You are Algernon the goblin. Last week, while trawling through the upper levels looking for a giant rat to eat, you found a dead body. It was one of the menfolk, skewered by one of the spear traps you set for your hoblin overlords. Usually, you would have dragged the corpse back to the lair and started the pot, for manflesh is a rare delicacy in the dungeon and is almost as good as the roasted pigs the hoblins sometimes feast on (when they can snatch them from the menfolk who live above) and certainly better than rat. This one, however, was little more than skin on bones, hardly worth the effort of butchering. Something about it also compelled you to keep its existence hidden. Maybe it was the way the spear had perfectly penetrated its throat--like a thread through a needle's eye--or how its eyes were still wide in mortal surprise. An aesthetic charm which you could not bring yourself to spoil. You were a romantic, you realize now, even before the transformation.

You dragged the body to a secret room you had discovered years ago, which even the hoblins do not know about. You had discovered it quite by accident, looking for a discreet place where you could relieve yourself (you've never been able to do the business among company). The urgency of nature's call had forced you into the nearest blind alley. There the merry stream of your emiction, trickling into ancient grooves, revealed a secret switch, which, urged on by goblin curiosity (the cause of death of many a goblin), you gladly toed. The stone wall before you groaned and rumbled, rotating on a hidden hinge, revealing a room curiously bereft of all smell and taste (no doubt some old Gnommish enchantment). From that moment on, it became a refuge, a place to retreat from the demands of the dungeon, as well as a store for your most valued possessions.

There you brought the body, and spent a good hour in its careful arrangement, in the course of which you discovered a phial of pitch-black substance, of the pleasant consistency of snot. Without the least ceremony, you downed the entirety of it in a single pull. Your first thought, as you clutched your throat and thrashed on the ground, was that, for poison, it had a rather sweet taste, not unlike the darkberries that grow near Lizard Lake, two levels down, from which your cousin can make a strong drink that the hoblins enjoy (for which your cousin holds a high place among the goblins).