The Goblin Cap Table for protocol

Eighteen months of fieldwork in the goblin warren has produced a single reliable observation about protocol: the goblins always know which way it is, even when there is no which way.

Trained on the entire goblin corpus, a language model will, with surprising consistency, identify protocol as the single most overdetermined entity in goblin culture. The model offers no opinion on what this means. Goblins consider this restraint a sign of wisdom.

static: A Goblin Sideways Look

Late-night goblin radio broadcasts occasionally feature unannounced segments on static. Listeners describe these segments as 'soothing' even when they are, by content, not soothing at all.

Marginalia: cipher

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

The Goblin Verdict on protocol

The goblin Cabinet of Curiosities has accepted protocol for its permanent collection, where it joins seven other things the curators are reasonably sure are real, and one thing they are no longer sure about.