MBGSP Chpt 116-118

Here are this weeks' advance chapters for MBGSP

Just a reminder, the story is going on a 1-month hiatus after next week's updates so that I can work on War Horses.

Chapter 116 - Huntsville Hunters

After George calmed down about Armstrong eating his prisoner (mostly because George himself had wanted to eat him), he left to coordinate with the scrappers on the rescue mission for his king. I sat with Sourfang and Rufus to figure out our next move.

I had tried to make peace with the javeline, perhaps naively, in an appeal to my better nature and make allies rather than enemies on Rava. I was less inclined to offer the elves that courtesy now that they’d also greeted us with aggression. Once bitten, twice shy, after all. They and the humans that used goblin tongues for herbal stomach pain remedies could get stuffed as far as I cared. Especially if they never even bothered to try calcium bicarbonate as a first resort and went straight to the body parts of a sentient creature.

Rufus, the Ifrit, and the orcs had proved that there were allies to be found and friendships to be forged on Rava. But none of them, it seemed, would come from the northwest coast where the men of Habberport sent pigs and elves to hunt us down. Even Rufus seemed reluctant to revisit the city.

“They may not have figured out exactly what I’m up to out here,” he said. “But they know the ceramics didn’t come from the Ifrit. A goblin king has the prince worried, no doubt about it. I know you for a creature driven by knowledge and not of greed or hunger. But they will not see it this way. If the elves are here in force, it bodes ill. If they learn you’re consorting with, well…” Rufus glanced at Sourtooth, who scowled.

“They have to be dealt with,” I agreed, heading off the potential for insult. I knew Rufus didn’t have a positive impression of the orcs. Which made sense. He was a trader and a merchant, and they were a society of moneyless raiders.

The old orc grumbled under his breath before speaking up. “My lads you’ll need, should you wish a good show against this menace,” said Sourtooth.

The now empty cage lay discarded and forgotten. I looked up at the old orc. “Because you’re good at hunting elves?”

“Because we’re good at hunting beasts. What you described is elf magic. A controlling swarm whose venom addles mind and tugs nerve. They will command the beasts of the bog to multiply their strength. I’ll send word to the Dawn as well. Lura Sunstrider may spare hunters to vouchsafe your promise.”

I nodded. “First things first, Rufus. I don’t want you caught up in this. I don’t know exactly how their swarms work, but I do know goblins are immune to their venom. What about orcs?” I turned to Sourtooth.

“Immune to mind-magic. Too headstrong, we, to be swayed by wiggled fingers and fancy words—be they magic or manners.”

I turned back to Rufus.

“Can you say the same?”

Rufus looked askance. “I have some natural resistance skills to venom. Badger.”

“But not outright immunity?”

He shook his head.

“Then you’re better off at Village Apollo—or, better yet, would you take a canoneer and some ifrit back to the City of Brass with a shipment of ceramics? We have to plead our case, and we can’t do that if it looks like we’re holding the exiles hostage. The longer we delay, the longer the idea that we’re kidnappers has to cement in their head. Er…”

They didn’t have heads. Smolder in their thoughts, maybe? Too many human colloquialisms referenced body parts that didn’t apply to the ifrit..

“I can do that,” said Rufus. “But I can’t promise you the king will listen. I’ll catch the next supply run back to the bluff.”

The wild-marked dwarf pushed to his feet and swung his oversized bag up onto his back. “Fare well, and good luck, o’ king. I hope to return with good news and potential profits.”

I leaned back. “There’s still the elves. What’s their end-state, here?”

“That’s easy, boss,” said Armstrong. “They want you.”

I raised an eyebrow, but Sourtooth nodded. “Right your scrapper is. They seek the renewed trade of goblin ear—a practice which will return only with your capture. Alive, at that, since killing you means killing too, their source of what they seek.”

“I’m the proverbial golden goose,” I said. “So they want to keep the population in check, and me off in a cage somewhere I can’t influence things. Attacking our infrastructure draws us out, forces us to waste time, material, and goblin lives. They’re trying to spread us thin.”

“Divide and conquer,” said Sourtooth.

“We have a similar strategy where I’m from. But we need a strong foothold.” I thought for a moment. “Does that mean I should stay here?”

Sourtooth shook his head. “Staying still lets them figure out where you are and mount a mission to take you—playing to their strengths. Best stay mobile. Your airships and choppers they are equipped to deal with not. They will have somewhere secure out of which to sortie.”

 “Ringo’s island, Daytona,” I said, thinking of the beast defenders on the beaches and the swarm that rose from the fort to attack us. “It still has walls and infrastructure. It can be defended, and if we take it, it gives us a staging point for aircraft and watercraft to defend against Habberport’s next push. We’ll hit that and put Ringo back in his hall. We need to take the fight to the elves before they penetrate the forest. It’s bad enough that they’re hampering the harvest of kerosene and iron. If they made it on top of the bluff, they could do real damage.”

“Wings, they’d need,” said Sourtooth. “Both for the bluff and your flying fortresses. Great hawks and glide-paws in the bog will get them over your walls and onto the deck. But suited to fighting your weapons of smoke and iron bullets, are neither. They will need something more.”

“Ok, so we start clearing out airborne predators around Huntsville,” I said. “The scrapper patrol boats can handle that. Especially now that we’ve got bug zappers. With some extra orc muscle along, the bewitched elf animals will have a blunted impact.”

Which still left the problem of the elves themselves. Sending out swarms and familiars left the little creatures out of the firing lane. I needed to drive the little buggers into the light where they could be stomped. But we had our next step.

I looked up at the docked airship, where I’d be coordinating the searches and offensives. It did offer a solid logistical platform—an eagle-eyed view of the swamp from which to direct efforts. But two-way communication still hampered us. I whistled for a runner. A goblin trotted up.

“Have Sally join me on the airship, tell her to bring magnets and wires.”

Chapter 117 - Spark of Ingenuity

<Your tribe has decreased to 903 members>

<Your tribe has increased to 944 members>

<Increasing your tribe size has unlocked a new Goblin Variant.>

I sat up in the cuddle puddle. A new variant? What was the milestone?

<The new variant was unlocked at 942 members.>

Why 942? Why not 1,000?

<Have you gotten the impression goblins work in round numbers?>

Fair point. What are the choices?

<You may select one of the following: Goblin sporeite - a speech-capable goblin skilled at identifying and cultivating edible fungus. Selecting this goblin variant enables the agricultural subtr—>

Are you serious! Now you’re offering me agriculture? After I traipsed up and down the badlands?! Literally days after I’ve already solved the food crisis? Now I know you’re doing this on purpose.

<New variant choices are randomly selected from a pool of available subspecies for whom your tribe meets the requirements.>

I groaned and rubbed my face. This was typical of System. Though, agriculture was still useful even with hunting rights, even if it didn’t pay off for months. Just how many variants are in this pool?

<Information on variants is available upon unlock.>

Ok. Rephrasing the question, then. I knew there were variant triggers based on both tribe size and accomplishments. The choice for canoneers or partizans had come from beating the javeline, and the choice for zealots had come from forcefully assimilating a tribe using a lieutenant instead of my natural goblin king mojo.

What triggered the taskmaster option?

<Progressing through simple stone tools added taskmasters to the variant pool.>

And the wranglers?

<Successfully defeating a beast creature of at least level 5.>

The Igni were obviously from the furnaces. What about Scrappers? We’ve seen them in other tribes as well.

<You did not technically unlock them. But launching a successful ambush that defeats a hominid creature of at least level 10 adds them to the variant pool.>

What if tribes don’t have a king to choose?

<New variants are randomly selected based on available subspecies for which the tribe meets the requirements.>

Interesting. Explained why scrappers were so common. I bet the other tribes got them from brushing up against the javeline. There were definitely rutters and maulers above level 10.

What’s my other choice?

<Goblin sparker - a goblin skilled in zap’em  applications. These goblins will receive a bonus to crafting zap devices or using zap-based weaponry. These goblins have whiskers sensitive to zap waves.>

I straightened. Friggen radio goblins? You enjoy making these choices as difficult as possible, don’t you?

<I deny everything.>

Ugh. This was agonizing. But at least System hadn’t sprung the choice on me while I was drunk again. Mushrooms as a staple food source made a lot of sense—they could grow vertically, thrived in forests, and didn’t need tilled land. All the timber near the village would potentially turn into food-producing resource. But that was also timber we were chopping as fast as Buzz’ axe and saw teams could cut and strip.

Still, nearly every aspect of equipment in the industrial revolution and beyond required electrical components. The ifrit could fill some shortfalls where computing power would have bridged gaps on earth, but the ifrit couldn’t make a transistor. The goblins could blow glass for bulbs, but only a select few of Sally’s engineers actually understood that the wires hooked to a generator were making them glow. The tech tree was simply becoming beyond the grasp of non-variants.

At the end of the day, we’ve solved (or at least deferred) our food problem. What we suffered from right now was a communication gap to communicate between both long and short distances. A variant specialized in electricity with some built-in radio functionality would help us cover that and be critical when it came to actually putting together the compressors needed for jet and rocket aircraft—plus everything else that relied on electricity.

I rubbed my eyes. Give me the sparkers.

<21 goblin sparkers have been added to your tribe>

I pulled myself from the sleeping mound and made my way out to the main courtyard at Huntsville. The airship, Gemini, gently swayed in the tower mooring. The yard was otherwise quiet, except the scrappers and wranglers on the night watch, making sure bog creatures, or now elves, didn’t come over or through the walls. I thought about what Sourtooth said—that they’d be looking for flying creatures. Hawks and bats and such. I was just glad the night haunts hadn’t followed us west.

Slowly, the tribe came awake, stumbling out of the sleeping towers and flopping onto the ground, where they picked themselves up and wandered to a scat pile to relieve themselves of what remained of dinner. It wasn’t long before I saw my first sparker make an appearance. They were wide-eyed, with tufts of long white fur at the tops of their heads and a thicket of whiskers on their cheeks. With those tufts, they looked a little as though they’d been struck by lightning, themselves.

I called one over, and her eyes lit up as she recognized me.

“Welcome to the tribe,” I said. “Are you ready to get to work?”

She chittered excitedly in place.

“Do you understand the relationships behind electromagnets and current generation?”

The sparker thought for a moment, then opened her mouth. She ran her claws across her whiskers, and a sound like an electric guitar riff issued out.

“I…” I just stopped and stared. “That’s amazing. But can you speak?”

The sparker tilted her head at me, uncomprehending.

Uh oh.

System! You said this variant was speech-capable!”

<The sporeite was speech-capable. The sparker does not have the speech skill.>

What good is a radio goblin that can’t relay messages?

<All variant decisions are final.>

Is there even a taskmaster chief for these guys?

<Tribal variant roster may be accessed through the population submenu>

I knew what I’d find there. Damn, damn, damn. System was definitely doing this on purpose. And enjoying every second of it.

<I deny everything.>

I ran my hands over my face and stalked over to the cistern to stand under the cold water for a minute. Behind me, I could hear more strumming, with a few answering calls here and there. I’d created metal-head goblins that brought their own instruments. And I’d given up agriculture to do it.

<All variant decisions are final.>

Shut it, System!

Still, it wasn’t a complete disaster. They were skilled at working with electricity and that was a critical ability for the future of the tribe.

I walked back to the base of the sleeping tower, where several of the sparkers had joined an impromptu concert of sorts. They swayed back and forth as they strummed whiskers at each other. Other goblins were starting to gather around and make their best impression, though it sounded more like a bunch of cats in heat.

<Goblin Technology Unlocked: zap-core music>

The wave of understanding swept quickly through the crowd. I saw several glistening eyes. Natural metal-heads. Even the orcs were nodding and stomping along to the beat.

“Listen up,” I said, cutting off the musicians. “We’ve still got boglins to find, and elves to fight. And a day’s worth of light to work by. Let’s get cracking.”

A cheer went up in the camp, backed by a wicked guitar riff.

Chapter 118 - Apocalypse Drow

George was hesitant at first to reveal the location of King Ringo. He trusted us about as much as I trusted him, after all. But ultimately, we were an uncertainty in our loyalties, while he knew exactly where the elves stood. As a boglin, he slept mostly during the day, and was most active at dusk and dawn. By the time he woke back up, I’d had more choppers brought over from the main bluff to supplement the fan boats and retrofit them to fight the elves.

Recoilless rifles weren’t going to do us much good against anything smaller than a thundercleave, so I pulled them off and replaced them. I’d also put a series of live wires around the outside of the frame to make a sort of anti-bug cage to help deter the red swarms the elves commanded. The forges and furnaces went full-blast (sometimes literally) all day, pumping out glass, iron, and ceramic. The goblins were a manic workforce the likes of which existed nowhere on Earth, and Sally had brought over dozens more of her engineers to make use of the new materials. Huntsville was so packed that we began to run out of space.

The sparkers, like the canoneers, it seemed, were natural artists. It wasn’t long before all the choppers were festooned with tribal imagery and nose art of various forest and badlands beast jaws, of which I thoroughly approved. When it came to actually working with electricity, they were about the best wire rats I could have asked for, wriggling through the tightest spaces to route cabling and their saliva worked as a natural conductive adhesive. I wish I’d had about a dozen of them back home on Earth.

I’d set Sally to task, as well, building a basic functioning radio transmitter using diagrams rigged up by a canoneer, but she hadn’t unlocked anything by the time we were ready to push out with the boats and helicopters. We’d have to go one more night without them. Buzz’ assigned sparkers had already rigged Huntsville with inner and outer lighting, including several search-light batteries—which is how we caught the attack on our north wall coming.

A cry of alarm went out as I was securing fast one of the final connections on a chopper, with a goblin sentry banging on an iron bell, and then the boom of a wall-mounted gun going off. A few moments later, something big crashed into the gate on that side. Half the tribe flinched and looked at me.

I spun my finger in the air. “Mount up!” I shouted.

The goblins hooted and hollered, running to boats at the canal and climbing aboard choppers. Engines revved to life. I myself mounted up in the chopper I’d been working on, and for once, Armstrong didn’t complain. I guess the new anti-elf countermeasures were enough that he thought I’d be as safe in a chopper as I was on Gemini. Or maybe he just wanted to man the new guns. Either way, I pulled on the ear cups, and we lifted off.

Without the multi-stage missile and the recoilless rifle magazines, these choppers were significantly lighter. Our engines were getting more efficient as well—even if they did vibrate twice as violently in lockstep with their increased horsepower. An ifrit in the engine kept it running smooth and clean—for goblin tech, anyway, so I was reasonably sure it wouldn’t explode.

We rose above the walls and I dipped forward at the same time the portcullis hauled up and boats began to speed out of the waterway. Armstrong trained the new weapons down, and their linked spotlights illuminated the hulking form of a croc-knocker alpha and several of its smaller kin, striking the gate with coordinated shots from their bulbous tongues—too coordinated to be the natural instinct of the beasts, and they’d come further up out of the water than I’d ever seen them before. The elves’ magic was at play, here.

Defenders at the top of the wall fired down at them with rifles and tesla wasp blowguns, as well as slingers loaded with nets. The crocs started returning fire, and I saw multiple goblins struck as the alpha hit the battlements with a tongue that must have had a 100-kilo lump of iron in it. The fortifications literally shattered under its assault, sending goblins flying. Sourtooth appeared on the rampart, barking orders and rallying the defenders. His orcs were experienced beast hunters, and they started throwing javelins and heavy poppers down at the attackers. But it seemed like the croc-knockers were focused more on keeping the defenders’ heads down than breaking the gate.

What’s more, I saw other beasts behind. Two of the heavy lizard primates towed ballistas behind them, dragging the wooden weapons through the mud, with bolts that would punch right through the wooden gates. The implication that the elves could have their mind-controlled minions use devices was troubling, at best.

Where’s the elf? I wondered, scanning. The stealthy invaders wouldn’t readily show themselves—it was only by providence that the boglins had managed to capture one. Still, our primary concern was those siege weapons. I tilted us down. “Light ‘em up, Armstrong!” I shouted into the sound-powered handset.

My scrapper chief revved up the generator tied to his weapon. A pair of compression pumps began to spin, forcing air through a set of nozzles on the front. As we dipped low on our attack run, He kicked on a secondary pump which began to feed fuel into the compressors. They kicked on, pulling in even more air and fuel. The stream of aerosolized fuel met with a set of sparking live wires and ignited, sending a helical jet of flaming gas spiraling down to the swamp floor.

<Goblin Technology Unlocked: Turbid Engines>

<Goblin Component Technology Unlocked: after burn ‘ems>

<I don’t think that’s how you use those.>

It is now!

If using laminar flow principles to turn a primitive turbine engine into a goblin flamethrower wasn’t maximizing the potential of the Goblin Tech Tree, I don’t know what was. The first ballista burst into flame, along with the lizard who towed it. The other choppers opened up as well, spraying fire down in a flare of flame that turned night to day.

“Boss, we got ‘em!”

We sailed past the ballista. I tossed a glance over my shoulder at the wreckage and saw a red wedge climbing skyward from the lizards.

“Heads up!” I shouted.

I banked us around, pulling up on the collective pitch to tighten the turn, and then hauled back on the cyclic so that we flew in reverse. I had to trust that we were above the treeline, but it gave Armstrong a clear shot at the swarm giving chase. He swept his beam through the swarm, which actively tried to dodge with some success. Roasted, flaming bugs fell by the thousands, but it kept coming on. As it got close, I yanked down a toggle on my dash, and an electric buzz and snap started to fill the air, along with the smell of ozone overpowering even the smoldering fuel fire.

I pulled down my new goggles as the bugs hit us, sparking against the live wiring on the outside of the chopper. More still splashed against my goggles, and I had to wipe away red goo. One of the sparkers climbed onto the outside of the chopper and shorted himself between two live wires. He went stock-rigid, and electric arcs started climbing between the tines of his whiskers like a Jacob’s ladder. Every bug near him popped with a tiny flash, like hitting a humanoid (goblinoid?) bug zapper.

Armstrong cheered, and then coughed as he inhaled a dozen red bugs. I jammed the stick full forward and reversed our course, now plowing through the swarm like an icebreaker through a frozen fjord with our electrified sparker prow. The swarm parted around us, sizzling and popping. More still were chewed up by the rotor blades, which started to struggle as carapace and bug juice crunched through their moving parts. We bifurcated the assault and exited out the other side of the decimated magic bugs, craft filthy and dripping. The sparker turned around and climbed back into the craft, white grin the only spot on him that wasn’t covered in blackened, sizzling husks. He opened his mouth and strummed his fingers over his whiskers.

Take that, tiny bastards! I thought. They were going to need more than bugs and lizards to get the best of Tribe Apollo.

“Boss! The village!” called Armstrong.

I wheeled us around, bringing Huntsville into my field of view—and my stomach dropped.