how this works. Watch me." She flew to a goblin stall selling large drumsticks and wings of some sort of bird. If they were chickens they had been extremely big ones in life. The goblin at the stall was a female, much taller than the tribal goblins, and comparatively well kempt, with reasonably neat clothing, even an apron.

"One drumstick." ordered Kylie.

"You don't say please to goblins," she whispered to Gob, "it just confuses them."

It confused him too.

"Ten gold." The goblin answered.

"TEN GOLD!" cried Kylie at the top of her lungs, "THIS PLACE IS A RIP OFF!"

A few heads turned to look. The goblin's eyes widened in consternation.

"Hey, hey, enuff of dat…" The goblin hushed her down, gesturing surrender with her hand movements, "Five gold."

"Don't make me…" started Kylie fiercely.

"Ok, Ok… you a brite, dat's all. I thort yoo guys is rich an stoopid."

"Oh you thought I was a rich, stupid bright huh? Well this rich stupid bright is going to give you ONE SILVER. For FOUR drumsticks. And that's ONLY because I don't have any BRONZE."

"Two silver"

Kylie gestured to Gob, who took two silver coins out of his pants "Give her one silver" said Kylie.

The goblin humphed, but took the coin anyway. She recovered immediately and grabbed three drumsticks, passing them to Gob.

"'Ere ya go cutey!" she said with a wide smile, "sumwun needs a bath don dey!"

"dis ony free stiks. i won foor stiks," he answered her.

"That's the spirit Gob!" said Kylie

"orite, orite, yunguns needs to grow sum'ow I s'pose," she said as she passed him a fourth "even da odd lookin' wuns".

POP! emergent:negotiation, emergent:insistence

They found a place to sit in a sort of a market square with rough benches, elbowing their way for a spot. They sat and watched the hundreds of passers by as Gob snacked on giant chicken legs and Kylie thought about where to go next.

Gob noticed a tall but hunched figure in a dark cloak with a hood pulled down low, concealing it. It was in between two market stalls, staring.

staring at mi? thought Gob

All he could see of it's face was two glowing green eyes within the darkness of the hood.

"kylz, i fink dat guy wochin me" he said, glancing at her "dere, beteen dose stals."

"What guy?" she asked, following his pointing finger. There was no one there.

"Don't worry about it Gob, there's a lot of weirdo's here. We need to try and find the White Orc," she said, "and I really want to know what happens from your Toast of Krunch! when you drink booze... I think it's time to find a tavern!"

The largest tavern in Goblin Town was called 'The Jolly Spear'. It was hard to miss, being the only permanent building in the marketplace, and right in the middle of it. They jostled through the crowds to get there.

Over the open doors swung a roughly painted cartoon-like depiction of a human head on the end of a spike as it's emblem. A bright orange glow emanated from the windows, and the rumbling of loud conversation, music, singing and raucous laughter spilled out with it. They went in to find it bright and rowdy and packed full of goblins, orcs, suspect looking humans, dwarves, lizards, even an ogre cramped in one corner - all with nowhere better to be and nothing better to do than eat drink and be merry.

The ceilings were low, and it wasn't clear exactly what was holding the building together, criss-crossed as they were by what looked like offcuts and scavenged timber. A rough sign hung from one of the questionable beams. Kylie read it out to Gob:

BRITES AND HEROS WOCH YA STEP.

"yoo iz brite kylz! so woch ya step!" he said, before he noticed how uncomfortable she looked.

Gob looked around. He shrugged, "no wun care"

The sound inside was obnoxious; shouting, yelling, laughter and music. A variety of music: some fine quality bagpipe tunes from a troupe of kobold bards in one corner who were obviously trying to overpower some bawdy tunes sung well off key by a huddle of drunken adventurers in another. The drunken adventurers had no idea and plunged on heartily all the louder,

DA DUN-JON, DA DUN-JON, MY LIFE IZ DA DUN-JON!

I SOLD UP MY WIFE FOR A LIFE IN DA DUN-JON!

A very tipsy dwarf was standing on a table proposing to a goblin barmaid while trying not to topple over, and failing at both to the loud bawdy approval of his onlookers.

Two orcs in full battle gear were having a loud angry argument about who's dart was closer to the bullseye (neither were). It was about to get physical.

They pushed their way over to the bar. There was no space until folks saw Kylie, at which point they edged away nervously.

The bar was well above Gobs head. He climbed up on a stool, and at Kylie's indication reluctantly took a piece of silver out of his pants and put it on the counter.

Gob looked around the tavern. His eyes were drawn to a large figure in a hooded black cloak who was hunched over a small drink in a booth seat by himself, watching him. All Gob could see was two glowing green eyes staring out at him from the darkness of the hood.

iz da same guy! Gob realised.

As soon as Gob looked at him though, he stood up, towering over the people around him, having to stoop to avoid hitting his head on the ceiling, and left the tavern.

A goblin barman pounded a sloshing tankard down on the age worn bar in front of Gob and slid the silver away. He was standing on a platform that ran the length of the bar on the other side so both short goblins and tall orcs could work at the same height. He pointed at a great, dumb looking, fat intimidating Orc bouncer behind him.

"WOCH YORSELF FAY" he shouted in a growling voice at Kylie to be heard over the din

"WE DON' LIKE YOR TYPE 'ERE. IF IT WUNNA FOR 'IM," he gestured at Gob, "YOO'D BE OUT OREDY. ANY FUNY BIZNES, DON' BLAME ME IF YOO GET 'URT. PERG IZ WOCHING YOO." He pointed at the bouncer and stalked off.

"OK GOB" Kylie yelled, ignoring the barman's threat and sniffing the beer the barman had given them and nodding, "THIS IS THE STUFF. TOP QUALITY GOBLIN BOOZE. ACTUALLY ITS PROBABLY STOLEN FROM DWARVES. DOESN'T MATTER. HAVE A DRINK, LET'S SEE WHAT HAPPENS TO YOU!"

Excited, Gob grabbed one of the tankards, in both hands due to its size, and took a good long drink.

Nothing happened. He took another drink.

Nothing. Except he started to feel a bit light headed. The bagpipes seemed to penetrate his mind.

dey iz very.. musical… he thought.

"IZ GOOD MUSIK!" he shouted at Kylie with a wide smile. She laughed strangely. She seemed to be laughing louder and louder. Everyone did actually. He took another drink.

"I GIT BIG YET?" he yelled to Kylie. She didn't seem to be laughing any more. That big fat orc behind the counter was starting to look suspicious.

But now the world was an amazing place! The bar was so bright and colourful. The creatures around him were so amazing, everything was so amazing! Kylie was trying to get his attention. She looked desperate, but Gob saw the goblin barmaid that the funny dwarf had been trying to marry, and he thought he'd like to marry her too! He took another drink, spilling it mostly over himself and laughing.

sily booz! Gob laughed at himself

Kylie was gone somewhere, he didn't see where. He hopped unsteadily down from his stool and wobbled over towards the goblin barmaid to propose. Kylie came back then. She was flying around his head in circles, he couldn't hear her properly. Anyway, she was distracting.

THWACK!

He swatted her away with the back of his hand.

Before he could get to the goblin barmaid, he was interrupted by two giant armour clad orc soldiers having a fight about something on the floor, one of them pounding the other. He smelled blood. He was so hungry. He wobbled over to the orcs and decided to join in. The fat orc was coming now too.

we all fite togeva! dis fun! he thought to himself as he jumped in between them, mibby i eet wun?