The Wagon of Doom as told by Arbre Trebuchet

I shall tell the tale of handed down through the generations of goblins....

A tale of mystery and terror...

The tale of... "The Wagon of Doom!"

Three goblins one day set out to prove their passage into adulthood, seeking to raid among the vile humans...

The three brothers were brave... For goblins, and true to each other... Or at least as much as quarrelsome goblins can be...

After leaving the noisesome warren where they and a few hundred of their kind lived, they set out for a village many leagues away...

Or at least, it was a far distance in goblin leagues... Which is a far bit smaller than normal leagues. They have short legs you see.

Upon reaching the village, the squat little goblins found a most marvelous find...

A Goblin King's ransom atop a hill, laden with a fortune...

A two-wheeled cart with its front bars laid to rest on the ground, overflowing with bounty: fruits, vegetables, bread, cloth and grain alcohol...

Well, after they woke up the one that fainted, the three snuck up in the late dusk of the day to take this for their own...

Greed, for goblins, is a virtue and not a vice...

And these three, were goblins ready for sainthood...

Eagerly they scrambled into and over the cart, trying to steal everything they could. They jammed loaves of bread into their mouths, rings of bologna down their pants and bottles of whiskey beneath their arms.

One among them. A particularly foul fat goblin, whose name translated into the common tongue was: "Chunk", was the greediest of them all...

It was this Chunk who spied the shaped blocks of wood beneath the wheels of the cart and sought to claim them...

Now, goblins, for all their copious faults, DO know how to make fire. And in the gathering dusk, the three lit torches to aid in their raiding.

Chunk eagerly grabbed the blocks and yanked them free, stuffing them into his pockets...

Above him, the two others quarreled over a jar of pickled herring, rocking the cart dangerously....

Well, our goblins were not bright. The wagon being on the top of a hill, with its blocks removed, began to roll down it...

One of the goblins fighting atop the wagon dropped a bottle of grain alcohol, smashing it all over a bundle of firewood and himself...

The other began to bash him over the head with his flaming torch... And proceeded to set the wagon ablaze...

Chunk, noticing the wagon was rolling decided to do the wise thing...

instead of waiting for it to roll over him or dash aside, he ran out in front of it.

 And the other continued to beat him with the flaming brand, trying to put him out...

Chunk, the fattest and laziest of them, was least qualified to outrun the cart as it barreled down the hill and in the direction of their underground home...

To those goblins returning to their warren after hunting for raccoon and weasel, it was a sight out of their myths...

At least one returning party watched in awe as the blazing tempest rolled towards them, a fat goblin screaming doom and destruction. IT looked like the hot abyss was coming for them on spokes, "Hell on Wheels", quite literally.

Goblin legends told of a great, flaming skywagon that would descend and destroy them.... Or at least, it was close enough to terrify them...

The hurdling cart even had their great evil god, Mephibboo, riding atop it and blazing with infernal light...

Or at least, a hapless, flaming goblin being bashed by a stick...

Chunk was, of course, the great prophet, come to warn them. He just was doing it in a far greater hurry than most stories told..

Soon the warren was in a panic, with goblins racing about, their horror illuminated in the racing cart.

Of course, so stricken were they, that the thought of dodging from the cart was quite forgotten...

For them, when the cart smashed into the noisesome mob, firey debris and a large quantity of flaming grain alcohol everywhere, the end was there for most of them...

Goblins in other warrens whisper around the fire of the great omen... Of the punishment that the god of the underworld inflicted on them for their 'ungobbyness'...

So, to this day, the people in the nearby village no longer worry about goblins stealing from them in the night... And lament the loss of their cart loaded for market....

The End.