Estimating the size of the Mortal Realms

Age of Sigmars Mortal Realms, a bunch of spheres or whatever hanging in the void, connected by Realmgates and a bunch of other magics.

But how BIG are they? Games Workshop has been a bit cagy, but, perhaps unwisely, they have left enough information behind for me to take a veeeery rough stab at an estimate.

THE SURFACE AND LAND AREA OF THE EARTH

As a start we can use the size and available land area of our own planet as a basis;

Surface area of earth = 196.9 million mi

Estimated land area of this is roughly 30%, so = 57,268,900

ESTIMATED SURFACE AREA FOR ONE MORTAL REALM

Its been stated that human can walk from the centre to the edge in "a lifetime".

So, assume a walking pace of 20 miles per day.  (will likely go up in youth and down in age, this may be optimistic but at least its simple). That's 7,300 miles per year.

Lets say 70 years of walking as an optimistic average.

So that's a radius of 511,000 miles

If I jam this into an internet calculator that does equations for me I get = 8.2×10 11

Is that 8.2 billion square miles?

In raw numbers I think its =   82,033,581,529

If we assume, like earth, its 70% water we get = 24,610,074,458.7 square miles for one mortal realm.

Divide that by the earths land area = 57,268,900

We get 429.7284295437838

So best guess land area of each mortal realm is 420 TIMES the land surface of the earth?

ALL MORTAL REALMS COMPARED TO THE EARTH

To get the total available surface area of all mortal realms, x the raw number by eight = 656,268,652,232

But assume, like earth, that only 30% is 'land'

So estimated total land area for all the Mortal Realms is = 196,880,595,669.6 square miles.

I don't even know how to comprehend a number this big... But if we divide 196,880,595,669.6 by 57,268,900 we get=

3,437.82743635027

Shorten that to 3,437

So the mortal realms land surface in TOTAL are about three and a half thousand TIMES larger than the land surface of the earth.

ESTIMATED POPULATION OF THE MORTAL REALMS

Due to the influence of magic and cross-realm agriculture, plus likely massive depopulation in the Age of Chaos, plus are we counting Skaven? Goblins? Plus we know the core parts of each realm are more liveable for mortals in most cases.....

But as a nice round number we can say that before Fritz Haber, about 1800 our earth had about 1 billion people.

So X that by 3,437 = 3,437 billion mortals

About 491 TIMES more people than there are on earth at this moment.

AN ESTIMATE OF THE LAND AREA OF ONE CONTINENT OF HYISH

GW has been quite clever and, for most realms, not shown the full extent of the realm in any map. This means if they need more land area in the future they can just zoon out.

However with Hyish, the realm of light, they seem to have shown the whole thing in one go..

Eight large equal continents and a bit in the middle. Say the middle bit is roughly half the size of the major continents. Dividing the total by 17 might give rough size of Xintil

82,033,581,529 / 17 = 4,825,504,795.823529

Shorten that to 4,825,504,796 square miles

Hyish is clearly less hydrous than earth, but by how much, general impressions can be deceptive so I will say 50% water.

That gives me 2,412,752,397.911765 square miles

Earths land area is 57,268,900 square miles

Divide one by the other and we get 42.13023819056704

So, Xintil, the smallest central continent of Hyish in the realm of light, and the most liveable, is roughly 42 times larger than the entire land surface of the earth?

That's pretty intense.

Its so much insanely bigger than earth, even this zoomed in section of Xintil has probably several times more landmass than earth;

So lets throw up a best-guess spread of the earths area against this map;

So, even one of those very zoomed in areas, , say this little fragment of coasts and sea based around the Elidor range;

A dot on the map

Could be a giant combination empire/culture equivalent to some of the largest Empires our world has ever seen - bigger really. You could tell entire sagas set entirely within this square, based around travel and novelty, and never run out of new and very different cultures and places to visit.

SOME FUN QUESTIONS

What about rain? On earth very big continents often have deserts near the middle. Can rain clouds even make it that far over gigantic landmasses? Maybe the rain is coming from another dimension or something.

Travel - there would be a massive class difference between people, or magical beings who travel long distances, by flight, magic, or otherwise, or realmgates, because for most people even if they travel as much as someone travelling between every part of the British or Spanish empires at their greatest extent, they still haven't gone very far in relation to the size of the realm.

Story limitations for normal humans - its near impossible for relatively normal people to have stories where they range a long way between realm landmarks without the , whole story being the Odyssey or something. Yes there are realmgates, but they are point to point, even travelling across that red square by airship would be like circling the world probably multiple times.

On the other side there is so much room for strange forgotten or lost things, really an impossible-to-fill amount.

The awareness of near-infinity in AoS cultures really makes it a very different world to ours. There is always more.. no real limit so far as an ordinary life is concerned.

VEINS OF THE EARTH FOR SALE

Yo! I am selling my onlyremaining copy of Veins of the Earth on ebay,

no shade - I just NEED THE MONEY

You can look on ebay here

If you win and want it signed or a message or something let me know and I will do so

I am selling a bunch of other stuff but, other than VotE, its all within the UK only. Mainly its Warhammer stuff. HOWEVER, as a reward for reading this far I will tell you a mysterious truth - somebody sent me anonymous pornography

I DID NOT ORDER THIS!!!!

I was sent a full set of the 'Hardcover' collection from Editions Cauderette

with no reason, for free

I couldn't work out if this was a mistake as I ordered something else from them around a similar time

or did they send it to me for review or something because of my radical boomer takes on freeze peach or whatever? If you did I am sorry but I did not have the nerve to review it, I just hid it on a shelf. 

Anyway, this is also for sale but UK only as god knows what the laws are about this sort of thing.

Also I realise no-one will ever believe me about "they just sent me porn for no reason". Once I was fucking about with wood glue to try and base a mini and was having a nightmare of a time trying to get it to fit, heard a knock at the door and I opened it in t shirt and shorts, red, sweaty and stained with white wood glue. It was the postman. I even said out loud "Its wood glue! I'm gluing something..." but I can see he didn't believe me and I expect neither will you. Such is life.

New, Rentable Patrick (DRM INCLUDED DO NOT REMOVE)

 Peace unto you! The moment you read these words my propriety DRM was injected into your brain please be aware that thinking about this in a way I don't like will be considered a copyright issue. If you got this far an NDA is also in effect.

Good news everybody! Technology has advanced to the point where the means of production are falling into the hands of the creators directly!

But what does this mean for.. CORPORATIONS? How will they live? 

RENT

Production is so last century. Creation is passe. The horrible mistake of an industrial economy was that, in mass producing products and selling them to everyone, that meant that they, the consumer, NOW HAD THOSE PRODUCTS! That is not what consumers are for! Its in the name! Con-SOOOOOOOOM. 

["consume (v.)

late 14c., "to destroy by separating into parts which cannot be reunited, as by burning or eating," hence "destroy the substance of, annihilate," from Old French consumer "to consume" (12c.) and directly from Latin consumere "to use up, eat, waste," from assimilated form of com-, here perhaps an intensive prefix (see com-), + sumere "to take," from sub- "under" (see sub-) + emere "to buy, take" (from PIE root *em- "to take, distribute")."]

Over the years our finest minds have been working on amending this horrific error. Planned obsolescence, shifting fashions and instilled desires have gotten us part of the way there. But now, the problem is finally solved. 

RENT! 

The same advances in technology that allow the consumers to communicate, create and even (blech) PRODUCE amongst themselves, have given us a wonderful gift! What was once bought can now be rented, what was owned can be made transitory. Your car? rent or we cancel the OS. This toilet? Rent. That kitchen knife.. we are working on it. Rent is our future, rent is our god.

Once you seal people into a closed system and annihilate anything outside it’s really just a matter of going through your budget line by line and striking out everything you don't like the look of.

In our brave new future the only things that exist will be rent control systems and marketing budgets (to remind consumers that only by paying rent will they be part of a community).

No longer will new ideas need to be developed, we have enough. Can just keep re-releasing Spider-Man, fiddle with the numbers on Warhammer, change the genders in Planescape. Old ideas are best apart from when they are insensitive but we can change that hour by hour.

Yes, intellectual property laws may be a problem. Like with Middle-earth the most resistant IP holders just died recently and the whole thing goes into public domain in 30 or 40 years

so we only have that gap to utterly SKULLFUCK the setting, but that’s no reason not to try.

Fairness and Accessibility - in our walled these things can be invisibly disposed of through the feigned gift of INFINITE OPPORTUNITY! Everything you could desire only a click away!

Although in practice what the consumer will not find is a nice clear index of previous products and development in the order they were created, arranged in a coherent system - but a search bar and a series of recommendations created and curated by us.

Of course they can still find ANYTHING through the search bar - but the only way to know what they are looking for is to know in advance or to have been told about it by us, and results are weighted by whatever others are searching for, and by whatever the algorithm thinks they want or should want, and whatever weights have been applied to it by us

this dull and misty form of information control much much more powerful than simply banning or removing things. a hard block creates a hard counter-response, and that might encourage a competitor, or the surge of resistance and negative emotion that causes someone to actually try to leave the walled garden, but a soft block, a series of narrowing hoops, the artful use of confusion and vagueness, softens resistance and reaction.

Reaction is the enemy. Any very strong emotional response is really actually quite dangerous, since it can set up very unpredictable currents within the consumer, unregistered or unpredicted desires which the garden cannot fulfil - very bad

Softness comfort and emotional anhedonia at all levels are the way. A soft comfortable dose of mild pleasure at regular intervals creates the most valuable rent source; predictable, no anger or reaction, no unknown desires, long term, permanent.

So.......

WHATS NEW FOR FALSE MACHINE???

First - NEW APPS!

As a wonderful addition to our legal-protection community of ideas nu False Machine product protection software will randomly changing the numbers AND (for no extra cost) letters and whatever with each update, (updates will be continual).

The re-updated False Machine product will be extremely diverse, respectful, representative (of the ethnic balance of the "nicer" parts of US coastal city), and will be under continual review from a range of sensitivity readers. Let me make it clear - if you disagree with this you are a racist*.

(*Unless you are from the Chinese market or 'global south' in which case we will respectfully and sensitively edit out all of this stuff because False Machine Products are for EVERYONE; including all minority groups and the people who hate exactly those minorities)

Nu-old-re-sensitised False Machine product WILL be freshly de-coherent due to the semi-random recombination of words and letters in each FREE (open to all) downloadable (through our app, please don't try to move files outside the app) content update.

GOOD NEWS - for the low low price of [INSERT CURRENT PRICE HERE] per day, YOU can gain access to our False Machine Community, consisting of; a Discord server from which a fair proportion of the groomers have been removed, THRILLING bi-weekly updates and virtual conferences and most crucially, (this is something we are really very excited about) our welcoming and soothing decryption software.

With the all-new False Machine "Community and Decryption" app (charges separate to the False Machine "Releases and Engagement" App), YOU will be able to decrypt and actually read a wide (but not total, and continually shifting) amount of the False Machine back catalogue! Access to literally some books some of the time in some places!

And it gets better! Because we at False Machine LOVE YOU so much (this entity just wants to take a moment here to offer its thanks and very genuine love to you all, this is a real and actual relationship which this entity has with you the reader) by joining our SUPER ELITE DIVERSITY MAX program (for a relatively small extra daily charge) YOU will be able to share our content with your friends (so long as they also have the False Machine "Release and Engagement" App, the False Machine "Community and Decryption" App and have are also part of the SUPER ELITE DIVERSITY MAX program) for up to d4 hours! (Little bit of an OSR reference there,  FOR THE FANS).

Bringing people together is what its all about. In a context and manner controlled entirely by us. 

Second - NU GOBLINS!

For one of our first EXCITING roundtable updates - SHOCKING NEWS - Goblins have gone from 1HD to 2 HD creatures! And are also being re-named Derp-Thrust Gobelyns for copyright reasons.

Yes we have listened to your feedback and our community of playtesters and random twitter nutters and come together as a community to make this radical (get somehow comforting) change. 

False Machine Derp-Thrust Gobelyns! What will these changes mean for YOU? And for the META? We gather a group of employees from random parts of the company in front of a webcam to read bullet points from an off-camera whiteboard. It’s like a circle of friends who are paid to be here and told exactly what and what not to think. Community.

Why not become part of the False Machine COMUNITY and leave a comment? (Any offensive, non pro-social, 'troll', fruitlessly critical, anti-social negatively analytical comments will be moderated we try to keep our community safe for EVERYONE because False Machine is for EVERYONE).

Yes Derp-Thrust Gobelyns are now twice as Goblin as before, in a way this is exactly what our founder probably was imagining when they invented Goblins or whatever but only now with our best ruleset and system EVER can we bring you Derp-Thrust Gobelyns as they were _intended_ to be represented and at twice the previous price. And yes we have listened to our community and new  Derp-Thrust Gobelyns are fully representative of a range of gender and lifestyle choices. Failing to like the new Goblins does indicate transphobia*. There is no room for prejudice here at False Machine.

[*Unless you are  buying in the Chinese Market or Global South]

Hot new exciting and representative 2HD Derp-Thrust Gobelyns will be available to pre-order SOON. But don't worry! For those of you still (why though?) using _legacy_ goblins, we will be releasing some fucking thing who knows probably there is a PDF somewhere. Old Goblins will still be playable they will just be fucking stupid and pointless.

Third  - Good news! 

OUR DISCORD MOD HAS BEEN RELEASED FROM PRISON IN THAILAND.

Weebery Five - I Barely Survived

I am back and I have watched yet more anime. I could not stop. The original posts are here

One - Descent into Weebery

Dororo

Re:Creators

Inuyashiki Last Hero

Two - into the Maelstrom of Thighs

Gankutsuo: The Count of Monte Cristo

Onihei

Outlaw Star

Full Metal Panic!

Three - Hee hee hee

The Great Passage

Bannana Fish

Kemurikusa

Kokkoku

Four - I Came back for More

Ranking of Kings

Odd Taxi

Fire Force

My Hero Academia

Jojo

Attack on Titan

Mob Psycho 100

Slime

Demon Slayer

Belle

I have broken this down into categories based on general theme

1 - WHAT THE FUCK

Darling in the Franxx

Assassination Classroom

The Girl from the Other Side

2 - COMEDY???

Spy x Family

Love After World Domination

3 - HARD TO BE A WOMAN

Miss Kuroitsu from the Monster Development Department

Shadows House

Vivy -Flourite Eyes Song

4 - FAAAAAAAATE

Fate/Stay Night Unlimited Blade Works

Fate/Zero

5 - FUCKING ISEKAI 

SSSS.Gridman

Dr Stone, Series 1

The Vision of Escaflowne

Mushoku Tensei: Jobless Reincarnation

The Devil is a Part-Timer Series 1

Re:Zero - Starting Life in Another World

Banished from the Heroes Party I Decided to Lead a Quiet Life in the Countryside

6 - I FORGOT ABOUT THESE

86 Eighty Six

In order to keep this to something like a sane length I will try to describe the premise to each show in AS SHORT A WAY AS POSSIBLE before moving on to note things I liked.

CATEGRORY ONE - WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK

Darling in the Franxx - what the actual fuck

Starts as a porn kind of? Gets good then goes VERY strange. Look it’s just your classic evolved-from-porn post-apoc teens in mecha show that evolves into a ruthless depictions of vampiric gerontocracy which then in the very last big turns into a cosmic galactic war, also the mecha are driven by orgones or their equivalent apparently.

WHAT DO I LIKE ABOUT THIS

The central section where the teens in a kind of fishbowl simulation of a school gradually find out that they are essentially malmukes, slaves created purely to fight to the death in defence of a society of immortal adults, that they are subhuman in that society and they will never "grow up" and become adults, either they will die in the field or die of genetic degradation since they are hybrids not made to live that long.

We find this out along the way in a range of neatly implied ways - the children’s school uniforms which look like early 20thC ritualised European school uniforms with braces, ties, garters for the socks - then we find out that these are daily-extruded plastic/paper hybrid all in one coverings with just those elements pictured or embossed on the fabric. We didn't see this because its an animation and we can't see the texture of cloth, and the teens don't know how strange it is because its all they've ever known.

It's really quite wonderfully horrific - the depictions of seemingly-empty night-cities of immortal humans who live in giant CLEAN apartments blitzed out of their minds on cyber-soma, with no actual physical connections to each other.

The "bad" things about Franxx are also things I kinda respect it for just having the balls to do. I sort of respect it for being so irredeemably porny to start with (think it actually evolved from a porn to begin with) and towards the end of the series it goes completely fucking nuts, in a way where you get the sense they knew they were not getting a second series and decided to 'Babylon 5' it, so in very quick succession you get the secret queen of an underground race of ancient, well not aliens as they are terrestrial but Archeans or Cryptids, plus the ascension of adult humanity to a bodiless state by a bunch of aliens who were behind everything the whole time, the reveal of a centauroid super-robot powered by love, war in space, pregnancy, learning to grow crops, more war in space and a cosmic gate to the far side of the Galaxy and a super-war against the aliens. It really goes balls out.

+ Vampire State/Gerontocracy = its literally all about that - OLD = BAD! BOOMERS = BAD!! Looks like Japan has already gone through everything we are about to.

+ Calls to the FBI = so much it would be mad to try to list them, the whole thing really, especially at the beginning. If you have seen this you should be on a watchlist.

Assassination Classroom

Its Goodbye Mr Chips if Mr Chips was a --- like a warner brothers monster? Or a surrealist nightmare? The moon blows up. A super-being exists and reveals to the worlds government that they blew up the moon and are going to destroy the earth and the ONLY way to stop this is to let them teach this one particular class in this one particular Japanese school and if the students in this class can assassinate the creature before the year ends the world will be saved. Honestly its a tribute to insanity that this plot actually makes sense by the end  of the series.

WHAT DO I LIKE ABOUT THIS

Basically imagine if one of those shitty High Concept series from US TV that starts "what if" and rapidly dies of being milked too much and staggers on with its desperate original fandom hanging off its withered haunches - well imagine if one of those was over and done in one series and actually managed to answer all the insane questions it brought up at the start. And was funny.

What can I say it’s Mr Chips/Dangerous Minds with heart-warming stories of personal growth and regular increasingly complex assassination attempts and various plots

+ Vampire State/Gerontocracy = not that much but the Japanese School system treating its "failures" as disposable objects is a theme.

+ Perversity/Calls to the FBI = a little, one of the students is very obviously a "trap" and this becomes a whole thing. But honestly, for anime, relatively low levels of ambient paedophilia

The Girl from the Other Side

A girl wakes up in the forest at night, heavily implied that she is a survivor of a massacre of "infected" or suspected infected people from 'the inside', this forest being the outside. Meets a weird as shit man beast monster wearing a suit who looks after and protects here while being very careful never to physically touch her as he definitely is infected and if they touch she will end up a memoryless monster like him.

WHAT DO I LIKE ABOUT THIS

It’s really incredibly strange and beautiful. Is either hand animated or pseudo-so. Storybook, well I say "dreamlike" too much but this is the most like a dream you half remember. Quite affecting. 

ANGRY though because clearly much deeper and more complex than what we were shown but we only got THREE EPISODES! WHY? Cost too much to animate? Ended in a vague bougie ambivalent symbolic way which frustrated me. It’s based on an illustrated series so may eventually pick that up.

+ Perversity/Calls to the FBI = NONE! Don't you fucking even DARE to besmirch the purity of this sacred Anime!

CATEGORY TWO - COMEDY???

Spy x Family

If you know anything about Anime you probably know about this already but I will go on. Pseudo cold-war setting. cold as ice but Heart of Gold super-spy  given mission to literally create a family, beautiful but very awkward young office girl secretly a midnight super-assassin looking for a cover relationship to get suspicion off her back, orphan girl w telepathic powers is looking for a home, all  three come together in a pseudo-family which is, in effect, a real family except we know that and they don't. The spy doesn't know the wife is an assassin, the wife doesn't know the husband is a spy, neither of them know the girl is psychic and the girl knows everything.

WHAT DO I LIKE ABOUT THIS

Do you know how fucking hard it is to do an action comedy that’s actually good and that’s for normal people? Well the first part is hard for anyone, and doing anything even vaguely normal is hard as shit for the Japanese...

Its just a really well done action comedy that’s also a very pleasurable, ridiculous and self-sustaining farce. Basically its Frasier meets The Man from Uncle. A family who don't realise they are actually a family but we the audience do! Normative Values! you probably don't think this is good from the way I described it but it fun as shit so whatever.

+ Perversity/Calls to the FBI = there are LITERALLY NONE its hard to believe! This Anime is pure! Oh no wait I forgot Yor Forgers brother has a somewhat creepy crush on her. I spoke too soon, you win again Japan.

HOWEVER, other than this, this is one of relatively few Anime that I would willingly show to normal people. 

Love After World Domination

The main guy from a Power Rangers type situation and the S&M-Themed Arch Foe from the villains organisation fall in love and have a tentative romantic relationship.

WHAT DO I LIKE ABOUT THIS

This was pleasant and the art style was calming. the warm soft roundness of the characters and ok basically I have a childs colour palette so whatever fuck you. The gags are intermittently funny but sometimes go pretty hard. I laughed occasionally. Someone clearly put a more than normative amount of effort into developing the art style at least compared to the average anime.

+ Perversity/Calls to the FBI = I don't know if an almost insane level of neuroticism and pathological avoidance and simultaneous desire for intimacy actually counts as "perversity", but its repeated so much in anime that it actually feels like it does.  I suppose this one isn’t that bad as they are partially making fun of those tropes.

Also the Miss Reaper costume is... like way too hot for a sort-of kids tv themed anime

CATEGORY THREE - HARD TO BE A WOMAN

Miss Kuroitsu from the Monster Development Department

(This is really a comedy but I needed to bulk this section out). Farcical/Absurdist workplace comedy with a young scientist trying to survive and get ahead in the crazy world of corporate but the corporation is actually the evil supervillain org from a seinen hero series - her job is monster development and all the monsters go out and get beaten up by the hero figure.

WHAT DO I LIKE ABOUT THIS

Slightly badly animated but much more directly funny than 'Love After World Domination', the workplace insanity is more cutting and feels more on point, monster designs being completely bollocked because the CEO paid a visit to the lab and 'made suggestions', a valentines themed chocolate monster being banned from use because she was poorly manufactured and is full of foreign objects, (also never make a holiday themed monster, you can only use them once a year), single-episode beat-em-up sidekick roles being sketchy single say work-for hire jobs where they bus you to another city and don't tell you what it’s about, its funnier than I'm making it sound.

+ Perversity/Calls to the FBI = male monster gets brain transplanted into the body of a hot wolf girl yeah its Japan.

Shadows House Series 1

Is it weird that this reminds me of the Korean film The Handmaiden? I really liked this one. Young girl wakes up in a box, in a servants room in a labyrinthine house, finds out that she is a 'living doll' and is meant to act as a servant for  a featureless living silhouette the exact shape and form of the main character with slightly different dress who speaks and seems to think just like a young noble lady but who emits soot in a vertical column when upset. An entire generation of shadows live in this wing, each with a 'living doll' servant, which they are physically identical to in form and shape, except that they are utterly featureless black voids. Gradually we realise that  that the 'living dolls' as well as being servants are meant to act as their shadows 'face', learning their moods and manner so well that they can walk alongside them and simultaneously express emotion in a visible way. Then our main girl and her shadow mistress are put through a range of increasingly odd and obscure tests and situations, those that don't pass "disappear".

WHAT DO I LIKE ABOUT THIS

It’s a beautiful weird country house puzzle drama. I like stuff where everyone is mannered and drinks tea and anyone could be killed at any time according to a labyrinthine arrangement of rules which are never fully disclosed. Possibly this is my British DNA showing. The first series main character Emilico, a hyper positive to the point of mental illness super-girl is great. The classic introvert/extrovert pairing of the two main girls is also great.

+ Vampire State/Gerontocracy = oh hell yes, the older generation of Shadows are effectively evil and part of an evil and consuming structure of power headed by the oldest, who is essentially worshipped by the rest.

+ Perversity/Calls to the FBI = not that bad.

Vivy – Fluorite-Eyes Song

An A.I. created "to make the world happy with my singing" is visited by another robot from the future,  in the future A.I.s go Skynet and destroy mankind. These two team up to alter events so that doesn't happen. The stage is set for a series of special-ops missions and strange investigations spread out over decades as the two awkwardly try to change fate.

WHAT DO I LIKE ABOUT THIS

Remember the Asimov film I.Robot, well its a bit like that but good, except actually very good. Really well animated - some fucking great robot vs robot vs cyborg vs human fights. Matsumoto the cube-formed time travelling robot is great, especially as time goes by and he develops more and more abilities and add-ons, all of which are cube-based. Ah and its overwhelmingly sad. Also its really beautiful, did I mention how well animated this is? Plus each episode is a strange new evolution of the relationship between men and machines, and between machine and machine.

+ Perversity/Calls to the FBI = you know I'm not sure I even saw one. A guy does fall in love with a robot at one point but the incredible sadness of how it turns out really robs it of FBI points.

CATEGORY FOUR - FAAAAAAAATE

Goddamn Fate, the Universe which started as a multiple choice story that was also kinda a porn and just got more complex from there.  Basically don't bother with this unless you like working things out of the fly or really enjoy lore. I have only watched two series of this; Fate/Stay Night Unlimited Blade Works and Fate/Zero.

A  maguffin called the 'Holy Grail' grants wishes. To reach it, seven mages have to fight each other by summoning seven 'Heroic Spirits', like ghost, tulpas or reincarnations of famous historical heroes. Only one mage can reach the magical thing at the end. 

WHAT DO I LIKE ABOUT THIS

The main interest comes from the tactical dicking about between the mages and the various skill-sets and personalities of the different mage/spirit pairings, and the conflicts between the values, personalities and ideologies of the different mage and spirit combos. In one scene Gilgamesh, gender-swapped King Arthur and Alexander the Great have a sit down to discuss the meaning of Kingship, you are unlikely to get this stuff outside Anime.

Damn the creator has a dark view on the heroic ideal and the search for meaning, in Fate Zero at least, those with the most clear "heroic" motivation are gradually corroded by those desires, leaving them mutated and morally compromised, while those who often seem if not sociopathic then very unpleasant, often gradually come to seem more reasonable as time goes by and they emerege as, at least, less hypocritical and self-deluding

+ Vampire State/Gerontocracy = not so much though the old mage families which dominate things are usually mildly psychotic.

+ Perversity/Calls to the FBI = YES. Did you want to see Gender-Swapped King Arthur tied up in a BDSM style by Gilgamesh Lord of Uruk well you are going to.

CATEGORY FIVE - FUCKING ISEKAI 

The genre that has eaten Anime like a fat fucking fuck eating everything. 

But the Isekais have been going so long that they have started to meta-evolve, a bit like the Gremlins in the film 'Gremlins 2' producing slightly more interesting variations and iterations on the basic theme. Here I throw in Isekais and a range of post, pre and semi-Isekais together.

SSSS.Gridman

Is this even an Isekai? Or even a post-post Isekai? Fuck knows. It does take place in some kind of virtual dream realm or something. A teenage boy wakes up with amnesia, his parents are 'on holiday', he tries to act normal and go to school but the city is attacked by Kaiju and things get stranger from there.

WHAT DO I LIKE ABOUT THIS

Very strange intense and horrific dreamlike feel as kids and people die horribly in monster attacks before the city is "re-set" each night, leaving no memory of the particular people who died. Only the main characters know people are "missing" school classrooms gradually becoming more sparse, happy families reduced to lonely parent and single parents unable to mourn the absence of someone they can't even remember.

Pleasing monster designs - especially towards the end where the demonic entity allowing the Kaiju to become real just grabs a bunch of unfinished ones off the shelf, resulting in some really awkward, gawky nightmare broken toy monsters that are quite unpleasant.

Also a good scene where the heroes meet with the main alien/demon guy in an ordinary roadside restaurant at night -everything is normal and low-fi and this fictional supervillain inhuman nightmare guy thing walks in and no-one but the heroes really perceive it fully.

Monster vs Robot Superhero fights with the crazed energy of a childs summertime imagination but maybe we are indeed in a dream or something like that? What is real?

+ Vampire State/Gerontocracy = not really other than the deep loneliness of the children

+ Perversity/Calls to the FBI = hmmmmmm

Dr Stone, Series 1

Mankind gets turned to a bunch of stone statues by UNKNOWN FORCES. Several thousand years later one guy wakes up and decides he is going to re-create ALL human technology from the stone-age ground up, revive ALL of humanity and also work out the Petrification thing.

WHAT DO I LIKE ABOUT THIS

Procedural science stuff! That’s basically what this series is about. Want to see how to go from a literal stone age level of tech to building a radio in a year or so? Well here you go.

The Plot armour in this one is a little ridiculous.

There are some genuinely effecting moments where stone age people experience the miracles of raw science, diseases defeated through sulphur drugs, an electric light shining in a stone age world.

Has a lot of unexplored depth where you could look at the not-all-good effects of technology and knowledge on a prehistoric culture but that’s largely unexamined 

+ Vampire State/Gerontocracy = motivation for the main villain is that in our time the place was plagued with olds who owned everything and kept everyone down so now he is going to CRUSH their frozen bodies and build a NEW SOCIETY of the young and pure! No one has told this guy that people age I guess

+ Perversity/Calls to the FBI = none come to mind... a gymnast eats cotton candy in a suggestive way..

The Vision of Escaflowne

One of the (near) original Isekai transported to a dream realm stories? and its technically Shogo. Teenage girl arrives in fantasy land where evil Wizard Scientist guy is trying to conquer everything for obscure reasons - girl faces "bellas choice" between Hot Princes whilst having adventures, also there are steampunk mecha powered by dragon hearts.

WHAT DO I LIKE ABOUT THIS

Its FUCKING BEAUTIFUL. PEAK 90s aesthetic. The backgrounds. Sky rocks hovering in the midnight air. The science-fantasy worldbuilding. The dreamy summer-ish feel. Our own planet hangs in the sky like an unreachable vision.

+ Vampire State/Gerontocracy = Isaac Newton is evil and old but he's just taking the place of God who is always evil in Anime.

+ Perversity/Calls to the FBI = I think there's a sister-brother crush in this? Not sure. But that’s about it, oooohh no I forgot [SPOILERS] one of the evil characters is actually the abducted sister of one of the good guys, transformed through dark science in to a psychotic man, yes they changed her gender and psychology thanks Japan you did it again.

The Devil is a Part-Timer Series 1

After a standard defeat-the-demon-lord story the Demon Lord in question escapes... to Japan. With a handful of his courtiers, followed by the Hero who beat him. Over here though magic is hard to come by and they are little more than normal people who have to adapt to Japanese society, get jobs etc.

WHAT DO I LIKE ABOUT THIS

Damn this thing is keeping a lot of balls in the air. In particular a strong conflict between the rarely stated background and current reality, i.e. the demon king literally killed quite a lot of human beings, including the hero girls actual family, and this is never entirely swept under the rug, but just chunders there quietly. Honestly manages to remain fun and interesting but how will they maintain it and where are they going with it?

+ Perversity/Calls to the FBI = questionable relationship with subordinate at McDonalds

Re:Zero - Starting Life in Another World 

NEET is Isekai'd to normative Fantasy World, is genre savvy but has no special powers. Turns out his power is Groundhog Day. When he dies he is returned to the last 'save point' and must live that time again till he can reach the next. He doesn't know when he has reached a save point, doesn't know anything about the vast range of conspiracies and horrible things aimed partially at him and is massively overpowered by everyone, plus when he dies its utterly horrible and traumatic.

WHAT DO I LIKE ABOUT THIS

Oddly a really innovative story structure. Everything is a mystery and the hero progresses largely through understanding *context*. 

Deep and tragic alienation of the Hero from reality as, he knows and values everyone around him deeply but from their perspective they met him about a week ago. Same applies to us as through repetitions we understand everyone’s drives and backstory.

Key Point - its really more of a horror story, or a guy trying to escape from a horror story, and the middle parts of the first series are some of the most exciting horror/nightmare stuff I've seen recently. Poor bastard dies so much and so horrifically, and is so utterly trapped by fate and astounded by impossibilities, that ultimately he does what anyone would and goes completely catatonic - just shuts down mentally for several episodes, AND THEN THINGS GET WORSE

+ Perversity/Calls to the FBI = fetish maid.

Banished from the Heroes Party I Decided to Lead a Quiet Life in the Countryside

Another derivation of the Pre/Post/During/Alternate 'Defeat the Demon Lord' story. Follows the guy who is the mainstay of your JRPG party throughout the first half of the story but eventually you load up on specialists and level grind and he's just not keeping up so you summarily dump him in an inn or something, after taking every single sword and potion you left on his person.

WHAT DO I LIKE ABOUT THIS

Prepare to see something you have never seen before in an Anime, something so surprising it may SHOCK YOU. In this story, a man, and a woman (not related by blood or even raised together), have an emotionally intimate relationship, that develops at a reasonable pace, without any insane misunderstandings, mental breakdowns, mind control, demon rape, anyone bein snatched into a parallel dimension or any we-need-to-hide-this-from-the-world bullshit, and then they fuck. 

They just fall in love, get closer and eventually have fulfilling sex. I don't know what to tell you. Has 'BftHPIDtLaQLitC' actually done the impossible and produced an anime with NO perversity? No because the guys sister kinda has a crush on him. 

I mean thats not the only good thing about this series - the slow development of how living in what’s effectively a 'Levelled' society actually works and affects people, and the weird science-fantasy inferences of how that came to be ('High-Elf Ruins look like a crashed space ship, very D&D) are interesting, plus a main character who is trying hard to avoid explicit heroism and build another kind of life with a strange skill set, good. But holy shit they just kiss, bang and have a relationship, holy fucking god.

+ Vampire State/Gerontocracy = Kami Sama seems evil but that’s relatively normal for Anime

+ Perversity/Calls to the FBI = Sister crush

Mushoku Tensei: Jobless Reincarnation

FUCK this is tiring. Did I write about this one already? Its not the original Isekai but the one that set the template for the more recent versions. NEET meets Truck Kun and is reincarnated as a baby with a nice family in a fantasy world, he keeps his adult knowledge and is naturally insanely overpowered with magic juice.

WHAT DO I LIKE ABOUT THIS

I've been writing this for a while.. It’s just really good? It’s kinda pervy but surprisingly emotionally honest compared to most Anime. This is one of the only guys where they got Isekai'd and actually genuinely tried to change who they were in their new life and genuinely and deeply struggled against their own crappy broken personality and to actually grow in ways not defined b power (though they also get to be super-powerful too HAXXXOORRR.

+ Perversity/Calls to the FBI = Oh yeah plenty. Really can't even list them all.

Category Six - I FORGOT ABOUT THESE

86 Eighty Six

Future gene-hacked society is fighting against an A.I. hive-mind someone accidentally made and which is wrecking everything but hopefully it will run out of juice soon. In order to avoid taking casualties they uuuuuussseee.. the children of refugees! Yep its child soldiers thrown into disposable mechs and sent to fight until they die. Main female character is an in-group remote force commander who starts to intuit that race-based child slave solders might be wrong somehow.

WHAT DO I LIKE ABOUT THIS

People shit on this because its depiction of racism is facile but I am old and conservative and 90% of all pop culture is somewhat like that for me anyway so whatever. 

The direction has these modernist cuts which leap directly from inference or incident right to consequence, which I quite liked and appreciated as it saves me a fair amount of time. The depictions of swarm warfare - solar-powered micro-drones filling the sky like swarms of flies or lying in great fields like crops of glass, weird mechs and super mechs, the shitty spitfire-like vulnerability of the good-guy mechs, the depictions of a decadent society which has made a terrible invisible deal; its officer class bloated, drunken and mentally broken passed out in fountains capped with statues of the glorious founder, nothing to do except remotely supervise the sacrifice by war of the Untermensch, and the bad-guy A.I. has taken to stealing the heads of human troops lost in the field, it finds some forms of originality hard to rips the heads off, freezes them and either strips the brains down to engrams or just straight up wires the heads into its mechs as an officer corp.

GOBLINS GOBLINS GOBLINS

 GOBLINS!

Here are some rules for an all-Goblin game build on the "BX Commons" chassis.

Arthur Rackham

CHARACTER GENERATION

• all goblins are stealthy
• all goblins are thieves
• all goblins attend to the phases of the mooooon
• not all goblins are goblins
• all goblins can hide behind things
• Fear COLD IRON

AMORAL - a goblin is not a hero and can never do anything because it is the "right thing to do" (in human terms at least)

it has to be funny, tricksy, part of a deal, chaotic or otherwise

STR - 3d6 drop the highest

DEX - 4d6 drop the lowest

INT - 3d6

WIS - zero, gobs have no wisdom

CHA - 3d6

CON - 3d6 drop the highest

d3 hit points

• Climbing - all can climb *built surfaces* without restriction
• Sneaking - all can hide if there are shadows to hide in
• Crafting - all can tie & fix things together pretty well, if an unspecialised handyman could do it they can too

Genderless, or so we think, except for the Goblin Queen and for Changelings

And one of the following GOBLIN POWERS (d100);

1. can invert personal gravity 

2. can spit like a hand catapult

3. excellent voice impersonator

4. can talk to (choose one) corvids, foxes, rats, bats, cats,

5. wonderful dancer

6. plays the [choose one] fiddle, whistle, harp, or sings beautifully

7. can tell one not immediately disprovable lie per night which will automatically be believed

8. can read, write, calculate and do accounts

9. can pick locks with fingernails

10. can tie things up super-fast

11. acrobatic/clown skills (vaulting, tumbling etc)

12. can hide under any object (regardless of size) (and opposed to hiding *behind* objects, which all Goblins can do)

13. can light or quench lamps and lights in a room by snapping fingers (fires dim but don't go out)

14. can whistle up a wind

15. wears a coat with seven pockets, containing; string, sharp tacks, chalk, a sharp stone knife, a gold ring, a beautiful mirror and a brass bell

16. detachable limbs act as floating truculent (and unreliable) servants, responding to voice command (sometimes)

17. can always guess what others have in their pockets

18. can swim in air as if it were water while holding their breath

19. can inflate self like a pufferfish, becoming a robust, very bouncy rubberesque ball

20. can throw cutlery *other than knives* with incredible accuracy 

21. can roll like a hoop without end

22. has a fundamentally indeterminate number of toes (i.e. they cannot be counted at all)

23. has a large black "riding cat", cultured, more intelligent than they are, reluctantly obedient and largely indifferent to their desires

24. a magnificent cook

25. wears a wizards hat, top unscrews to reveal a pot of super-strong glue

26. can enchant snails for remote communication if worn as ear buds (range 50 meters, snails whisper what is said, casting goblin must be wearing one)

27. can charm others to dance as they are dancing, (music must be playing and they may not play it)

28. wears heavy boots which only they can move in with prefect ease and silence, boots highly resistant to all damage, leave human-seeming footprints

29. wears a red coat which is very fine, all shall remark on it

30. extremely sharp teeth

31. savant whistler

32. extremely skilled and lucky at games of gambling or chance

33. can pull an extremely frightening face

34. can wiggle out of or though most impediments and restrictions (within bounds, under door gaps perhaps, not through keyholes)

35. very good at hiding things

36. has a pair of thick spectacles that allow them to see things very far away like an owl, because this is how they think spectacles work

37. can make excellent paper planes and in fact use them as gliders

38. acidic piss

39. own reflection acts as a kind of retainer, can be sent on missions to other reflective surfaces, keep watch etc, must be paid in silver for each deed

40. has a 'ghost costume' which, depending on circumstance, looks kinda legit

41. snot is mildly explosive when flicked (equivalent to streetkid 'caps')

42. can telekinetically control milk (when in field of view) if rolled twice can control cheese as well

43. can easily pull rug or carpet out from underneath someone's feet (regardless of mass, floor staples, etc)

44. earwax acts as a low-friction Grease

45. can magically transform into small critters if they eat one (dispelled by daylight or cold iron)

46. can poke, prod and pinch via power of the mind alone (line of sight only)

47. can 'solid snake' small containers as un-suspectable disguises (so long as not seen moving)

48. can musically control hair so long as continually playing, whistling singing etc

49. can trick or fool most quadrupeds

50. after being pressganged for a winter, has an encyclopaedic knowledge of the names, addresses and various naughtiness or niceness of all local children, as well as any potential access via chimney

51. after slight case of vampirism, can command the sleeping to perform actions they would usually perform

52. high voice, big ears, has an inaudible (to humans) ultrasound squeal that enables darkvision

53. smoking habit, hacking cough, pipe, can form quite large smoke animals and objects & command them somewhat (depending on wind & tobacco access)

54. can garble and disorder systems of measurement by "fiddling" with them (clocks ruined, book pages out of joint, calendars give wrong months/days etc)

55. genius puppeteer

56. can shed skin like a snake, leaves goblin-shaped skin-bag behind, multiple possible uses

57. 'moon eyed' one eye clear white, constantly emits moonlight when opened

58. can balance on anything

59. if they can stick their finger up a quadrupeds arse it will do whatever they say *so long as the finger is up their arse*

60. savant goldsmith

61. can turn small stones to gems (limited time period)

62. can swallow quite a large number of small objects and bring them up later

63. has a remarkable beard, from the neck up, could me mistaken for a very old man

64. has golden scissors, can shear a sheep or cut hair in a trice "with my golden scissors!"

65. poops out fruit pastilles, has a constant supply, they are pretty tasty

66. savant who always wins any artistic competition, (in any field) but no talent rest of the time

67. swapmaster, others will always listen to their offer of a swap, usually gets the best out of any deal

68. can clean and repair pretty much anything over the course of a night

69. alcoholic goblin, can mix great drinks - knows them all, also compulsive drunk who will neck everything in sight

70. very large nose, smells like a dog

71. can roll most round objects for an undeterminedly long distance

72. can balance almost anything on top of anything else

73. mushrooms growing under left arm produce hallucinations when eaten, those under right arm incapacitate with sickness, crotch shrooms create agreeableness

74. is haunted by a spectral capybara which appears in darkness and prophecies doom (actually quite useful information most times, is unusually specific doomsayer)

75. has a witches hat stuffed with straw which contains a small owls nest, the small owl will sometimes agree to perform certain narrowly-defined tasks

76. left eye is a crystal Palantir which can see the *feet* of anyone within 100 miles ( will only focus on feet), others can stare into (or steal) the eye

77. can throw pennies with unearthly accuracy

79. Goblin Prince,  wears a silver paper crown which bestows  *influence* (by verbal and RHYMED command only) over [pick or roll one] pigs, cows, goats, doors, kitchen implements, wool (influence more powerful in darkness, tripled under a full moon)

80. has pockets full of pins

81. 'door painter' can paint doors onto vertical surfaces which give goblins, friendlies and neutrals access to, if they take half an hour to paint it, the other side, or if they do it super-fast - wherever the DM finds most amusing, doors panted under full moons can go further but effect ends that night (may return next full moon)

82. when saddened, weeps silvery tears which, if tears from both eyes are used to flavour food, make it delicious, or if collected in *identical* (they must be identical and unlabelled) crystal vials, the tears from the left eye make a 'first sight' love potion while those from the right eye form an donkeys-head-plus-egomania potion. These vials are easy to tell apart UNLESS *anyone* warns against getting them mixed up, in which case they are immediately mixed up.

83. has a tongue of purest alchemical green which if it licks an object *all over* can turn that object into 'pure green', pure green objects are (d6) 1 weightless, 2 unearthly smooth, 3 ripe cheese smell, 4 come alive with impish consciousness, 5 emit bright green glow or 6, either wonderous sharp or leaden heavy it being whichever they were NOT before

84. wears a magnificent three-piece suit and top hat and no shoes with a large spider in each pocket, the hat full of webs and another spider in their pocket watch which tells the time some of the time, spiders are somewhat commensurate to command

85. very large, ripe buttocks, invulnerable to most harm, very bouncy

86. carries a glass hammer which they can use to anneal (only) very soft things into each other, shape them and to make them hard

87. impish ancestry, immune to fire and in fact finds it healing and invigorating, likes to sleep/dance in there

88. candle goblin, head encrusted with single large white old wax candle which, when lit, allows them to summon and partially command relatively large amounts of relatively large moths, goblin depressed when candle not lit

89. vantablack goblin, can hide in strong shadows, even during the day, even in villages and civilised areas, often hard to find

90. wears fine glass gloves (horrible goblin hands inside) leaves human hand prints, can shatter brittle objects from a distance by rubbing fingers to make a SKREEEE sound, if glove is lost humans who find it will assume it belongs to a "beautiful lady" & seek "her" out

91. egg goblin, can transform into a sinister-looking egg at-will and roll about in a dark and ominous manner

92. curse goblin, can only have one curse operating at any time, curse MUST have specific, (if impossible) conditions, can also be ended on command, curses must be FUNNY (to the goblin at least), need line of sight, pointed finger and voice to curse, curse must be announced and heard by victim

93. very big ears, hears like a surveillance microphone (must be aimed in right direction)

94. pneumocephalic goblin, can inflate own head and other limbs, and body like a balloon and use it to float away, and for other purposes

95. sack goblin, carries a bag of holding, 1ft diameter opening, sack is patched and will semi-regularly let random items loose unless constantly re-patched

96. horned goblin, horns re-grow over a night if pulled off 

97. gold-toothed goblin, gold teeth will re-grow (as gold) if pulled out, over about a month (teeth are not sharp goblin can only eat soft foods)

98. sleep terror goblin, if it crouches on someone's chest when they are lying down and *looks at them* they will be utterly unable to get up, also terrified

99. mosquito goblin, can extend super long tongue to slluuuuuuuurp up large amounts of liquids & store in expanding belly

100. Goblin King, wears a golden paper crown which gives (by verbal and RHYMED command only) command over hair, eggs, shoes, golden objects, snails, prickly animals and the hearts of spinsters and very old men

GOBLIN CHARACTER IMPROVEMENT

At a new level you get a new hit *point* and one more goblin power.

"COMBAT"

(Goblins find it hard to win a straight fight with anything bigger than themselves. Especially in daylight, they will be booted like a football, kicked to death and once they are dead people will say "look its just a strange rat or hairless racoon". By morning they have calmed down, take a look at the body again and its clearly some kind of strange animal, dangerous certainly, we should get another dog, but spirits were high last night and things always look worse by moonlight eh?)

Also Goblins don't actually *fight* much. Their missions don't require it and they wouldn't win anyway. Trickery is usually better.

HUMANS ARE (CIVILISED) OGRES

Run a standard Human as a 3HD Ogre. Big, slow, dumb but unlike Ogres, civilised.

HD, Morale and Resistance to Trickery of Humans goes UP relative to;

- Daylight

- Adulthood

- Numbers

HD, Morale and Resistance to Trickery of Humans goes DOWN relative to;

- Darkness

- Moonlight

- Children

- On their own

- Drunkeness

- Madness

FRIENDLIES, NEUTRALS AND ENIMIES

FRIENDLIES (will greet Gobs in a Freindly way, Gobs rarely get into conflict with these & can get missions from them)

- Necromancer (or mad Wizard)

- Witch

- Vampire

- Troll

- A ghoul in the graveyard hanging out and waiting for a meal

- Ghosts roaming about here and there

- A dragon on a pile of gold (of little interest to you, you prefer cake & socks)

- THE MOON

NEUTRALS (who knows how they will react, depends much on circumstance and chance. i.e a reaction roll)

- Children on their own or in small groups

- Wizard (standard)

- Drunk adults

- Madmen

- Beggars

- CATS

- Fairys (are twats to you, basically the Goblins Goblins)

NEUTRAL/NEGATIVE (not friendly, but won't necessarily attack)

- Farm animals like horses, cows etc

- Skeletons

DANGEROUS ENEMIES (No need for a reaction roll, these fuckers will kill you on sight)

- All sane sober adults

- Policeman

- Priest

- DOGS

- (COLD IRON)

- Guardian animals

- THE COCK

- Redcap (magical and kind of a Goblin but also a serial killer)

WHERE ARE THE GOBLINS? - THE MAP

'CENTRE' of the Goblin map is the margins of a normal 'civilised' map. More 'points of dark', so forest, moorlands, buried glens, caves, ruins of truly ancient cities,  dragon sleeping deep in a forgotten cave, hills and steep valleys like Appalachia, dry soil, no way for croplands.

'Goblin Normalcy', relatively safe places for you, even in daylight.

INNER RING of the goblin map, ruins, old forgotten graveyards, a necromancers tower, a witches hut, a vampires mansion, all far away from villages, hard for villagers to get to, no roads, or at least no obvious roads, but might be pastoralists around; shepherds, goatherds, truffle seekers, wanderers, charcoal burners, hermits. A troll bridge, - probably a rare road leads between villages, across the wilderness, but a troll there (you know them well), plenty of dungeons and stuff (you live in them sometimes).

OUTER RING of the goblin map

The villages - actually the outskirts of three different counties or duchies, (lucky for you they don't talk to each other much), managed forest, rivers grow more navigable, land flatter, roads, scarecrows, more pastoralists (likely young men and women), outlying houses, usually for the poor and old.

Then the centres of the villages - very dangerous places for goblins, even at night, can be many people around, blacksmiths, the church, DOGS, still lots of nooks and crannies, roofs to hop between, eaves to huddle under, bins, drains, alehouses. The village for Goblins is like a dungeon for humans. The castle/mansion, you would want somewhere for the Duke to live so the Goblin Queen can send you to swap his baby for a changeling.

How big would the map actually be though? You would want it to be small enough for children to potentially get lost in the forest. Probably not all that big.. But maybe distance means fundamentally different things to Goblins?

FAST TRAVEL

PCs can fast travel without random encounters so long as the PLAYERS sing a goblin song together.

GOBLIN MISSIONS

Goblin missions are meant to be somewhat absurdist, though still to involve infiltration, trickery, deception, thieving and general shenanigans. Stealing eggs from a grandmother should still be a pretty hard ask since that grandma is essentially an Ogre armed with a magical weapon (iron skillet), with a guard dog (pretty dangerous to Goblins), and not to mention the COCK - a fucking prehistoric murder machine that will not let you near those eggs.

Standard Goblin missions come from the Goblin Queen, who usually wants something completely different each time she wakes up, so you only have a single night to fulfill her desire and it will be different tomorrow.

- Causing goblin trouble for people i.e. scaring their cows, spoiling milk etc.

- Stealing eggs from a henhouse.

- Stealing the golden hair of a maiden.

- A priests teeth not won by force.

- A grandmothers cup (she won't let it go, lives on the edge of town drinks heavily, complains constantly of Goblins in her house

- Goblin inception - placing something *in* a house rather than taking something *out*

- Changeling-Swap (probably a high-difficulty mission)

- Bring a bunch of people to dance round a mushroom circle under the moon.

- A catskin cloak

- A copy of the humans 'magic' (i.e. holy) book.

- *Hot* tarts

- Certain pale apples

- A particular rare alcoholic drink

- The roundest pig possible.