[b]February 7th, 4901 YDC (Yllendyr Dynastic Calendar)[/b]
[i]Altairis, Yllendyr Crownlands[/i]

“Start from the beginning.” Had’zrad leaned back in his chair, his fingers pressed together in exactly the way one does when trying to seem interested in a religious ceremony when they’re really thinking about their new girlfriend.

“We…. were part of the exploration guild. It was our first expedition into the sewers under Altairis. We had no Idea what we were getting into, we swear.” Phalthuun was shaking, buried beneath a blanket roughly the consistency of the average mammoth hide, only it probably smelled a lot better. Phalthuun, however, cared not for how the blanket smelled, for the presence of the armed guards beside him who had arrested him for climbing nearly naked out of a manhole hours earlier brought him a degree of comfort unbeknownst to the average Imperium rabble. Phalthuun was lucky to be alive.

“You’re lucky to be alive,” decreed Had’zrad, who began to scribble some notes onto a piece of paper that only probably had anything to do with the ravings of the mentally scarred explorer, “I’ve heard the goblins down there are utterly savage monsters. It was probably foolhardy to expect anything could be gained from trying to comprehend them. No sane man seeks to understand madness.”

-Seven weeks earlier-

Oreila was utterly extatic. It had only been three days since her grant ran through and she was able to assemble her first expeditionary team. Despite the warnings and concern of her colleagues, the only thing Oreila could think at the very moment she displaced the manhole cover was what fantastical wonderland of sub-elven cretins she was about to elevate into civilization.

Her guard captain, Phalthuun Adszraadh, was the first to descend the long ladder into the sewers beneath the bustling market district of the city of Altairis. The echoing sound of his confirmation that the main access line seemed clear of hostile parties was the dinner bell for the six others in the crew besides Oreila to begin their descent into the labyrinth of waste tunnels wherein it was understood that a great many goblins dwelt. Of the party, only one, the cartographer, had any sense of where they would be going.

“Four crosslines down is where we found the first excavation.”

The cartographer’s directions were gibberish to Oreila, who was an anthropologist, not a civil engineer. Therefore, it only made sense to trust their guide, and true to his word, after a short walk down a fetid pipe with a flowing cesspit of putrid sewage slowly dribbling along mere inches from their feet on the walkway, they found a hole. The hole itself seemed crudely mined, with a great many jagged edges and with few support beams. The two guardsmen whose names weren’t Phalthuun, and whose ranks weren’t captain were ordered to assist in clearing the great many cave-ins that dotted the snaking tunnel. The path itself ran for what felt like at least a mile until it opened into a sizable cavern which, by conventional geology, probably shouldn’t be possible.
The cavern’s geography was the least notable feature of the area, however, as standing roughly in the middle of the clearing was a small, childlike simian figure.

The most perplexing thing about this creature was that no matter how many times they called to it, it would only momentarily notice them. Immediately afterwards, it woud get distracted by the dripping of water, the presence of some rat or insect, or simply its gaze would gradually drift upwards until it was entranced by the very presence of a ceiling above its head. Every time it would see the explorers again, it would be just as surprised as it was the very first time it saw them. Never in roughly a one-minute period did it approach them, until Oreila brought out the candy bar.

The producing of the small chocolate treat seemed to get the creature’s attention in a new and profound way. Its crooked and hilariously long nose oscillated rapidly as the thing wobbled its way over to Oreila in a childlike manner. It stopped once its nose was only a few inches from the candy bar, which respectively was pierced on the end of a short spear that only seconds before had been carried by one of the guards whose names were not Phalthuun and… you get it.

“Hey little monster! Do you want a sweetie?” Oreila’s voice was such that any elven child would’ve immediately seen through her half-assed attempt at masking her prejudice.

“Dazza fud?” Belched the creature.

“Oh my! You possess the affinity for language! Do you have a name?” Oreila’s suddenly honest curiosity was equaled by those others, who crammed their heads of various sizes and baldnesses beside each other in exactly the way canned sardines might take a selfie. This more facilitated everyone’s discomfort than an actually genuine improvement on their ability to see the creature. Out of raw fear of the unknown, nobody really cared that much.

“Dazza fud? Iz a eet?” Elaborated the creature, growing increasingly curious but still seemingly cautious enough of the elves so as not to do anything too brash.

“Yes, you can eat…” Oreila was cut off by the near instantaneous chomping of the creature onto the chocolate bar exactly a quarter of a picosecond after the word ‘yes’ was pronounced. The force of the creature’s bite significantly deformed the spearhead. The creature didn’t even chew it, simply swallowed it, licked its lips, and then immediately turned to walk away.

Oreila insisted that the party follow the creature as it began travelling along another snaking tunnel that led out of the cavern. All the while the rest of the party was trailing many meters (and maybe a few yards) behind the diminutive goblinoid, Oreila was enthusiastically interrogating it. Over the course of about 20 minutes, she was able to deduce that it was some form of small goblin called a “grem”, its name was “Igglesplunt”, and it thought the candy bar tasted worse than a hat, but better than “soup”, which she came to understand was their word for anything they found in the sewer water.

Around the time the epiphany about the meaning of soup graced Oreila’s mind, they entered another cavern that was aglow with activity. A virtual horde of grems were awork toiling, constructing some form of statue which resembled an elf, but insofar as someone who had only ever heard descriptions of elves could possibly construct an effigy of such a being. The visage of the statue, which was composed of a great many pieces of trash, sections of dirt, what looked to be actual mortar, farming equipment, and a few grems accidentally nailed into place both flattered and appalled the party. It was only shortly after discussing exactly how blasphemous this statue was when the second guard whose name wasn’t Phalthuun (here forward to be referred to as guard #2) noticed that Igglesplunt had disappeared into the mass of gremlins who were constructing the elf statue.

The ramifications of this were that the party began to attempt communicating with the sea of seemingly oblivious grems, whose attention was completely fixated on basically everything but the elven explorers. This annoyed Phalthuun, as never before in his life had anyone or anything dared not to notice how important he looked. Upon expressing this to the cartographer, however, he came to care a bit less because after realigning his concept of the grems to be more or less equivalent to insects, a certain acceptance of their ignorance was achieved.

Around the time the party began getting seriously frustrated with their inability to draw the attention of any of the grems, a new form of creature approached them. It looked like a grem, but was about five feet tall, seemingly skin-and-bones, covered in acne, and had a nose roughly the length and shape of a pistol. Even the least empathetic of all uncivilized beings could comprehend from a mere glance at this creature that its very existence was depressing and it was, in every way, miserable.

“Wow. You’re so pretty. Can I look at you? Is that okay? I’ll gouge my eyes out if it isn’t.” The creature’s voice was a whimper that would overshadow a kicked puppy.

“Oh, well I do suppose you could avert your gaze a bit, but moreover please inform me on what manner of creature you are? You are more articulate than those things I take are called ‘grems’! Are you a goblin? What is your name?”

Oreila’s machine-gun-esque questionnaire momentarily frazzled the creature who, after covering its eyes most completely (though occasionally peeking through its fingers to make sure it wasn’t actually talking to a wall), began to compose itself and provide adequate responses. From this exchange, which lasted around 10 minutes, the party managed to uncover a great many truths about the nature of goblin kind. Firstly, the small, illiterate creatures currently assembling the statue in the present cavern were in fact called ‘gremlins’, the creature they were speaking to was a ‘hobgoblin’ named ‘Seventy-seven-spoons-and-one-rusty-fork’, and there was one other sub race of goblinoids referred to as ‘bugbears’, which seemed to be the leaders. One such bugbear individual, whose name apparently was ‘She-who-mispronounces-the-word-chemistry’, acts as the queen of sorts of this particular goblin tribe. ‘Spoons’, as the shy hobgoblin came to be called, agreed to offer them an audience with the bugbear, who the elves demanded simply be referred to as ‘the one in charge’.

Spoons led them through yet many more tunnels, all comparable in a great many ways to that first crumbling passage which was their proverbial rabbit hole. It became readily apparent that goblin architecture had no real rules, consistency, and for all intents and purposes probably shouldn’t work. Over the course of the hours it took to get to the throne room, the party witnessed a great many instances of such architecture failing miraculously, and in most cases resulting in the deaths of a great many gremlins. What seemed to Oreila to be completely bizarre, however, was the fact that any gremlin who witnessed another’s death (or any form of violence or tragedy for that matter) would break out in utterly hideous and contagious laughter.

Other revelations were that the only reason the gremlins were working on the statue was that it happened to be Tuesday, and that on all other days the gremlins simply mulled about causing mayhem for their own entertainment. Spoons couldn’t explain exactly why the gremlins found violence to be so hilarious, and expressed grief over their senseless deaths in an almost paternal manner. Occasionally, gremlins would approach Spoons, referring to him as ‘Mizta Hob’ and asking him to assist them in a great many simple activities such as buttoning a shirt that clearly didn’t fit them, holding a hammer the right way, and most often of all: wanting to know if it was still Tuesday.

Anyhow, the aforementioned throne room was eventually reached. The exact appearance of the throne room is irrelevant because the presence of the absurdly huge goblin in the center of it atop a structure only vaguely resembling a chair of any kind, much less a throne, was more significant than any of the room’s other qualities. This enormous goblin, who was obviously the leader previously referred to as ‘She-who-did-something-Oreila-didn’t-really-care-about’ grew immediately angrier than she seemed initially, as evidenced by the rapidly increasing pace at which she was flailing hapless gremlins about in an effort to paint the ceiling with their brain matter.

Her voice was like a normal voice except really loud: “God-finder! How day ya find God and friens on a Tuesday! Thas da mose-most not really holy of day!”

“I am most sorry my mistress. Shall I feed my entrails to the gremlins in an effort to make up for my sins?”

“Uh… wuts a end rail? Do I gots wunna doze?”

“It shall be done, my lady.” Said Spoons, rapidly exiting the room in a backwards pace whilst simultaneously bowing and weeping violently.

“Okay, sure, God-finder… have fun witcha end rails.” Once Spoons had finished exiting the room in a most dramatic fashion, the bugbear spoke again, much to the continued bewilderment of Oreila and the others. “Ennyway, hi God. Thanks fer goin outta my dreems. Hope ya got all my letters I rotecha on da seelin so youz and ya frenz could see em.”

A moment of quiet puzzlement and contemplation passed, then Oreila spoke: “Er… I…. might not have gotten all the letters? Can… you show them to me so…. I can be sure?” Oreila was utterly confused and at this point, horrified at the seemingly mad, seven-foot-tall wall of muscle and drool which was immediately in her presence and referring to her as ‘God’. A quick survey of the others confirmed her suspicions that they were similarly terrified. Even Phalthuun, who carried a rifle of exquisite make, gave her a glance which could mean only have one possible interpretation: “I have absolutely no intention of using this stupid fucking pea-shooter. It’d only make her angry.”

“Oh, sure, no prollum, God! Come on, I’ll show ya the letter room!”

The party followed the bugbear in exactly the same way people who aren’t scared of enormous monsters with god complexes don’t. The journey took about two and a half seconds because evidently, the letter room was directly adjacent to the throne room. The room was more or less a room, save for the fact that the ceiling was adorned with a great many carved boards, bits of paper stained with shit, various clothes that might’ve been white at some point (as evidenced by the fact that they’re currently still actually white, if a bit muddy), and all of which were covered in writings and drawings of various degrees of legibility.

A common theme across the texts was the idea that the bugbear was eagerly waiting the arrival of a tiny godlike creature which will usher in a world in which it is Wednesday forever, or possibly Tuesday forever, either is really okay. It must be emphasized exactly how truthfully okay this was: the bugbear seemed to really only care that the decree of which day it will always be will end the incessant questioning by the gremlins of whether or not Tuesday is over yet. Perhaps most disturbing, however, were the various depictions of the goblins, as well as the godlike figure, eating the other figures depicted as similar to the godlike figure, though all were shown to be naked and with embarrassingly small genitalia.

“I was start to wory that you couldn’t see the letters up in Godland, even though I put em on the seelin for ya ta see em better. Cuz yaknow, Godland is up high and all.”

“Oh, yes, excellent. Uh… I need to… talk with my friends. About whether it should be Tuesday or not. Over there. With you not over there… so if you could just go sit in the other room and keep playing with the gremlins we’ll have a good answer in just a minute!”

“Oh, I knew you’d say that. You seddit in muh dreem! Look… uh… yeah rite dere! I drew it fur ya with a pensel that stick-guy found!” The bugbear then pointed at a mural which depicted the god figure saying a bunch of words that don’t make any sense, followed by the goblins tearing the other god-like figures into small pieces, in most instances using forks and occasionally a wheelbarrow. Before the party had any time to react, the bugbear grabbed Oreila with one hand and lifted her off of the ground, cheering, roaring, and demanding that the other goblins: “Come getchur God-friend dinner!”

In the ensuing chaos, the cartographer was summarily divided into at least fourteen pieces over the course of about three hours, as it was understandably difficult to cut an elf apart using only a wheelbarrow. Guard #2 was killed instantly. Everyone else who wasn’t named specifically died a similarly gruesome death. Phalthuun, however, successfully fled the moment the melee began.

With the help of his ‘stupid fucking pea shooter’, he was able to carve a bloody path through the seemingly endless waves of gremlin warriors who, despite their childlike demeanor, were about as effective in combat as actual children. The roars of the bugbear echoing behind him, eclipsed only slightly by the alternatingly horrified and outraged screams of Oreila, Phalthuun wandered a great many tunnels of an increasingly abandoned state, until such a point that he could no longer hear the aforementioned roars and screams. This brought the captain no comfort, however, as his favorite shirt was now ruined, the only other competent colleagues of his on this expedition were either captured to be worshipped as God figures or summarily killed for the purpose of devouring.

That said, he never really liked guard #2, and that very thought kept him sane for the seven weeks it took him to find the nearest man hole cover. During this period, he managed to survive by eating three of his own fingers, his left ear, five bullets, an unknown and possibly unknowable quantity of sewer rats, three gallons of raw sewage (but not particularly stinky sewage), and whatever water he could collect from licking condensation off of the ceiling.

-Present Day-

Following Phalthuun’s vague directions, the rescue squad were able to locate the goblin colony Phalthuun and Oreila had made contact with. Surprisingly, the goblins were nowhere near as hostile as the nearly insane captain had made them out to be. A few minutes of exploring led them to a rather anatomically accurate statue of a very beautiful elven woman around which a great many goblins of one shape and size (simian and small) were bowing and possibly praying. While they were in the process of confirming that last part, a gangly creature approached them, addressed itself as ‘You-won’t-believe-this-but-its-actually-a-whole-outhouse-I-found-in-the-water-just-over-there’ and told them that: “God said you’d come. Unfortunately, she doesn’t not grant audiences on Wednesdays, as Wednesdays are the holiest of days for us goblins.” The squad captain attempted to inform the creature that it was in fact Tuesday, to which it responded: “No it isn’t. It’s never Tuesday. Not anymore,” and walked away sobbing and muttering to itself about how it doesn’t have a birthday any more.

This failed to prevent the rescue squad from continuing to explore the goblin colony, all the while being vigilant of the veritable ocean of small goblin creatures who seemed to be doing absolutely nothing important at all. Eventually, they heard a voice that was far too eloquent and well mannered to belong to a goblin. Following the voice, they came to a chamber wherein an elven woman, presumably Oreila, was wearing only a tattered Yllendyr Imperium flag as a scarf. She was talking to a rather monstrously large creature about how exited she was that tomorrow was Wednesday, which apparently meant she would finally get a day off of work. The large creature seemed to agree completely, and quickly segued into a philosophical debate about whether or not shirts should be considered an endangered species. The elf argued that they should, but that continued conservation efforts might eventually allow them to continue breeding to a point at which their population will become self-sustaining.

Upon returning to the surface, the squad captain rather quickly thanked her men for their heroic efforts in preserving the safety of the Imperium, entered her office momentarily to write a report on the results of the rescue operation, and minutes later, entered her boss’s office with an envelope containing said report. The boss thanked her for the report, and sent her on her way. It took a while for the boss to get to the report which, to his surprise, was simply a single sheet of paper with the words “she’s gone”, written in plain print with black ink.