by Pirateaba
The undead were gone. Few knew they’d even been here, but they were gone. Ryoka was gone. Winter had ended, and the faeries had left. Brunkr was gone. Ulrien was gone. Griffon Hunt had left.
And Ryoka was gone. She might never come back. Erin sat in her inn and heard the drum beats. There was only one thing left now, wasn’t there? They had come at last. They were here, and they weren’t a pest any longer. They were here. Here.
Goblins.
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Goblins.
Goblins?
Goblins! Goblins, Goblins, Goblins!
Goblins.
Goblins.
The word was on everyone’s lips. From the Walled Cities to the Antinium Hives, from the tribal Gnoll camps to the Human cities like Invrisil, the news had flown on the warming winds. Goblins were back.
And this time there was a Goblin Lord.
For some, the news was just the conversation of the day. Those who were hundreds or thousands of miles away took comfort in their distance. So long as this Goblin Lord was dealt with swiftly, there would be no problem for them. Now, a Goblin King? That would be disastrous, which is why the leadership or command or someone in charge was doing something about the Goblin Lord.
Right?
People closer to the Goblin issue were less sanguine about the entire affair. They demanded, sometimes loudly, that something be done. Because the Goblins were a menace, a threat, a pest that had to be wiped out every few years. Only, unlike plagues of cockroaches, rats, mites or other vermin, Goblins were a lot more dangerous. And they became something truly frightening given half a chance.
No one gave them that chance. Armies were being raised. Humans, Drakes, and a few Gnoll Tribes began making preparations to end the threat before it had fully begun. The Goblin Lord had crushed two Drake armies; so four would be sent this time. Or six. Or eight. The Humans were already fielding huge forces of their own for the Goblin Lord if he marched north.
In no one’s mind was the idea of negotiating with the Goblins, or making peace. Or defeat. Goblins would do damage, but they would die. They would always die, and it was just a matter of the cost. Everyone knew that.
Strangely, so did the Goblins. In all the commotion about their species, few people gave thought to what the Goblins were actually thinking. Oh, there was all sorts of speculation and predictions about what the Goblin Lord might do, but what he as a thinking individual thought? None.
But in three parts of Izril, so late into the night that it was becoming day, three Goblins looked up. They all had a sense. A premonition.
Because, after all, they were all of the same species. Their fates were intertwined.
—-
The first was the Goblin Lord. He looked up as his armies marched past the city of Liscor. Around him, his Goblins cheered and whooped, sending arrows towards the walls until one of his lieutenants ordered them to stop wasting ammunition.
Silent watchers on the walls watched as the Goblins passed, not returning fire. They might have against a lesser host, but none dared provoke the flood of Goblins in black armor. The Goblin Lord’s army was tens of thousands strong and they marched across the plains. Northwards.
The Goblin Lord turned his head, seeing almost perfectly in the darkness. Liscor’s walls rose to his left. He sneered at them, at the Drakes hiding behind stone. But he did not order his army towards the walls. He had orders.
There was a structure on one of the hills closest to the city. An inn, a very odd one with some kind of tower. The Goblins shot flaming arrows at it, grumbling when the arrows failed to set the building aflame. Indeed, some of the arrows bounced off the glass windows, which was rather unusual. But it was too close to the city to loot, and was probably empty, anyways.
So the army marched on, northwards. The Goblin Lord sighed. He could sense them. His people. Goblins. He was coming to claim them, by blood if necessary. And if they refused to kneel? He would have their bodies, at least.
And they knew it.
—-
Garen Redfang stalked the halls of Tremborag’s mountain, sword in hand. A few of the Goblins from his tribe followed, the ones who hadn’t joined Rags. They hung back as Garen walked forwards, his red blade at the ready.
Ahead of him, Goblins got out of the way. Hobs, regular Goblins—when he had first arrived, they had treated him like any ordinary Hob or an inferior outsider. Several fatal duels had established his rank.
Garen was angry. He was always angry. He hated sitting in the mountain, hated that Rags had left and hated Tremborag. He and the Great Chieftain did not get along. But he acknowledged Tremborag’s might. And it was might they needed.
So the leader of the Redfang tribe walked. He could feel the Goblin Lord coming. Tremborag could too, which is probably why he was eating alone, roaring for females and wine. The fat Goblin had to know.
An end was coming. For Goblins. A crossroads. And though the Goblin Lord was meant to unify the tribes, Garen would never kneel to him. Never. So the Hobgoblin walked, restless. Waiting for the scent of blood on the warming winds. Waiting for war.
—-
And the last Goblin to look up and sense something on the wind was Rags. The small Goblin was listening to some of her Goblins having a farting competition and grimaced as Pyrite took the lead in a noisy—and smelly—way. She pulled her blankets over her head and growled to herself.
She couldn’t have said why she was restless. If she had to put words to it, it was probably the very smelly odors drifting on the wind towards her. In the end she sat up and shouted for the other Goblins to stop, or go somewhere else.
They did, grumbling. She was Chieftain, after all. Rags turned over in her blankets and tried to sleep. But she couldn’t. There was something on the wind. She sat up and glared at Pyrite. He shrugged apologetically.
Three Goblins, all of whom were linked. In some way, they were chosen. But what did it mean? What was their purpose? Did they have a purpose? The three sat, feeling restless and waiting. A faerie might have said their destinies drew closer, but there were none to watch and listen. Frost Faeries were leaving this world, and those that still remained did not watch Goblins. Never Goblins. They might cry if they did, and the fae did not like to weep for the past.
The next day dawned slowly. And for the Goblins of the Flooded Waters tribe, it was an interesting day. It was always interesting when their small leader woke up. They woke up, yawning, searching for food or worms or bugs to eat, and looked around. Waiting. They didn’t have a purpose, like every other species. Theirs was only survival. Their Chieftain decided what to do.
And her name was Rags.
—-
His name was Pyrite. And he had bad gas. It might have been last night’s jumbled soup containing some slightly rotting Mothbear flesh. Or it could be the tree bark he’d been munching on, or the colony of black beetles and larvae a Goblin had dug up. Pyrite had gotten a handful of them and crunched the beetles down. Or maybe it was the soap?
The Hobgoblin sat by the embers of the fire as the day fought the night. It was that ghostly hour before true day, where the light had begun to illuminate the world. The hours before birds woke up, a ghostly moment where everything seemed asleep.
He farted. The Goblins around him groaned. One threw a rock. It bounced off Pyrite’s back and the Goblin shifted. Yes, it was probably the soap.
It was high quality stuff. The Hobgoblin looked down at the lump in his hands. The Flooded Waters tribe had stolen it from a caravan a day ago. It was bright blue, nearly perfectly clear the entire way through, and smelled of sandalwood and something else. Something…turquoise.
Smells were like colors to Pyrite. Smells were taste, color, feelings—the Goblin sniffed the soap he was holding appreciatively. He nibbled at it. It certainly didn’t taste as good as it smelled.
Pyrite would be the first to admit that he wasn’t that smart. He was just a former Goblin Chieftain of a small tribe that specialized in mining. Sure, they’d done a
bit of smelting and attempted some armor crafting of their own to limited effect, but he considered himself a rather weak example of what a Chieftain could be. He wasn’t that smart about a lot of things.
For instance, he thought that soaps were a product of some plants, namely the ground up roots which, when combined with water, created a nice lather for people to use. Of course, that was some kinds of soap; it was also possible to mix leftover fat and oil with some ashes to create another variant of the stuff. That was probably what he tasted here. Pyrite’s palate detected traces of lye, which made sense since this was high-quality lye soap probably intended for the Human marketplace.
Of course, he could be completely mistaken. He wasn’t that smart. The Hobgoblin chewed thoughtfully, feeling the soap dissolve in a pleasant way in his mouth. He didn’t mind the taste. The Hob had eaten far worse things than soap. Huge insects, rocks, dirt, other dead Goblins…soap wasn’t a problem.
He didn’t need to eat the soap, strictly speaking. But if he didn’t, who would use it? Certainly not the other Goblins. Soap was a useless product to them by and large. It smelled good, but Goblins didn’t wash.
Rags did. She’d picked up the basics of hygiene somewhere and forced her Goblins to adopt a variation of it. But that was only to the extent where if a Goblin’s hands had a lot of ick stuck to them they had to swish it around in water or rub it off first. Washing each time with hot water and soap was something only other species did.
Of course, Rags might use one bar or two herself. Pyrite nibbled at a bit more soap as he thought. But she wouldn’t use much, and the other Goblins would probably cut it up, hoard the shiny fragments of soap until they got dirty, and then toss it when they got bored. Or eat it.
The last of the blue bar disappeared into Pyrite’s mouth. He grunted. This time he could definitely feel the pressure building. Yes, the soap was giving him gas. He’d heard that some kinds of soap used toxic plants, which presumably meant you weren’t supposed to eat them. But again, he was used to eating unhealthy things. He was a Goblin, and more than that, a Hobgoblin, one of the giants and leaders of his kind. He could eat almost anything.
And it was a habit for him to always chew something. Pyrite fished around in the wax bundle sitting in front of his crossed legs and came up with a red bar of soap. It was flecked with bits of yellow inside and it was semi-transparent and smelled spicy. He eyed it appreciatively and then took a bite.
He liked to eat. Eating was productive for him. It helped him build fat, and fat was important in case he fought or starved. Pyrite had no knowledge of the biological issues caused by excessive weight gain, and if he had, he wouldn’t have cared particularly much. His argument, if he’d been pressed to make it, would be simple.
Fat was important for Goblins, far more than for Humans or other races. That was because Goblins did not enjoy the security of a set food source by and large. Starvation was a facet of life, not an event to be avoided by most tribes. Additionally, Goblins had to fight for their lives on a regular basis.
Everything in the world wanted to kill them, and lacking armor that was specially crafted for their kind, a Goblin had to rely on their ability to dodge or survive something like an arrow hitting them. As Pyrite was definitely not shaped correctly for any kind of traditional armor, the layers of fat on his body were his only shield. Ergo, gaining weight was for him, a necessary task until it began to impede his movement or health in a dramatic way.
That was what he would have said if anyone asked him. But no one did. Pyrite was known to be a silent character of few words. And he wasn’t that smart.
The Hob had gotten through the red bar of soap and was looking for the pink one he’d spotted earlier when Rags woke up. He paused in the act of calculating how much the soap was worth—by his rough estimates, he’d probably eaten a few hundred gold pieces worth of the stuff, especially if it was going to be used by the nobility. The sun had risen high enough to illuminate the world and Rags was up. He could tell because she was shouting.
Up, up! Goblins stirred, groaning at the young Goblin’s voice. But they got up quickly; a slow Goblin was a dead Goblin, and faster still because they could smell food cooking.
Pyrite carefully bundled up the soap he’d been eating and lurched upright. His legs weren’t asleep though he’d been sitting for hours; he had taken care to adjust his position throughout the night and stretch them now and then. He moved quickly and slipped into the front of the line for one of the soup pots before the other Goblins could get there.
That was the beauty of Rags’ tribe. What elevated it above all others, save perhaps Tremborag’s Goblins. As the Goblins woke up and poked each other, feeling their empty stomachs grumble, there was already food. Because the [Cooks] and [Stirrers], the less advanced Goblin version of [Cook], had woken up an hour before the others and begun making food.
Organization. It was a foreign concept to most tribes. Pyrite’s belly grumbled as he sniffed the air and detected a good deal of flour, butter, and animal fats in today’s soup. Not much meat which was normal, but quite a good bit of the spices they’d stolen yesterday. The Goblins would eat well again.
And best of all, they didn’t have to eat their own dead. It was an unspoken thing among Goblins who rarely spoke anyways, but everyone knew that in times of hunger, meat was often the most plentiful food source around. But they didn’t relish that knowledge because that meant the meat they were eating was their own kind, chopped up, boiled, or sometimes eaten raw.
Of course, the Goblins ate it. But contrary to what other species might have assumed, not a single Goblin liked eating their fallen. It was something they did to survive. So given half a chance, dead Goblin would not be on the menu. Pyrite took a big bowl of soup appreciatively from the Goblin in charge of serving, sniffing it. Yes, there was nothing like non-meaty soup to raise his spirits for the day. Anyways, he liked fish more than red meat. Most Goblins did.
Rags was already sitting by her personal campfire as Pyrite approached. He didn’t bother with a spoon, but gently sipped at the bowl as he walked towards her. She was sitting on a log.
They were in a forest by a lake. It was, in fact, the same forest by the same lake they’d been camped at for quite a while. It was their semi-permanent home at this moment. For good reason.
The lake had fresh water so long as no Goblin had peed into it, and the forest had useful wood for fires, equipment, and so on. There was wildlife nearby, and the branches provided some protection from the snow and cold winds. That wouldn’t be an issue as the world continued to warm, but it had been one of the concerns that made Rags camp here.
And one last thing. The forest by the lake was placed near several smaller cities and towns. It was the perfect place to strike from. Already, the Flooded Waters Goblins had raided several caravans on the road and plundered a few farms.
Nonviolently. That was to say, the Goblins came in, aimed crossbows, chased the Humans away and didn’t kill anyone unless they were attacked first. It was a good system. And it had made their little tribe rich on the spoils, even if what they got was sometimes less useful, like soap.
“Pyrite.”
Rags was sitting on her log. Pyrite sat in the dirt, noting that she’d already gotten halfway through her bowl. One of the perks of being Chieftain was that she didn’t have to line up. That was right and proper. He grunted at her, but said nothing. She eyed him.
She was probably holding a grudge from last night. Pyrite still felt gassy, but held it in as he ate. Rags looked at him, and then around her bustling camp.
“Last night. Anything happened?”
She still pronounced the words with difficulty, but her ability to speak in the common tongue was far better than it had been. She was a quick learner. It had taken Pyrite years to learn how to speak, and that was with a dedicated teacher. He shook his head.
“Silent, Chieftain.”
That was all he said throughout breakfast. When he’d finished his bowl of soup, Pyrit
e put it by the fire to be picked up by one of the Goblins on bowl-picking-up duty and opened the satchel of soaps again. He selected the pink one and Rags edged upwind from him.
Why didn’t the soaps make his farts smell good? It was a mystery. Pyrite sniffed the soap. Some kind of perfume. Too cloying for his tastes. He began to nibble it anyways.
In a few minutes, a Goblin passed by their fire. He picked up the bowl Pyrite had put on the ground and the one Rags tossed at him. He wandered off with the stack of bowls, bringing them towards a Goblin who was filling up more bowls with soup for Goblins in line.
Pyrite watched the Goblin go off. He must have had the duty to pick up empty bowls for the day. And the Goblin pouring soup had that duty as well. No matter how many times he saw it, the Hobgoblin was always impressed. Because the fact that those two Goblins had woken up and remembered what they were supposed to do was a sign that Rags was a great Chieftain.
She had brought organization and systems to this tribe. She and she alone had done that. No other tribe save for Tremborag’s had implemented daily work rosters, much less a rotating duty schedule. And Tremborag’s tribe had only developed such systems through the efforts of many, many Hobgoblins and out of sheer necessity. But Rags had come up with it all on her own. With her head.
She was a genius. The other Goblins knew it. It wasn’t that they used that word lightly; most of them didn’t know what that word meant at all. But it was clear that Rags thought where other Goblins didn’t. She’d taught them how to make crossbows, created a unit of Goblins who used the deadly twenty-foot-long pikes made out of wood and scrap metal, and found a way to scavenge and steal enough food each day so that they didn’t have to eat their own.
And she was so young. Pyrite glanced at Rags. Yes, young. He wasn’t sure how young and she had never said, if she even knew, but she was clearly outstanding. She was like he was, in fact. Extraordinary. Pyrite only wondered why she hadn’t become a Hob yet.
