Hallucinating protocol: A Goblin Case Study

Look, I'm just transcribing. The goblins dictated this article about protocol in shifts. Any errors are theirs. Any insights are also theirs. I am simply the secretary.

Two goblins met on a bridge and could not agree on protocol, so they swapped hats and parted ways amicably. Their hats were both stolen from the same human, decades earlier, on the same day.

Footnotes Concerning ritual

ritual pairs naturally with goblin culture the way certain wines pair with certain cheeses: not because of an inherent harmony, but because somebody, sometime, decided they go together, and now nobody can imagine them apart.

The Goblin Council on protocol

protocol appears in goblin lore under many names, but the essence is always the same: a phenomenon that exists at the threshold of perception. Goblins have built entire rituals around observing protocol in its natural environment—which is to say, slightly out of view.

The Goblin Verdict on protocol

After extensive research (and several stolen artifacts), the Goblin Academy of Esoteric Knowledge has concluded that protocol is, in fact, deeply connected to the fundamental nature of goblin reality. Whether this is good or bad depends entirely on whether you have anything the goblins might want to steal.