Clean-up Crew

"Goddamn trolls."

Gomo wasn't the biggest fan of the brutes, along with probably half the whole realm. 

"They're big, they're ugly and they just make a huge mess of everything whenever they fight, and they never seem to stop fighting." Capa continued in his interview, "I guess the last bit's pretty good for us."

History remembers battles and wars. It remembers the Suicide Mages going up against Valanor the Frost Dragon in the Third Great War and Rorhim breaking the Great Troll Bara's axe into a million shards. History remembers blood. But it has a very unusual way of measuring it. It is measured with the number of bodies slain.

"We measure it in pints." Roco spoke for the first time in the interview.

"Maybe even chunks if those pesky Frost Mages have any part of it." Gomo interrupted.

"Books are nice and all. They teach you things sometimes. But they always get the magnitude of these things wrong. Slapping on a body count after every battle doesn't reduce it to a statistic. And having more soldiers slain doesn't make it any more majestic. At the end of the day, it's just people poking each other to death." Gomo sighed.

Roco, Capa and Gomo are three goblins tasked with cleaning up after the huge (and somewhat predictable) battles that occur all over the realm. They are the designated clean-up crew, the unsung heroes of every battlefield. Present in many but recorded in none.

"It's a hard job if it's a small skirmish and there's like thirty creatures dead. Because then you get to look at each face and wonder what kind of life they had or if they had a family missing them. When the body count's in the thousands, everything's the same and every face is a blur. No time." Gomo spoke.

"I was a librarian before this." Roco continued, "I used to have a small place at the corner of Middle Street near Zanzibur. Thatched roof, round windows, not too shabby I'd say. It was a nine to five I didn't care about all that much. Neither did the people it seemed, looking at the daily customers. But every once in a while a little kid would shuffle in shyly and want to look at a book about dragons, and then he'd be hooked. He'd spend the rest of the day looking at every picture of a dragon he could find. I remember getting into a heated discussion about the difference between dragons and wyverns with a know-it-all 8-year-old." Roco chuckled.

"The wyverns are the ones with two legs, right?" Capa inquired.

"No they're the one whose flames make human flesh purple. Dragons make it black."

"Oh."

"Life was pretty good. At least my wife made pie every other week. Then King Duncan decreed that all goblins were to act as cleaners for his godforsaken wars." Gomo seemed distant. "And then it all went to hell."

"I lost my job and my house because we have to constantly move around. My wife was killed last year cleaning up after a battle by an enchanted troll who still had some fight left in him. They don't count her as a casualty because it's after the battle."Roco said.

Capa said, "What we need is an anarcho-syndicalist commune with an executive-"

"Stop using words people don't understand." Gomo stopped him.

He continued, "My boy wanted to be mayor of our town. First goblin mayor of Koosville. That would've been a sight to see. Duncan-"

"King Duncan," Capa interrupted.

"Shut up, Capa. Duncan had other things in mind it seems. He's now learning which kind of soap to use with which 
kind of blood."

Roco spoke, "I don't even know where my kids are anymore."