My planet is infested with Goblins

Grand Marshal Rakhar Veyr had expected the first serious obstacle on Edras to come from armies, fortifications, or perhaps one of the local gods Noah had warned them about.

Instead, one of the most persistent problems facing the Divine Expeditionary Army was spread across several tables inside a converted chamber near the forward headquarters.

Maps, letters, tax records, merchant ledgers, military papers, religious texts, road signs copied by scouts, and documents recovered from the dead covered nearly every available surface.

The Reclamation Corps had gathered anything containing writing because all of it might eventually prove useful, but most of the material remained nothing more than carefully preserved symbols that no goblin could yet understand.

Rakhar found the situation unacceptable. Viridian was fighting an enemy whose soldiers could be defeated, whose villages could be taken, and whose roads could be mapped, yet the words written on a piece of paper could still hide more information than an entire captured settlement.

Chief Scholar Neris stood beside the largest table, sorting documents into categories with the help of several military scribes. The old goblin had spent most of his life studying ancient Viridian dialects and inscriptions left behind by tribes and civilizations absorbed into the empire centuries earlier.

He had been assigned to the expedition because military planners believed that experience with unfamiliar writing might help once Viridian encountered another civilization.

Neris had already identified repeated symbol groups and several patterns that appeared frequently in administrative records, but he had not yet managed to give those patterns reliable meanings.

"We know this sequence appears repeatedly beside quantities," Neris explained as he tapped one document with a thin wooden rod.

"This group may refer to a location, office, or title. These characters appear often in records taken from Brackenford, but without knowing the spoken language, we are still guessing."

Rakhar picked up one of the pages and studied the dense writing.

"How long would it take if you had nothing except documents?"

Neris considered the question before answering.

"Months if the language happens to resemble something we already understand. Years if it does not."

Rakhar returned the page to the table.

"We cannot wait for years."

"I understand."

Numbers had proven easier than words because quantities could sometimes be compared against sacks of grain, coin totals, or repeated entries in merchant accounts.

Maps were also useful because scouts could identify rivers, roads, and settlements they had already seen in person. Even so, those fragments were not enough. Viridian could not interrogate a document, and staring at the same symbols for another week would not suddenly reveal how they were pronounced.

Rakhar looked toward the intelligence officer standing near the entrance.

"What prisoners do we have who might be useful?"

"Several farmers and travelers, Grand Marshal. We also captured a merchant and his assistant yesterday. The patrol reported that the merchant carried ledgers and was reading from them before he was taken."

Neris immediately turned his attention toward the officer.

"Bring the merchant."

The prisoner arrived under guard less than half an hour later. He was a middle-aged human with a beard beginning to gray and clothing that remained noticeably better made than that of the farmers Rakhar had seen during earlier reports. His wrists were bound in front of him, and his expression changed the moment he entered the chamber.

He had clearly expected interrogation, imprisonment, or perhaps execution. Instead, he found himself surrounded by goblin scholars, stacks of documents, copied maps, writing tools, and soldiers standing quietly against the walls.

Rakhar watched him for a moment before looking at Neris.

"Begin."

Neris placed a wooden cup filled with water on the table and pointed toward it.

"Vesh."

The merchant stared at him without responding.

Neris pointed toward himself, repeated the Viridian word for water, then indicated the cup again before gesturing toward the prisoner.

The human frowned.

Neris lifted the cup, drank from it, and repeated the word before offering the cup across the table. The merchant hesitated, then accepted it and drank. Neris pointed at the cup again and waited.

The merchant finally understood.

"Water."

Several goblin scribes immediately began writing.

Neris repeated the sound with an awkward accent.

"Water."

The merchant corrected him, and Neris tried again until the pronunciation was close enough to be recognized. The scribes recorded the sound using Viridian phonetic notation, leaving space beside it for the written Caldris form once they found one.

The same process continued with other objects. Bread, sword, horse, house, fire, road, man, coin, shield, grain, knife, boot, and map were introduced one after another. Progress remained slow, but each successful word made the next one easier because the merchant gradually understood what the goblins were trying to do.

His fear did not disappear, but confusion began giving way to cautious cooperation.

The breakthrough came when Neris placed one of the captured merchant ledgers before him.

The prisoner immediately recognized the writing and began reading parts of it silently. Neris pointed toward a sack of grain, then toward the Viridian phonetic record of the Caldris word they had just learned. After that, he gestured toward the ledger.

The merchant searched through the page before pointing at a particular group of symbols.

Neris stared at the word for several seconds, then looked toward his assistants.

"Copy it exactly."

The scribes began a new ledger with three columns. The first contained the Viridian meaning. The second contained an approximate Caldris pronunciation. The third reproduced the Caldris characters themselves. The first crude Viridian-Caldris dictionary had begun.

Rakhar remained in the chamber as the process accelerated. The merchant became more cooperative once he realized that answering questions earned him food, water, and protection from unnecessary harm.

Objects gave way to simple concepts. Neris pointed toward one of the armored guards and received the Caldris word for soldier. He pointed toward a nearby doorway and learned another term.

A captured road map produced words associated with river, village, east, and west, though some required repeated confirmation before the scholars were willing to record them as reliable.

Eventually Neris placed several government documents beside one another and pointed toward a sequence that appeared on all of them.

The merchant read it aloud.

"Caldris."

Rakhar’s attention sharpened.

Neris repeated the word carefully.

"Caldris."

The merchant nodded.

Neris pointed toward the written word, then toward the map, then toward the prisoner himself.

"Caldris?"

The merchant seemed to understand what was being asked. He pointed toward his own chest, then spread one hand over the map and gestured broadly toward the world outside the chamber.

"Caldris."

Neris looked toward Rakhar.

"That is probably the kingdom."

"It matches what we were told before deployment."

The scholars marked the word as confirmed enough for military use. For the first time, Viridian possessed both the spoken and written name of the kingdom it was invading.

The merchant soon began trying to ask questions of his own. At first his words were meaningless, but one sound repeated several times as he pointed toward the goblins, then toward the eastern wall, and finally toward the distant horizon. Neris listened carefully before looking toward Rakhar.

"I think he is asking where."

The merchant pointed at one of the scholars.

"Goblin?"

Neris had already taught him the Viridian word for their race by pointing toward himself.

The human repeated it, then gestured outward again.

"Goblin... where?"

Neris glanced toward Rakhar.

"We may be able to answer with gestures."

Rakhar shook his head.

"No. We learn about them. They have no idea about us."

He had no intention of explaining that Viridian came from another planet, that a portal connected Edras to a civilization of more than twenty-seven million goblins, or that thirty thousand soldiers had been assigned to this campaign.

Caldris’s ignorance was one of Viridian’s greatest advantages, and Rakhar saw no reason to surrender it simply because a prisoner had become cooperative.

"Give them nothing about our origin, our numbers, or the portal."

Neris nodded.

The merchant was returned to guarded quarters after several hours, but the work continued. Another prisoner was brought into the chamber, this time a Caldris soldier captured during a skirmish near a road checkpoint.

He was younger than the merchant and far less willing to cooperate, but the moment the scholars began placing military equipment in front of him, his usefulness became obvious.

Neris showed him a sword, shield, spear, helmet, and officer’s insignia. Each object produced another word or partial meaning. Some terms were difficult because the scholars could not tell whether the soldier was naming the object, the rank associated with it, or the unit that used it. Rakhar repeatedly ordered them to mark uncertain translations rather than forcing convenient conclusions.

Eventually Neris placed a piece of equipment recovered from one of the professional soldiers killed at Brackenford onto the table. The prisoner reacted immediately and spoke several words.

The scholars compared the sounds against the merchant’s vocabulary and their existing notes.

After repeated questioning, Neris looked toward Rakhar.

"We believe this term means company."

Rakhar studied the insignia.

"So the troops at Brackenford belonged to a formal military unit."

"That is what the language suggests."

The battlefield evidence had already pointed toward the same conclusion, but confirmation from Caldris terminology gave the intelligence greater weight.

The humans sent to Brackenford had not been merely better-equipped local guards. They belonged to an organized military structure.

The success of the session convinced Rakhar that the work could not remain dependent on a handful of scholars.

"Create a permanent language section."

Neris looked pleased.

"Under military intelligence?"

"Yes. Scholars, scribes, cartographers, and scouts with good memories. All captured documents come here first. Do not let individual units keep papers because they think they might be useful later."

Rakhar then ordered selected scouts to begin learning the most basic Caldris vocabulary as soon as the scholars were confident in it. They did not need to speak fluently.

Recognizing words such as road, bridge, village, soldier, fort, east, west, number, and commander could already make reconnaissance more effective.

The intelligence officer standing nearby raised another question.

"What do we do with cooperative prisoners after questioning?"

Rakhar answered without hesitation.

"Keep them alive."

"For how long?"

"As long as they remain useful. Feed them properly and keep them healthy enough to read, speak, and answer questions. We gain nothing by damaging the very things we captured them for."

The officer nodded.

Rakhar continued.

"Send a standing order to the advance units. Priests, merchants, officials, scribes, officers, and anyone seen reading or writing should be captured when practical. A literate prisoner may be worth more than ten dead soldiers."

The order began moving through the forward command before the session had even ended.

By evening, the language chamber had become busier than when Rakhar entered. The scholars had assembled several dozen reasonably reliable words and many more uncertain ones.

The merchant was brought back briefly to confirm pronunciations and written forms, and one of the younger scholars attempted the first simple exchange that did not rely entirely on gestures.

He pointed toward the prisoner.

"Merchant?"

The human stared at him before slowly nodding.

"Yes. Merchant."

The scholar pointed toward himself.

"Goblin."

The merchant looked around the chamber at the organized documents, maps, guards, and writing tables before repeating the word.

"Goblin."

The exchange was simple, but everyone in the room understood what had changed. A barrier that had seemed absolute that morning now had a crack running through it.

The work continued after sunset under the steady light of mana lamps. Scholars compared tax records against numbers, merchant ledgers against known goods, and military papers against terminology supplied by the captured soldier.

Entire sentences remained beyond them, but individual words had begun emerging from what had once been meaningless lines.

Near midnight, Neris approached Rakhar with a partially annotated document recovered from Brackenford.

"We still cannot translate the sentence, but these words appear repeatedly together."

He pointed toward four entries they believed they understood with reasonable confidence.

Province, soldiers, and west had already been identified through repeated comparison. The fourth was different.

"This appears to be a place name."

Rakhar studied the unfamiliar group of symbols.

"What place?"

"We do not know yet."

Rakhar returned the document.

"Then keep working until you do."

He left the chamber while the scholars returned to their tables. Viridian still understood only fragments of Caldris’s language, and a proper conversation remained far beyond them, but the barrier was no longer unbroken.

Every captured letter, map, road sign, ledger, soldier, merchant, and official could now add another piece to the growing dictionary.

For the first time since entering Edras, the goblins were beginning to understand not only how Caldris fought, but how Caldris communicates.

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