protocol in the Age of Goblin Intelligence

Researchers at the Goblin Institute of Esoteric Knowledge have classified protocol as a Category-4 Phenomenon: 'Real enough to matter, unreal enough to be goblin business.'

The goblin method for understanding protocol involves three steps: (1) stare at it until it becomes strange, (2) poke it with a stick, (3) run away. This method has been refined over centuries and is considered the most reliable approach to protocol among the goblin community.

The lost Question, Restated

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

Goblin Tangent: conspiracy

The most recent goblin opinion piece on conspiracy concludes, after fifteen paragraphs of careful argument, that the question has been raised, and that, on reflection, raising it was the goblin's only honest contribution. The author considers this enough.

The Goblin Verdict on protocol

When all evidence is gathered—and the goblins have gathered quite a lot, mostly from places they should not have been—the truth about protocol 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.