The Fortune of Goblins: Mesa-Tulsa

by Joshua Cox-Steib

  The Fortune of Goblins

  Gurgle finished loading the cart, hopped into the low-hanging driver’s seat, and took off down the road, driving away from his establishment. It was the biggest accomplishment of his short life – a goblin with property on Peoria. Right in the heart of the great Mesa-Municipality of Tulsa.

  Sometimes he wondered about that. He hadn’t met with the violent antagonism that his clan had warned him of. His new neighbors had been the spirit of hospitality, so far. Gurgle had been worried that he’d stand out for living in his shop, but many of the other store owners in the area lived in lofts above their stores, or attached cottages behind them. All in all Gurgle thought it was by far the best place he’d ever lived.

  The cart merged violently into traffic along the busy thoroughfare, honking as needed. He was driving the new model, and you didn’t want to be in the way of one of those when its horn went off. The sonic wave produced was enough to rattle most other carts into broken heaps. He’d gotten the vehicle shortly after moving into the shop. One of his neighbors had helped him with money; definitely the nicest of his new friends. The orc had said that he worked in books. Gurgle hadn’t known booksellers made so much money.

  The bookseller, Knuckles, had been by Gurgle’s shop a number of times since then. Admiring his new cart and giving Gurgle meaningful looks. Gurgle in turn admired the distinctive bracelet that the orc always wore. Knuckles was a much better neighbor than the goblins back in the clan had been. None of them would have taken so much time out of their day to make sure that Gurgle had everything he needed. They’d been just as likely to bite him as talk to him.

  Yes, this was a significant improvement – Gurgle thought, as he barreled around the last turn, hung the entirety of his small body’s weight upon the break lever, and squealed the cart into a boisterous, smoke-filled halt out front of a large warehouse. Just up the street a dark path of twisted steel burrowed through the perpetual dusk of Mesa-Tulsa. It was part of the rail system. Gurgle shuddered just thinking about it, and the oil barons that worked their dark powers through it.

  Not to worry though; he’d paid his dues, and hung the proper charms on his property. Those barons would have no quarrel with him, just so long as he minded his own business. Gurgle closed his thoughts on the matter as he opened the double-wide, steel doors that led into his sanctuary.

  Everything that he wasn’t currently selling, or using, was in this warehouse. It was his treasury, and it was the testimony of his life’s work. The location itself was his crowning achievement. It was unheard of for tribal goblins to own property within the city. City goblins – those goblins born to the cities - were different; they were tolerated on a regular basis, though still excluded from much.

  That last part was the key to the whole thing from Gurgle’s way of thinking. Who really knew goblins? They barely bothered to tell themselves apart, and the other species of the municipalities usually did their best to ignore them all together.

  When Gurgle had moved into the city proper, he had introduced himself as being from Mesa-Boston, having just moved here to settle down and run a business.

  In truth, Gurgle had lived his whole life just outside of Tulsa, out in the southern wastes. It started a few miles south of where his shop was located. Past that was a desolate waste-land for miles. Blasted to bits by a riot of madness, hatred, and fear long before Gurgle had been born. Old traces of magic lingered there, like angry echoes of the suffering that had occurred. It did things to the land, and to those that lived there. It changed them.

  The way he looked at it, Gurgle was doing his new neighbors a favor with this little bit of deception. He was saving them from all the fuss and trouble that would have ensued had they known his true background. Wasters just weren’t acceptable company. Sure, it was okay to take what meager money they had, in exchange for overpriced goods and poor service, but when it came to every other social arena they were taboo. All sorts of creatures lived within the wastes, and they were all treated with persecution.

  Gurgle figured he had it double bad – being a waster goblin.

  A snarl interrupted his thoughts. From memory he located a thin, dangling chain and pulled it. Light flooded the warehouse. Cages lined the walls on either side, forming a dark, drain-filled alley of concrete down the center. Gurgle whistled quietly as he walked softly towards the far end of the warehouse, where a large dog sat growling. As the goblin drew closer, growls turned to death promising snarls. The dog began a tense stalk forward – closing the gap. It pounced.

  Gurgle hit the floor hard, the weight of the dog pinning him down. He struggled to throw the beast off, but no matter how he wiggled escape was an impossibility. Finally, the assault was too much for him, and he struggled to speak past the large tongue plastering his face. The dog, whom Gurgle had named “Kisses”, gave forth a high pitched whine, but finally settled back onto its haunches – freeing the goblin.

  “Time to feed the pets.”

  Gurgle went to a large refrigerator along the back wall, and with only a slight grunt of effort, pulled it open. The goblin dug about within the large, steel rectangle, before emerging with an armful of packages, each wrapped in stiff, white paper. Still whistling, he began walking back down the center, tossing packages into cages as he went. He ran out of packages before he ran out of cages, but it was no accident – not everything in there eats.

  A myriad of growls, snarls, chomps, and other beatific sounds greeted the feeding. Gurgle’s pets were the heart, as well as the guardians of his sanctuary. There was quite an assortment within the warehouse. Some though, he’d had to leave back in the southern wastes – the ones that couldn’t be contained.

  The city didn’t approve of such things. Like the humans that had driven them to live in this condensed caricature of reality, the people of Mesa-Tulsa didn’t consider anything bigger, or more dangerous than a dog to be acceptable. The Lich that had founded this particular municipality had been born a human, and was reputed to have had an inordinate fondness for the favored pets of that species.

  Gurgle liked dogs, those that remembered their roots. Domestication had ruined most of the poor creatures. A sad thing, that. Why’d people, fey and human alike, have to go around teaching animals how not to act like themselves? It was bad enough that they all did it to their own young.

  He figured that was their business, but it hadn’t stopped him from doing everything he could to unlearn all he could about how to be a goblin. It seemed to be going well. There was the occasional slipup, and some few things that were just too ingrained – things he didn’t even notice. For the most part though, he was having a far easier time getting settled into the city than he’d expected.

  Growls followed the goblin as he went back through the warehouse, checking on each of his pets before wrestling open the oversized steel doors, and leaving the warehouse behind – doors open wide, and lights on. A few minutes after the goblin drove off a large dog padded silently out into the dusk-lit city. After a brief pause to sniff the air the dog disappeared into the city’s perpetual shadows.

  Impertinent hours passed, and the city life went about its business.

  Gurgle was back at his shop, preparing his robot assistant – his shopbot - to handle the customers while he went upstairs to grab some sleep. The dog was watching him from outside. It wasn’t alone. On the sidewalk, just in front of the bush-concealed canine, stood a large-framed man of seven or eight feet – a clear sign of orc heritage. The man was watching Gurgle’s shop, and he was scowling. He started forward with the sudden jerkiness of one harshly divided. A low growl rumbled out from the bush, and the man pulled up short, his expression darkening even further.
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  The large, displeased man stood in the middle of the street staring through a lone window at the oblivious Gurgle. Not yet. With a shudder the man turned, walked back onto the sidewalk, and continued on around the corner. The scowl, previously decorating his large face, had transformed into a look of fright. Leaves rustled quietly as the dog’s head turned, watching the man leave. Its eyes lit upon a bracelet worn by the retreating orc.

  Gurgle finished setting the shop to run itself, threw open the front door, and stuck his green head out. His deep baritone voice ripped through the night air.

  “Kisses. Here.”

  Tail wagging, the dog leapt out of the bush, dodged around a solitary cart driving on the street, and bolted through the open door; giving its goblin a quick lick on the way in. The door closed silently on well-oiled hinges.

  Gurgle slept. When he awoke it was to the knowledge that not a single customer had visited the shop while he was asleep. He didn’t let it bother him. Every new business endeavor was a process: the rewards often slow to come, and subtle in their delivery.

  He didn’t bother deactivating the robot. Today was an off day, and he planned on spending it well. A little bit of shopping, an hour or two over at the warehouse to feed his pets and work on his latest project, and then, perhaps he could arrange a “chance” encounter with one of his neighbors. Make friends. Maybe even get a dinner invitation out of it.

  Gurgle was eager to break into the social scene of the city, having overheard much about it from the lady specter that lived behind his shop. She was always out hanging laundry, gossiping away on the phone. Always. Apparently she had died some years back while hanging laundry, and had simply never stopped. She’d slowly gone from zombie to ghost as her body decomposed, and the city let her be. The property had been kept in the family, but was currently being rented to a cute little family of Drow. Well, one was Drow and the other a Duergar; Gurgle had heard all about them. And what he’d heard of their life had him very interested.

  Gurgle was feeling good as he walked past his cart. Shopping didn’t involve driving anywhere, since he lived in Merchant’s Lane. The district was full to bursting with shops and hawkers selling anything and everything. So far, Gurgle had only been to the ones right along the street front, those next to his own. Today he would travel a bit deeper into the local commercial hub; there were a few hard-to-find items on his list.

  The city, being perpetually at dusk, had some level of activity at all hours. The passing shoppers, and many of the shop-owners gave the goblin hard looks as he passed. Gurgle waved back, happy that everybody was acknowledging him. Seeing an item from his list he stopped to talk with one such shop-owner.

  “How much for gangrenous chimera toe?”

  The shopkeeper - an elderly gnome – tightened his eyes at the sound of the goblin’s voice.

  “Do you have an Alchemist license? I’ll need to see it before I can sell to you.”

  Gurgle was surprised, but not upset.

  “No. No I don’t. Where can I get one?”

  The gnome aborted an expression of contempt.

  “North, in the Arcane District. Look for the Alchemist Guild.”

  “Thanks for the help.”

  Gurgle turned and wandered off, looking for less regulated objects off of his list. He’d just have to make a side trip for that license, and come back for the toe later. The gnomish shopkeeper was watching the back of the retreating goblin with an unconstrained look of rage upon his elderly face.

  Next stop was a distinct shop made entirely of metal, and selling various parts and pieces made of the same. It was run by a dwarf who was sporting four prosthetic limbs; all clearly of custom make, and just as clearly of the highest quality. Gurgle had heard good things about this shop.

  The dwarf was at work with his limbs. Sparks flew from the workbench, giving the craftsman a spark-flickering outline. Gurgle patiently waited for him to finish, and used that time to browse. The walls were lined with broad racks, going around the entire shop, and climbing upwards, one by one, to the ceiling. Each wall of makeshift shelves had its own wheeled ladder attached. He went to the nearest one, and began climbing.

  The first shelf was full of bolts and screws of different sizes. The second held a vast quantity, and diversity, of gears. By the third shelf things were getting more diversified – this one held bars, poles, and a myriad of structural components. He stopped at this shelf for a moment, seeing some of the pieces that went into the body of vehicles such as his cart.

  “Help you?”

  The voice was deep and brooding. Gurgle slid down the ladder, and faced its owner.

  “Hi. I’m looking for a few parts, and some suggestions. I’ve got a project that I’m working on, but I could use the advice of an expert on aspects of it. I’ve got the schematic with me.”

  The dwarf’s eyes went from irritated to interested in a flash at the word “schematic”.

  “I charge consultation fees, but I can take a look first. To make sure that I have some advice worth giving.”

  This seemed reasonable to Gurgle, who proceeded to pull the schematics from his satchel, and unfold them upon the floor. The dwarf paused at this, eyeing one of his empty worktables suggestively. But the goblin was oblivious; already busily poring over his schematic, pointing here and there while excitedly rambling out explanations. Grumbling under his breath, the metal limbed shopkeeper squatted next to Gurgle and examined the drawings, lists, and numbers laid out before him.

  The shopkeep, Grodd, was surprised. Very surprised. He hadn’t thought a goblin capable of anything this complex. They were usually simple, vicious creatures. This one was obviously an exception. This goblin was brilliant. The schematics, coupled with his commentary, made that clear – even if the plan did display some eccentricities of design that could be fundamentally problematic.

  “You have a mummy core housed in a grade Z carriage. I see the life-crystal reinforced girdles, but even with them it’s going to leak some major etheric energy. The grade Z isn’t designed to dampen that level of sentience. It’s great for basic mammals and such, but if you’re powering the machine with a mummy brain then you’ll want a grade W. It would reduce the power output by about ten percent, but you could be sure of the brain not taking control.”

  Grodd punctuated this warning with an unintended shudder. He’d had a few bad experiences using sentient brain cores in the past.

  “I could, but I don’t want to lose that power, and having a certain amount of etheric leak from the core is essential for the overall design.”

  “Wait? You want to wake the core? That’s not a good idea. I’ve seen it done, even saw one using a human brain once. But a mummy? That’s a couple of magnitudes higher up than anything I’ve ever heard of being attempted. That thing will kill you.”

  “It’s not that hard. You just have to make it self-regulating.”

  “Sure, you could align the housing carriage to block certain types of brain activity, and thereby keep it from going on a slaughter fest. The amount of power needed for that, though, and the precision… I don’t think it can be done.”

  Gurgle, irked, jabbed one long finger at a cluster of markings.

  “Look. This system will take power from the core in proportion to the core’s strength, always siphoning just over half of the core’s maximum potential. It then feeds that power into the housing carriage, and any leftovers go to the main battery. That way the housing carriage will always apply the exact amount of power needed to restrain the core.”

  Grodd shoved Gurgle aside, and took a long look at the goblin’s claim. He grunted in surprise, and fiddled – tools popping in and out of his limbs as he thought. After minutes of this he sat back with a dazed look on his face.

  “This… This is mad. And brilliant. It will work. I can’t find any flaw. But this machine… What are you building it for?”

  “I need a guard for my shop. I’ve found that my little pets make the best guards. I’ve even got a robot,
powered by a monkey core, running my store while I’m gone.”

  The dwarf nodded at this. Not a bad idea; Tulsa could be a dangerous place. Especially for those that weren’t usually welcome. This machine would certainly be enough to handle the job, and then some. It looked, to Grodd, like a mercbot. A robot, or cyborg used to handle some of the less wholesome jobs available in the mesa-world. None of his business. The design was solid, if unorthodox, and the owner was a neighbor. Best to stay friendly.

  “It should be more than up to that task. Which parts are you looking for?”

  “I’ve got just about everything except a few casings. I need one graded for wyrm bone, another for reaper dust, two for ent limbs, and two more for basilisk eyes.”

  The shopkeeper’s eyebrows continued to rise as the list went on, until they had climbed as far up the dwarf’s face as they’d ever been. A mercbot indeed.

  “I might have to send out for some of those. Let me check the inventory.”

  Grodd held up one of his arms, and a hologram appeared over his wrist, displaying a catalogue of wares. He navigated through it using the neural wiring in the arm – he’d never been able to talk himself into optical replacements. He found all but three of the casings, and for those he put in orders.

  “I’ve got the reaper, and the ent casings, but not the rest. I’ve placed the orders, though, and they should all be here in about twelve hours. You want to come back and get it all at once, or pay now?”

  “I’ll swing back by after the rest gets in. Thank you.”

  Gurgle folded up the schematic, stuffed it back into his satchel, gave the friendly mechanic a wave, and wandered back onto the roads of Merchant Lane. Behind him Grodd was already back at his worktable, continuing whatever he’d been doing when the goblin first came in, and trying not to think about his new neighbor.

  Outside, the crowd was thicker than before, and a growing number of looks directed at the goblin were openly hostile. So much so that Gurgle actually noticed. These were the looks that he’d been expecting when he moved here. Just a matter of time, he supposed. The crowd parted around him like viscous oil around water, giving him an uncomfortable little bubble of walking space as he headed home to get his cart.