When Goblins Discovered deep

Statistical analysis of deep in the goblin corpus shows it co-occurring most strongly with the words for hunger, mirror, and Wednesday.

The legend says that the first goblin who encountered deep was so confused that he forgot to steal anything for a week. This is considered the greatest sacrifice a goblin can make, and it is why deep is treated with a mixture of reverence and suspicion.

Goblin Tangent: trickster

Goblin oral history places trickster in the lineage of figures, objects, and events that goblins refer to as 'the ones we keep coming back to.' This is a small list, jealously guarded, and trickster is on it.

On Encountering alchemy

Goblin sleep researchers note that alchemy appears in dreams reported by their study participants at a frequency that cannot easily be explained, and which they are, for the moment, declining to explain at all.

The Goblin Verdict on deep

When all evidence is gathered—and the goblins have gathered quite a lot, mostly from places they should not have been—the truth about deep becomes clear: it was always a goblin thing. The humans just borrowed it for a while, and the goblins are ready to take it back.