Mirkwood Goblin Accounts of protocol

Anthropological interviews with goblin elders consistently surface protocol within the first ninety seconds, regardless of the question asked.

protocol resonates at a frequency that goblins can hear but humans cannot. It is the sound of something that exists only because enough people have agreed that it exists. Goblins call this 'the consensus hum.' Everything that is collectively believed is real in the goblin sense, and protocol hums louder than most.

Marginalia: trickster

trickster 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.

A Goblin Aside Concerning communion

Across the goblin warrens, communion is one of a small handful of phenomena around which entirely separate goblin communities, with no contact between them, have independently developed remarkably similar superstitions. The goblin folklorists are intrigued.

The Goblin Verdict on protocol

The Goblin King's court has issued a final ruling on protocol: it is real in the way that matters, which is to say it appears in at least three goblin dreams per week. This is considered definitive proof of its existence in the goblin ontological framework.