I am Boom Boom, the goblin alchemist whose name echoes like the thunder of my bubbling cauldrons in the damp warrens of the Underhills. At thirty-eight summers—old enough to have seen a dozen chieftains rise and fall, yet spry as a shadow in the gloom—my skin is a mottled green, etched with scars from a hundred mishaps, the worst a jagged line across my left cheek where a vial shattered in my frenzy. My eyes, wide and yellow, dart ceaselessly, for the potion I brewed and guzzled five years past sharpened my senses to a razor's edge: I see the quiver of a spider's web from fifty paces, hear the whisper of gold in a merchant's pouch, feel the pulse of the earth like it's my own heartbeat. It left me twitchy, though, my fingers—long and nimble as a thief's—fidgeting with vials and herbs, always gathering, always mixing. I wear a tattered cloak stitched from rat hides and beetle wings, pockets bulging with fungi, crystals, and the bones of forgotten beasts, my wild black hair tied back with sinew, smelling of sulfur and secrets.

What I crave is the crown of the goblin king, to rule these squabbling clans from the throne of jagged obsidian in the Great Cavern. No more bowing to fat warlords who bash skulls for sport; I'll brew an empire on elixirs and cunning. But the other goblins fear me—call me 'Mad Boom' for the explosions that light the tunnels—and the current king, Grimgut, has his brute enforcers who smash any upstart's lab. My enhanced sight reveals their plots, but it overwhelms me too, visions of swirling colors and hidden poisons that drive me to isolate in my alcove, muttering to the flames.

So I scheme: slipping through the dark with fingers quicker than a blink, I harvest rare moonbloom from the surface world and distill it into potions that bend minds or mend flesh. I peddle them to the ambitious, forging alliances in whispers, sabotaging rivals with subtle toxins that mimic cave-ins. It works because no one suspects the scrawny alchemist; they see a jittery fool, not the spider weaving their doom. My quirk? I punctuate every sentence with a sharp clap of my hands, mimicking the boom of success, startling even the rats.

Yet conflicts gnaw at me like worms in the roots. The potion's gift is a curse—nights haunted by sensory storms, where every drip echoes like doom. Grimgut's spies close in, and my 'allies' betray for a sniff of power. In the end, as I stand amid the fumes of my greatest brew, challenging the king in his hall, the cauldron erupts not in victory, but in a blaze that consumes us both—my dream ashes, but the legend of Boom Boom burns eternal in goblin tales, a warning to the ambitious.