Chapter One: Who Even Is Blorbo?
Blorbo the Shrewd was a name whispered in dark taverns and overcooked soup. Legend said he was once a humble tax collector until an unfortunate encounter with a mind flayer turned him into something between a bureaucrat and a chaos sorcerer. Now he lived in the Cracked Tower at the edge of the Swamp of Mild Inconvenience, surrounded by enchanted paperwork and eldritch red tape.
Grindle knew the name. Everyone in the region did. Blorbo had a reputation for asking odd favors. Last year, he paid a dwarf two hundred gold coins to bring him the left shoe of every goblin in the Warty Hills. The year before that? A dozen singing toads trained to harmonize in G minor.
But this?
“25 hobgoblin hides?”
That was a tall order.
Hobgoblins weren’t exactly known for handing over their hides voluntarily. They were brutal, organized, and stubbornly hygienic for creatures that lived in swamp forts and ate their meat with the fur still on. Getting one hobgoblin hide was a task. Twenty-five was a career choice.
Grindle sighed. He was an adventurer, after all. Not a great one, not a famous one—but competent. And competent adventurers didn’t question why the client wanted the hides. They just sharpened their blades and went to work.
Chapter Two: A Slight Misunderstanding
The first hobgoblin encounter did not go well.
Grindle snuck into a camp in the Howling Woods, sword drawn and ready for action. But hobgoblins, as it turned out, had gotten smarter.
“Is that… a decoy?” Grindle whispered as he crouched behind a bush, watching a stuffed hobgoblin propped up near a firepit. It was filled with hay and old socks, probably meant to lure in overeager bounty hunters.
Too late, he realized the trap. A net dropped from the trees, ensnaring him with the force of a drunk bear hug. Hobgoblins poured out of nearby trees, all armed, all grinning.
“Well, well,” one of them said. “Look what the forest dragged in.”
“I can explain,” Grindle offered.
“Please do.”
“I was told to bring 25 hobgoblin hides to a guy named Blorbo.”
The hobgoblins looked at each other.
“Blorbo?” one whispered. “That guy who made Urg translate an entire cookbook into Infernal?”
“Oh yeah. And he demanded it be edible!”
The hobgoblin leaned in. “Look, we don’t like Blorbo either. But why don’t you just buy the hides from us? We’ll fake our deaths, take a nap, and you get your quota. Win-win.”
Grindle blinked. “That’s… that’s surprisingly reasonable.”
And so, the deal was struck. Or at least, it seemed to be.
The next morning, Grindle returned to the camp, coin pouch in hand. Only, instead of cooperative hobgoblins, he found a squad of paladins interrogating a badly singed tree stump.
“The hobgoblins fled during the night,” one paladin explained. “But we liberated this camp. You’re welcome.”
Grindle nodded stiffly. “You didn’t happen to find a sack of hides, did you?”
“No, but we found a cursed cookbook. It exploded.”
Figures.
Chapter Three: The Great Hobgoblin Safari
With diplomacy off the table, Grindle went back to classic methods: tracking, ambushing, and screaming while flailing a sword.
He ventured into the Dread Canyons, where hobgoblins ran a smuggling ring involving rare cheeses. He survived three ambushes, one stampede of feral goats, and a brief romance with a smuggler named Tilda who turned out to be half-troll.
It took three weeks, two hospital stays, and one unpaid invoice to finally collect his hides.
Twenty-five, tanned, dried, and folded like towels.
He packed them in a chest, strapped it to a mule, and started the long journey to the Cracked Tower.
Chapter Four: Blorbo the Bureaucratic
Blorbo’s tower leaned like it had given up halfway through standing. It was covered in vines, stray feathers, and post-it notes enchanted with passive-aggressive reminders.
Grindle knocked.
The door opened itself.
“ENTER, DELIVERER OF LEATHERY PROMISES,” boomed a voice from within.
Blorbo was exactly what Grindle expected and also nothing like it. He was short, rotund, wearing spectacles with no lenses and a robe made entirely of tax forms.
“You have the hides?”
“I do,” Grindle said, dropping the chest with a dramatic thud.
Blorbo rubbed his hands together. “Ah, splendid. Perfect for my next project.”
“Which is…?”
The wizard looked over his shoulder and gestured at what looked like a massive reclining chair built entirely of random monster parts.
“I’m upholstering a throne.”
Grindle blinked. “Made of hobgoblin hide?”
“Soft, durable, ethically questionable. Just my style.”
Grindle handed over the receipt. “I want this in writing. I’m not doing this again unless there’s hazard pay.”
Blorbo signed with a quill dipped in beetle ink. “Done.”
As Grindle turned to leave, the wizard paused. “Before you go…”
“No.”
“You don’t even know what I was going to ask.”
“You were going to ask for 12 gelatinous cube cores and one sentient lemon. I’m out.”
Blorbo pouted. “Fine. I’ll ask Chuckles the Merciless. He still owes me a favor.”
Epilogue: What Lies in the Throne
Blorbo did, in fact, upholster his throne.
It was glorious. Hideously comfortable. Magically self-warming. He called it the Seat of Shrewdness and used it to preside over the Guild of Inconvenient Sorcerers.
Grindle, meanwhile, took a vacation in the Windy Isles, where no one had ever heard of hobgoblins or enchanted furniture.
He was halfway through his second coconut cocktail when a messenger pigeon landed on his shoulder.
The note read:
“Bring Blorbo 12 mimics disguised as ottomans. Or ELSE.”
Grindle screamed into the sea.
