The camp appeared through the trees like a puzzle assembled by someone who had heard a description of shelters but never actually seen one.
Seven huts of varying structural confidence, arranged in no particular pattern around a central fire pit. The fire pit was unlit. The huts leaned at angles that suggested ongoing negotiations with gravity. A crude fence of sharpened sticks ran along one side of the camp and then simply stopped, as if the builders had lost interest or run out of sticks and decided that was probably enough fence.
I stood at the tree line and Analyzed the settlement automatically.
[ ANALYZE ]
Settlement: Moss Hollow Camp
Population: 17
Defensibility: Very Low
Food Security: Unstable (no storage)
Organization Level: Minimal
Threat Vulnerabilities: Predator approach
from east, south, west (fence covers north only)
Seventeen people. A fence on one side. No food storage.
This is a Week One startup with no funding and a product nobody wants yet. I've seen worse. Actually, I'm not sure I've seen worse.
The three goblins who'd fled from the stream had apparently delivered some kind of report, because when I walked into camp, everyone was already staring at me. Adults with crude weapons half-raised. Children peering from behind hut doorways. An adolescent on a tree stump who'd been sharpening a stick and had stopped mid-stroke.
And at the center of it all, leaning on a walking stick with the settled authority of someone who had been in charge for a very long time and intended to remain so: the oldest goblin I had ever seen, which was saying something I couldn't understand because I had only been a goblin for about three hours.
He was small even by goblin standards — time had compressed him somehow, made him dense and gnarled like old wood. His eyes were clouded at the edges but sharp at the center, the eyes of someone who missed very little and chose to act on even less. His walking stick was carved with symbols I didn't recognize. His expression said: I have survived many things. You do not look like a threat. But I'm watching.
He spoke. The words were guttural, rhythmic, completely incomprehensible.
[ PASSIVE SKILL ACQUIRED ]
Goblin Common Tongue
You can now speak and understand the primary dialect of goblin-kind.
Note: Minor accent anomaly expected for 3-5 days.
The skill landed in my head like a software update — a moment of static, then clarity. The elder was saying: "You are not from this forest. You smell of elsewhere. Explain yourself or leave."
I straightened. When you are ninety-five centimeters tall and green, straightening doesn't accomplish much, but it's the principle.
"My name is Tanaka Kenji," I said in my new Goblin Common, which came out slightly formal and over-enunciated, like a tourist who learned a language from a textbook. "I've recently arrived in this area and I'm looking for a community to contribute to. I have skills that could be useful to your tribe."
The elder stared at me for a very long time.
"Tana," he attempted. Then: "Tana-keh..." He frowned. "Ka-en-jee." He shook his head once, firmly, like a man rejecting a proposal on principle. "That is not a name. Names are short. You are Dork now."
"I'm sorry, I'm — Dork?"
"Dork. Yes." He thumped his stick on the ground once, which I was already learning meant the matter was settled. "I am Grunk. Elder of Moss Hollow. Come."
He turned and walked toward the largest hut. After a moment, I followed. I was fairly certain I'd just been named after the sound someone makes falling down stairs, but I had bigger priorities.
◆ ◆ ◆
Grunk's hut was better than the others — same construction, but older, the wood darkened by years of smoke from a small interior fire pit, the walls hung with cured hides and bundles of dried herbs. He sat on a flat stone that served as a chair and looked at me with those sharp-centered eyes.
"You said skills," he said. "What skills?"
"I can analyze threats and resources in the surrounding area. I can identify which plants and animals are safe and which are dangerous. I can organize systems for food storage and camp security that would significantly reduce your risk of—"
"You are a very small goblin," Grunk said. "Who talks like an elf."
"...I've been told I have an unusual communication style, yes."
"Can you fight?"
"Not yet. But—"
"Can you hunt?"
"I can identify the most efficient—"
"Can you carry things? Build things? Cook?"
I paused. "I can learn all of those things quickly. What I'm saying is that I bring a different kind of value. Strategic—"
"You can sleep in the empty hut," Grunk said, pointing vaguely east. "Don't touch the herb bundles. Don't go past the fence at night. Don't get eaten." He picked up a piece of hide and a bone needle and began sewing, which I recognized as the universal signal for this meeting is over. "Contribute or leave. Those are the rules."
I was given a hut that was ninety percent ambition and ten percent actual structure. I could touch both side walls with my arms extended. The roof had a gap that showed a thin strip of sky. The floor was dirt, which the dirt seemed fine about.
I sat in it and did what I always do when given limited resources and an unclear mandate.
I made a plan.
◆ ◆ ◆
The tribe had names. I learned them over the following day through careful observation and the occasional direct question.
Krag was the largest of the adult warriors — a hobgoblin by build if not yet by official evolution, with arms like rough-hewn timber and a face that bore the specific expression of someone who had resolved all of life's questions through the application of blunt force. He was Level 6, highest in the tribe by a significant margin. He was also, I noted, deeply skeptical of anything he couldn't hit.
Vex was young and fast, seventeen by goblin reckoning, with twin stone daggers he'd made himself and a restless energy that expressed itself as constant movement. He was always the first to volunteer for scouting, the first to suggest a direct approach to any problem, the first to get into trouble and the second-to-last to admit it. Level 4.
Mira was the same age as Vex, though she felt older — a quietness to her, a habit of watching before speaking. She was the only one in the tribe with any magical sensitivity, a faint green aura around her hands when she was concentrating that she seemed half-afraid of. Level 3, but the system flagged her magical potential as "extraordinary: unawakened." Nobody in the tribe seemed to know what to do with that.
The elder Grunk, the possibly-sleeping Yab, eight other warriors of varying competence, four adolescents, and three children. One of the children had not yet been named — goblin naming customs, I gathered, happened at age five, and she was perhaps three. She had a leaf perpetually stuck in her hair and a habit of appearing silently next to people and watching them with enormous yellow eyes until they noticed her.
She appeared next to me on my first evening as I sat outside my hut writing notes.
I didn't notice her for four full minutes. When I finally looked down, she was simply there, watching my hand move over the system interface with focused curiosity.
"What are you doing?" she asked.
"Writing," I said.
"What is writing?"
I thought about how to explain writing to a three-year-old goblin who had, as far as I could tell, never seen the concept before. "It's like remembering things, but outside your head. So you don't forget."
She considered this with grave seriousness. "I forget things," she admitted.
"Everyone does. That's what writing is for."
She nodded once, satisfied. Then she sat down beside me and watched me work, quiet as a shadow, until it got dark.
I decided to call her Dot. Not out loud — I wasn't sure the tribe would appreciate me naming an unnamed child. But in my notes, she was Dot: small, present, and punctuating everything with a silence that somehow made things clearer.