Crocodile Tears and Goblin Truths

Once upon a time, there was a wee forest goblin by the name of Laki who was not quite the same as the other goblins, but many would still say he was similar enough. Unlike other goblins who are born in a litter, Laki was born an only child and began to cry rather loudly the moment he was born. It was a miracle that his mother, who already had a rather healthy brood the year prior, took pity on him, and let him suckle away until he had his fill, but even as he drank her milk, the tears streaming down his face only grew larger, and he did not cease sucking until her breast had run completely dry. Laki was always crying and always hungry, even though every day he would drink his mother's milk down to the last drop. When the time came for young Laki to ween off his mother's milk, he screamed, hollered, and howled so loudly that his family's treeshanty shook itself free from the branches and came crashing to the ground, killing all six of his older siblings and knocking his poor mother unconscious. At first, his mother's vision was black, and all she could hear was a gentle "I'm sorry... I'm sorry... I'm sorry!" accompanied by the grinding, crunching, and chomping of bones. When she finally awoke to the sight of young Laki feeding on one of his brother's remains, she became so infuriated that she tried to snatch the boy up and gobble him whole, only to find that her legs were broken beyond the point that she could ever hope to recover. The other forests goblins of the tribe watched from the treetops as Laki ate up every last bit of his siblings, and then they watched he made his way over to his mother, who did not so much as even try to put up a struggle as he and gobbled her down from the feet up, using his jagged teeth to grind every bone to powder and licking up every last drop of blood until there was truly nothing left of her at all. He cried miserably the whole time he did so, and every time he bit down there came forth a burst of bitter tears, but even as he apologized profusely for everything he was doing, his hunger was too insatiable for him to stop.

As Laki then had nobody else to care for him, he needed to learn how to hunt and to fend for himself. Unfortunately, the pangs of his hunger made him an awful trapper as he would always eat up all of his own bait, and there was no animal deaf enough for him to successfully ambush with the rumbling of his hungry stomach sounding like the growls of a ferocious tiger. He could get by well enough foraging wildberries, but the problem was that he could not help but gobble up the entire bush, berries, branches, roots, and all, leaving nothing to grow back the next season. The other goblins in his tribe tried to find some use for him, but with his ungodly appetite draining all their provisions, they eventually had no choice but to banish young Laki and so they sent him off in the direction of the nearest human village that they had not recently raided to see if it had someone who would care enough to take the sorry wretch in. In their strange way of goblin kindness, they made sure to savagely beat him first so that he would look extra miserable when he begged the humans for their pity and their protection.

Sure enough, when the tearful, battered, and bruised Laki arrived at the gates of the village, their mayor, a paladin a training, was willing to let him in so that he might tell his tale. Through tears, Laki explained that he had been beaten and banished because his mother was dead and he could not care for himself; he was careful to make no mention of certain details such as how his mother met her unfortunate end. Laki was not telling the whole truth, but the paladin's magic could detect that he had spoken no lies. The paladin decided the righteous thing to do would be to take pity on the poor creature, and so he allowed Laki into his home. Sure enough, Laki's voracious appetite promptly drained the supplies from his pantries and cupboards, but still, the paladin was already committed and so he simply went about procuring more food. The paladin was quick to learn that Laki's hunger could never truly be satiated, but he found that nine ample meals a day could at least appease the young goblin's stomach enough that he could try to function as a normal member of society. For the most part, Laki got along with the human children well enough so long as he had been fed, but even so, there were scattered rumors of raided trash bins and missing pets made the people wary of the goblin in their midst.

As Laki matured into a young adult, he grew more and more ravenous by the day, and it was becoming harder and harder to appease his hunger. One year's botched harvest led to a food shortage in the Winter, and when it became clear that food would need to start being rationed out, he cried and begged to be given more. The paladin understood his situation and did his best to abide by giving the small goblin triple the rations that the full-grown human villagers were getting, but for Laki it was still not enough, so he begged and whimpered all day and well into the evening. As it became clear to Laki that the paladin would not feed him, and as all the food was locked away and guarded in the grain silo, Laki felt that he had no other options. That night, the sleeping paladin felt a teardrop on his cheek and opened his eyes for but a moment to see the ravenous maw of Laki engulfing his entire head down to his neck in one swift bite. Again, Laki ground up every bone between his jaws and sucked up every last bit of blood through his lips, and he ate and ate until there was nothing left and the paladin was no more.

In the morning, the other villagers came to the house looking for their beloved mayor only to find no trace of him at all. Laki sat weeping on the bed, and when they asked what happened to the paladin, all Laki muttered was, "He's gone." Fortunately, the wary villagers could smell the blood on goblin's breath; in their righteous indignation, they drove the wretch out of the village. Eventually, the haplessly wandering Laki was taken captive by the ringleader of a traveling circus who put the goblin's unnatural hunger on display in order to wow cheering crowds who watched in awe as he devoured mountains of all manner of questionably edible things. Whole milk cows, dire dung beetles, and even piles of moldy laundry, Laki gobbled them all down with tears in his eyes as drunken masses laughed and cheered. For a time it had seemed Laki had found his place in the world, but that was all before the Advent of Sin you see.