(Also Titled: The Ongoing Diary of Thppgrg, Goblin Minion)

Before you get started on this entry, which is, as it says, part five, take heed! New readers, please scroll down a bit to where you see the Thppgrg tag. Click on it. Yeah, that’s right. Otherwise, if you missed part four, you can just click here. (Art by Chris McFann.)

DAY TWENTY-ONE

No longer sleeping in Sigvald’s room.

Extremely worried about being stabbed to death in the middle of the night by angry, romantically scorned Shaendralya, since I’m pretty sure I told her that Sigvald was either seeing someone else or was breaking up with her (can’t remember which one; maybe both?); equally concerned that I might have accidentally programmed Sigvald’s bedspread, which I am now almost entirely convinced is arcane-bonded to me, to wrap quite tightly around my throat and squeeze very hard when I mutter certain things in my sleep or roll over in specific ways.

Is conceivable that the bedspread thinks it is a magical amulet—or possibly a ring that maybe goes around my neck(?); must read wizarding book further, even though it is SO BORING.

DAY TWENTY-TWO

Mondays really are just the worst, aren’t they?

Bored and disappointed in equal measure. Book of magic spells—upon closer, nonskimming-oriented examination—mostly empty. Who in the hell publishes a 100-page book and fills up less than the first quarter of it?

Apparently am the proud owner of a light, breezy text containing a page or two of crappy, baby’s-first-grimoire notes, 20 pages of cantrips, 3 pages of lowly and trifling crap about illusions, and then seventy-five-odd pages of zip, zilch, nuttin’, and nada. Not one thing in here about binding demons to make them do my bidding or setting the entire universe on fire.

Variety of obscene doodles and some sketchy, untrustworthy, drunken-looking crib-notes on making homunculi in the very back barely make up for it. Some days, I don’t even know why I bothered slitting that one wizard guy’s throat and stealing this thing.

DAY TWENTY-THREE

Ugh. Stupid racist ghost is back. Has gotten better at dodging.

In further bad news, Neil and his family still mad at me; Jimbo, meanwhile, has become inordinately, inexplicably terrified of “pajama ghost,” and now refuses to attend strategically important poker night.

Am reduced to hosting tonight’s event only for myself and the racist apparition who lives inside my wall and occasionally extends a small portion of his head to yell various horrible slurs at me before dodging back to avoid being shot in the face with bolts of positive-energy-infused, undead-disrupting necromantic magic.

During a foolish bout of positivity, prepared enough rat-based carne asada to feed myself, Jimbo, Neil, and a potential fourth surprise guest, such as perhaps a comely dwarven lass previously unknown to me but old friends with Jimbo, recently single, just moved to the area, from an open-minded yet freakishly wealthy family and looking, perhaps, to casually date an educated, strategically important goblin gentleman such as myself and to buy him nice things.

Refuse to let this meal go to waste out of sheer bloody-minded misery; am now determined to eat every single bite of the entire dish, because my rage makes it delicious, while playing poker all by myself.

Will pull an all-nighter if I have to.

DAY TWENTY-FOUR

Can’t write. Sick. Hate self badly.

DAY TWENTY-FIVE

It is possible that some of those rats had, perhaps, gone bad.

Cannot leave strategically important, now inexcusably befouled, magical goblin bathroom. Accidentally left my one even vaguely interesting source of reading material—that stupid wizard’s book and those notes on homunculi—in Sigvald’s room.

Only entertainment is hearing Jimbo scream “p-p-p . . . pajama ghost!” in abject terror every few minutes.

Still hate self, still badly.

DAY TWENTY-SIX

Am determined to never eat anything with rats in it ever again.

My culinary options thus limited, have committed myself to planting a garden. Willing to read many books on gardening, use a shovel of some kind on dirt (mud? leaves? whatever those things grow in), and eat all of the vegetables in the world, if need be. Lovely garden will be tended to by my beautiful dwarven wife, our gaggles of chubby, rosy-cheeked gobo-dwarf children, and the lovely flocks of homonculi I’m going to make as soon as I STOP POOPING and get out of this stupid room.

Can see it now. It is lovely.

Actually, can see it pretty vividly. Painfully so.

There is a significant chance that I am quite dehydrated and hallucinating badly.

DAY TWENTY-SEVEN

Finally, a ray of sunshine. Feeling much better.

ALSO: At some point during my self-declared sick leave, while locked in strategically important room with “Caution: Haunted Door” written on it, dungeon was sacked by adventurers. Dead-Neck McGee, stupid cleric ghost, was dealt with quite harshly.

With little luck, that will be the last I see of him.

On topic of adventurers: Sigvald’s room was trashed both brutally and efficiently. Among the damage done, his potentially arcane bedspread was pretty nastily ripped into shreds; I might finally be safe from the stupid thing, and free to make Jimbo my super-awesome familiar.

Also of note: a note!

Pinned, discreetly, to the wall of Sigvald’s closet with a very nondiscreet, dangerous-looking dagger, it is very specifically addressed to Sigvald in angry-looking but flowery handwriting.

Appears, at first glance, to be a break-up note from Shaendralya.

Am just far, FAR too much of a gentleman to read it.