‘I think I finally have it, Velora.’

  [Are you sure? We’ve spent hours going over a bunch of concepts already. Football, Basketball, Baseball, Soccer, Handball, Track and Field and all of its subsidiaries, Cricket, and a few others you barely spent a second on. Is this another one that you’ll explore and then give up on?]

  ‘Oh, ye of little faith! Progress is all about failure and without it we would never move forward or something. Anyway, I think I finally got it this time for real. Instead of trying to replicate a sport I know and spending time trying to explain to Goblins, I’ll just make a new one!

  ‘One that is tailored to Goblins in a way, and something that allows their natural skills with fighting and such, to shine through. At the same time, I want whatever specific skills developed in this new sport to be transferable to fighting.’

  [Hm. That actually sounds like a good idea.]

  ‘I’ll ignore the deeper meaning of what you just said and move forward for the sake of progress…anyway, I’ll be calling it Gobbo Ball!’

  [Explain this…Gobbo Ball.]

  ‘Alright then. Well, I’ve taken concepts of a few of those sports and kinda brought them together. Essentially, there will be a team of 5 Goblins going against another team of 5 Goblins, and they will be trying to score a ball.

  ‘It will be in an arena of sorts, and the ball will be placed in the middle, once the signal for play is given, both teams will have to fight for the ball, and then try to score it on the other teams’ zone.

  ‘That zone will be some type of horizontal column where it will have a small opening just barely larger than the ball, and for the team with the ball, they have the task of trying to place it there, while other team will have to defend.

  ‘The ball can either be placed by hand directly into that hole, or be thrown in, if they are accurate enough. Once the ball reaches in, that is counted as a point for the scoring team, and for the defending team if they manage to thwart the attempt on goal, they receive half a point.

  ‘To win the game, one team needs to be the first to reach the 5-point mark, but there will also be some type of time limit for the total game, so the game doesn’t go on forever. If for some reason the timer runs out and the game is tied, then both teams will have a chance to shoot the ball into the hole from a certain distance until one side misses.’

  The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  [It appears you’ve given this real thought.]

  ‘Of course I have, I want a safe but exciting game to be played.’

  [I’m sure you have a lot more to think about then. To ensure real safety then clear rules need to be defined.]

  ‘Yes…that’s probably what’s going to take the longest.’

  And it did.

  Rick and Velora quite literally spent the next 3 days thinking up all of the little rules they could think of to ensure all possible scenarios and situations before, during, and after the game would be covered.

  Things like the exact size and shape of the area, the little scoring column device Rick wanted, the ‘fighting’ that would be allowed, a referee of all things, potential penalties, and so many more rules were in place.

  By the end of the third day, the both of the had to agree that at some point they would just have to allow the games to happen to actually get a full grasp of the game. Without seeing a real-life example, it would be practically impossible to make rules for every single scenario.

  Rick himself knew that rules for sports back on Earth were still being updated when he left over a hundred years later for some of them. As the game and people or in this case Goblins, evolved, then the rules would as well.

  So, with that being said, Rick did something that caused him more nervousness than he initially believed it would. He drafted a massive document, and that itself made him almost regret coming up with the idea, but he pushed through and then had the aides that worked in his home to make 12 copies and then…they were distributed to the Chiefs.

  Of course, all Rick wanted to do was get some feedback and have them fill in any gaps in the rules they might’ve missed since they wouldn’t have any preconceived notions about sports that he had.

  Plus, they were far older than he was and thus had a lot more experience.

  But that’s when Rick realized that they would now know about his idea to not only introduce sports to the Goblins, but the created sport itself…the name of it…the rules…and everything involved.

  He couldn’t help but be nervous.

  Rick wasn’t a tyrant.

  Just because he wanted to do something, it didn’t mean he would force that decision on his Goblins, especially not something that was technically for leisure like sports. Of course, at the end of the day this was a monarchy and not a democracy, so the Goblins would always move to his will, but Rick was still Rick.

  Despite being a King that had looked in the face of death many times and introduced it to Gang Green time after time, met two of the strongest beings on the entire Planet, and so much more, Rick was still Rick.

  Of course, he would be a little worried about the fact that the Chiefs could very well think the whole Gobbo Ball sport thing was stupid. He had no doubt that they would try to bring his wish to fruition regardless of how they felt, but if they didn’t like it, then how would he have the heart to push through with it?

  So, over the next few days Rick sat with nervousness and worry clouding his mind as the Chiefs who were rotating at the fronts took turns reading the dossier titled ‘Gobbo Ball’.

  It took some time for them to fully wrap their minds around the concept, and while they weren’t foreign to the word ‘fun’, things like sports weren’t in their vocabulary. But…based on all of their reactions…Rick’s nervousness will soon shift from that to something else.