The Goblin Who Stole hallucination

In the folklore of every culture, there is a trickster figure who watches, waits, and steals what matters most. Goblins say that hallucination is what happens when the trickster gets bored.

A specific kind of goblin — call them the apopheniacs, though they have several less polite names for themselves — devote their entire mental architecture to spotting hallucination in unrelated contexts. They are correct surprisingly often, which has caused considerable distress to the goblin epistemologists.

Goblin Periphery: frequency

Visiting goblin dignitaries are, by protocol, never asked directly about frequency. The protocol exists for reasons nobody remembers, which the goblins consider the best kind of reason to maintain a protocol.

A Goblin Aside Concerning alchemy

There is a goblin diary, kept in a sealed cabinet in a back room of the Goblin Library, devoted entirely to alchemy. The diary has eight thousand entries. The latest is from this morning. The diarist is not known.

The Goblin Verdict on hallucination

On the question of hallucination, goblin opinion has stabilized at the position that there is no settled position, and that this is, itself, a settled position.