MBGSP Chpt 110-112

I hope everyone is having a good weekend! Here's chapters 110-112 of My Big Goblin Space Program

Chapter 110 - The Missing Beatle

The first thing Armstrong did on landing was press-gang several Huntsville goblins into the secretive service to make sure I had ample protection. The swamp had long-since proven to be a hostile environment—maybe even more-so than the badlands. We hadn’t conquered it so much as mitigated it, and we’d still only explored a small part of the waterways and islands that made up the big crescent-shaped bog.

But we’d also come a long way since first braving its waters with ceramic-tipped spears, slingers, and small hot-air balloons. We had gas-powered engines, steel, guns, and soon we’d have electricity. From what I’d seen, the croc-knockers were now an annoyance at best, rather than a monolithic obstacle that could only be avoided or deterred. But the red mist spirits we’d never encountered before. Which made me have to ask: what changed? Ringo had existed in the swamp for years, and apparently not fallen afoul of them. And the answer was pretty obvious. I’d come. I’d spent the last few months disrupting the balance of power on Lanclova. It was only natural that things begin to respond.

I found Hadfield on top of the tower on the north end of Camp Huntsville, directing the flow of iron and oil coming in from the bog through a new canal that had been dug from the camp straight to the waterway, sealed off by a portcullis in the water. The process of extraction and refining at Huntsville was best described as barely-controlled chaos backed by the occasional detonation of a boom furnace producing a piece of workable iron. Totems erected throughout the camp boosted the productivity of the labor pool, and production here had to be diligent to keep the growing need for motor vehicles supplied at the bluff and on the plains.

I told Hadfield about the situation on Ringo’s island, and he considered the problem.

“We’ve steered clear of the place, most-like, as you said. Leave supplies out for ‘em on occasion, and they leave us little stacks of smooth stones and shells, for some reason. But they stopped taking them 2 days ago.”

“So whatever happened, happened very recently,” I said, nodding. “Then there’s a good chance he and some of his tribe are still out there. We need to find them and figure out what’s coming.”

With boglins most active at dawn and dusk, that would be the best time to perform our search without disrupting iron and kerosene production to a degree that stunted food collection efforts and tribe defense. We still had Lura’s task to accomplish as well, and the huntress didn’t seem the sort to rest on her laurels.

“We got plenty of boats and crews, boss. But they get stuck in some of the thicker peat. Boglins could be gone to ground in areas wot we can’t reach.”

“I might have something for that,” I said. “Come with me.”

Navigation in the bog so far had been primarily for the purpose of collecting the iron found near the loose river runoffs where rafts tough enough to withstand a croc-knocker attack could maneuver between the peat mounds. Getting up some of the smaller waterways choked with vegetation meant we needed something different.

We went down to the forges where the local igni were working with their crafting teams to make impeller craft. Most of them were still goblin-powered via pedal crank, since motors had been reserved for ground and air vehicles—and in fact, the swamp had a pair of helicopters that they’d built because there was no area clear enough for a runway. Taking a small engine with a spare prop from one of the choppers, I had the igni mount them sideways to a pair of canoes strapped together. The result was a shallow-draft pontoon boat with an air fan, and no underwater impeller to get choked by debris.

<Goblin Technology Unlocked: combust’em patrol boats>

Once the first one was done, the craftsmen got sorted out on making a few more. The choppers would also be useful in the effort, being able to scout through the bog—but I doubted you’d spot boglins from the air, especially if they didn’t want to be spotted.

“Armstrong, I want scrappers leading the charge on this. Your boys are natural trackers.”

“Onnit, boss. Trust,” said Armstrong. He scratched his chin. “But… why do you care wot happens to Ringo? Din’t he stab you? An’ din’t you torch him?”

I didn’t want to explain that Ringo was the only other person I’d met who might be from my home world and therefore my only link to it. The fact he was a paranoid Florida swamp-man just meant he fit in better with the goblins than I did. But it was a legitimate question. Other goblins had actually stopped working to wait for my answer. I looked around for a canonneer and whistled him over. I pointed a finger in the air.

“What’s the first commandment?”

The canonneer reached into his bag and fumbled for a folded scrap of paper. “Be excellent to each other,” he said.

I looked at Armstrong. “Goblins help goblins. Ringo got paranoid and scared because for years, he thought he was alone in a world where no one gives a goblin anything, they only take. Well, he’s not alone, and neither are we. We’ve got orcs, we’ve got the Ifrit, and we’ve got the boglins. Maybe they’re not all entirely on our side, but we’re getting there. And we’re not giving up any of them. And we’re definitely not giving up on any of them.”

A wave of straighter backs and puffed up chests passed through the crowd. The canonneer scribbled furiously on a corner of his pamphlet, and even Armstrong nodded.

“Guess we gotta stick together, even with a goblin that tried to stick us,” he said. “Right. I’ll gather the lads.”

By nightfall, we had a handful of boats and two-dozen scrappers and their non-variant crews. Hobgoblins were pretty common as far as variants went, making up about a fifth or sixth of the entire tribe. 20 of them would be a force to be reckoned with. I started to climb onto the lead boat, but felt strong hands pin my arms to my sides and lift me off the gangplank. I kicked the air helplessly.

“Sorry, boss,” said Armstrong. “As your secretive service, we’re stayin behind walls ‘til we know wot we’s dealing with. Leave it to the scrappers. They’re good lads.”

I relaxed, deflated. “You’re right, of course,” I said. Armstrong put me down, and with a longing look at the airboats, I wished the scrappers luck and headed back to the safety of Huntsville’s walls. The scrappper search and rescue teams set off so they could search into the night. But I still had the diurnal limitations of a non-variant forest goblin, and not long after that, a hot meal put me down for the count.

                            *

<Your tribe has decreased to 881 members>

<Your tribe has increased to 912 members>

I woke up to a hell of a shock, losing nearly 40 goblins overnight. I checked the roster menu and found that fully 15 of them had been scrappers I’d assigned to the search party. That was most of the search party. What was even worse, though, was that a taskmaster had vanished—one responsible for pumping and transporting kerosene from the springs in the swamp. Without task-masters managing the minutiae of logistics, the downstream effects would start to stunt efforts of everything that required fuel—which now heavily influenced food production and aircraft manufacturing.

I struggled out from the bottom of the cuddle puddle and went up to the north wall, where several goblins were already pointing out smoke trails from further north where the pumping station had been. I grit my teeth. If I’d just been there… it probably would have made no difference. As much as I hated to admit it, even more goblins would have died from the Head of the Snake skill, if they really did meet with such a catastrophic result. But the search parties hadn’t returned yet, there was no way to know what had happened. Hell, it could have been the red spirits, or it could have just been some other form of particularly nasty endemic life.

It was a couple hours before two of the scrapper boats limped their way back to Huntsville with dead-tired skeleton crews.

“We never even saw wot was attacking us,” one of them said. “It got real dark. Then 4 crocs jumped out all at once, right onto the boat! We lost sight of the other lads with us, and when we’d made it out of the fight, they weren’t nowhere.”

“Didn’t you have torches?” I asked.

“Somfink snuffed ‘em,” said the scrapper. He looked over his shoulder back at the bog. “I could feel ‘em watchin’ me.”

That wasn’t good. Something was definitely in the swamp, and it was making a concerted effort to attack goblins. It knew to hit at night, it knew to separate groups of goblins to negate their numbers advantage. Scrappers were great ambush fighters and surprise attackers. What could get the jump on them?

I opened the variant spawn control submenu and slid the slider for Scrappers all the way to the right, prioritizing their reproduction above other variants.

The goblins started squawking and running to the eastern rampart. I closed the menu and followed them and was greeted by a dark shadow in the sky to the east. A shadow that was drawing closer.

Chapter 111 - Working Remote

The sound of motors reached us before the silhouette resolved into an airship—not Gertrude, but one of the others built in the weeks we’d been on the badlands. Like all of the tech that was iterated on after unlocking, this was more refined than our first powered balloon, yet somehow more ramshackle. Two canvas envelopes kept the thing aloft, one fore and one aft, with scat burners beneath. A rampart of wooden planks circled the envelope with patrolling goblins. The rigid structure suspended in a tangle of cords was longer and thinner, and sported sponsons with the barrels of recoilless rifles poking out. I also spotted a belly-mounted missile ready for a rider. No doubt there were at least two-dozen goblins aboard with spears and rifles close to hand.

Someone whistled from one of the other towers, and I saw a goblin frantically waving semaphore flags. The airship came in, scraping the edge of the tower before the goblins atop could hook it and tie it down. Most of the crew, not needing to wait for the gangplank, simply disembarked at altitude—including a taskmaster I definitely recognized.

“Sally!” I shouted, dropping off the rampart. I jogged over, where she proceeded to glare at me and then kick me, and flail tiny, angry fists—until Armstrong appeared and lifted her away from me.

“Hey, hey!” I said, trying to fend her off. “That’s your king you’re kicking.”

Glare.

I ran a hand through my fur. “Look, I’m sorry I didn’t come to see you when we got back. We just meant to take a tour, and… well, excuses won’t cut it. I’m sorry, Sally. Can you forgive me?”

She crossed her arms and turned her head, but her posture and expression had softened. Armstrong set her back down. She whipped around and sank her teeth into his leg.

“Argh! Wot’d I do?” he demanded, shaking her off. The diminutive blue ball of chomp rolled away and jumped back to her feet.

“What are you doing here, anyway?” I asked.

Sally pointed up at the airship, where goblins were busy unloading flat, dull-grey plates and the tail section we’d taken off the whistler. My eyes widened.

“Sally, that’s amazing!” I said. With magnets and wire, we could start converting the mechanical energy of the motors into electric energy through simple alternators.

Electricity might seem like a big jump, but at its core, if you have angular momentum, and you have magnets and wire, you have electricity. What happens next is the complicated bit, as it’s fed through rectifiers, filters, diodes, or regulators to make it safe and practical to apply. But I’m betting regulator wasn’t even a word in the Goblin Tech Tree. If struggling with the internal combustion motor had taught me anything, the KISS principle applied to goblin tech. Keep it stupidly suicidal. The more ways it had to blow up, the more likely it was to unlock the tech.

Sourtooth was struggling to disembark as well with the cross-wise flow of goblins competing to unload equipment or rush aboard for something to carry down to the ground, and Taquoho hovered behind him along with a few other ifrit and Promo.

The old orc scrabbled down the ladder on the docking tower, making good time despite his leg, followed by the ignis taskmaster. “Thinking to dump me off while adventures you seek, hmm?” he demanded.

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” I said. “I’m glad you’re here, actually.”

Sourtooth looked around at the totems lining the camp. “Not the freshest smelling of the lands I’ve trampled. Yet neither is it the most foul. I would join in the work, little brother mine.”

Truth be told, I was glad to have him. Sourtooth was well-traveled. Maybe even as well as Rufus, if in different circles. The old orc might be able to offer insight into the threats currently plaguing the boglins. Of course, we had to find them first.

I turned to my chief ignis and rubbed my hands together. “Promo, let’s set up a workspace. I’m going to need wire, engines, cross-sections of the whistler tail, and tools.” I considered. “We’re also going to need sand and metal pipes. We’ve got a day to work before the next wave of scrappers is born and I want to make the most of it.”

“Trust, boss,” said Promo. He waddled off, already barking orders like he owned the place. The rest of the goblins snapped-to and started dashing about, rearranging the place in a strangely efficient manner. While individual goblins sometimes worked at odds or stepped on each others feet, the weird semi-gestalt nature of the goblin tribal structure ensured the needle moved consistently toward the task complete end of the spectrum.

Sally and I set to work, using a gas-powered table saw ordinarily used to cut wood in order to cut narrow slices of the whistler tail prongs. As I had suspected, they were powerful, permanent magnets—nearly on a level with rare earth magnets back home. They’d be ideal for applications at all levels of electrical equipment, from portable power generators to walkie-talkies. The material chewed through sawblades, and not for the first time, I really missed the diamond-coated tools common on Earth. We made up for efficiency with volume, but individual work was still somewhat arduous.

Its tail wasn’t the only gift the whistler had given us. Arguably just as valuable was its hide. The stone-hard carapace of the meteor-made-flesh was actually a form of natural metallic chitin, and if my guess was correct, it used the magnetic prongs of its tail to electro-plate itself using the ore from the pink gravel of its canyon. The result was a light-weight, bonded composite metal natural to Rava that, if not actual aluminum, was the next best thing. It was clear the Ravan periodic table was more overlap than difference, but I doubted you’d find this ore anywhere on Earth.

While I spent the afternoon eclipse with Promo figuring out how to heat and shape the whistler carapace into thin panels for general use, a small motorcade arrived with yet another surprise. The goblins hauled open the gate on the east side of the settlement to allow the vehicles in, and I saw the squat form of Rufus with his black-and-white badger snout sniffing the air.

“Well, now the gang’s really all here!” I said.

The wild-marked merchant spotted me and hopped down from his buggy, fishing in his trouser pocket for a coin, which he flipped to the driver. The driver caught it, looking at it curiously, before popping it in his mouth and swallowing it whole. Rufus spotted me and trotted over, grim expression on his face. He cast a side-long look at Sourtooth working at one of the forges, who was quick to return a lop-sided sneer.

“I’ve just returned from the City of Brass,” he said. “The Ifrit delegation reported to the king that you took many of their number captive and reneged on your agreement to produce ceramic parts.”

“It’s not true,” I said. I gestured to the Ifrit present in the camp, flying in their coaxial vessels. “They’re free to come and go as they please. They’ve chosen to stay, and the delegation leader destroyed the first shipment and tried to kill both Taquoho and one of my taskmasters. You can ask Taquoho about it. He’ll tell you.” I raised my voice and called for the Ifrit, who floated down. Rufus repeated what he’d told me.

“Ah, it pleases us to see you, Rufus—though I wish it bore brighter tidings. I assure you, everything King Apollo has said is the truth.”

Rufus raised his hands. “I believe you. I saw the Ifrit at the bluff. They’re clearly not prisoners of any kind or under any duress or threat. However, the king of the Ifrit does not share that view, and because I brokered this exchange, the delegation’s lies have damaged my reputation, Apollo. Nothing is more serious to the Ifrit than their own being taken captive. That’s why they so rarely leave the City of Brass.”

I sighed. “I’m sorry, Rufus. I didn’t mean for any of this to backfire on you. We need to get the record straight with the king. We’ve remade the ceramic parts and I’m ready to send them along with envoys to make clear what actually happened. I’m going to make this right.”

“It’s not so simple a thing,” he said. He fished in his pack for his flask of liquor and took a sip. “Some may argue that if all the Ifrit do not return, then threat against those remaining may influence the words of whoever you sent back. Disputes among Ifrit aren’t just a matter of evidence and opinion. They get very…”

“Political?” I asked.

Rufus nodded. “And Ifrit political debates have a lot in common with civil wars. They’re incredibly nuanced and complicated.”

“Taquoho suggested as much,” I said, grimacing. I hated politics. “Still, we can’t do nothing. Especially not with your reputation on the line when you’ve done so much for my tribe. Will you accompany the shipment? It might help to have you deliver them personally, along with your account of what you witnessed.”

“I’m not sure they’ll let me back into the city,” he admitted. “But I’ll try. I’ve invested too much in this deal and have too much to lose if it falls through.”

“There’s also the cooperation of two nations and the progress that comes from mutual exchange and understanding,” I added.

Rufus shrugged. “Mutual understanding and progress won’t buy me an estate in Umberbarrow. Trade will.”

“Well, I wouldn’t want Umberbarrow to go un-estated. We’ll fix this, Rufus. I promise.”

Somewhere deeper in the camp, someone fired up an engine. The rumble of the engine was quickly followed by a loud Snap and then a brief shriek. I looked over to see an expanding cloud of smoke and smoldering, blue fur.

<Your tribe has decreased to 908 members>

<Goblin Technology Unlocked: Spinny spark-ems>

<Goblin Technology Unlocked: Spark-em spinnies>

“What under the stars was that?” asked Rufus.

“Progress,” I said, rubbing my hands together.

It was time to shock this tribe into the next age.

Ad Luna.

Chapter 112 – Blowing It

Ever since I was a kid, the raw buzzes and snaps of loosely-harnessed electricity fascinated me. The love affair was kindled the first time I watched Frankenstein with my dad at the dollar theater and I realized what I wanted to be when I grew up. Of course, six weeks later I nearly burned our house down with an electrical short, and I was banned from watching movies about mad scientists.

Sally had an honest-to-god generator going, and had wired it up to a primitive electric motor. Unfortunately, lacking solder, she had used goblins to hold the wires to the contacts with very, very predictable results to anyone except, apparently, the goblins holding the wires.

“We’re going to need a commandment for this…” I muttered, looking around at the carnage. Sally at least had the decency to look embarrassed at having vaporized three of her tribe mates. She quickly choked off the engine, but I could already see the new technology propagating through the tribe as they took on glazed expressions. Still, electricity generation was something I’d wanted to get going weeks ago—almost as soon as I’d realized I had an electrolytic solution in spitting distance of Village Apollo. But it turns out being a leader is mostly putting out fire after fire after fire. Better late than never. And as far as I knew, no one else on Rava had working lights or gas motors, so we’d already outstripped the locals on both fronts.

“No more electricity for you,” I said. “Have your engineers start coating wire with rubber for insulation and then help Promo with the glass-making.”

Sally saluted and ran off.

Glass-making had a lot in in common with ceramic-making, and like ceramics, most of my knowledge of the process was second-hand from a girl in college dragging me to a glass-blowing class, fallaciously believing I had an artistic bone hiding somewhere amongst the 206 actual bones in my body.

Never in a million years had I thought I would have to reinvent the incandescent bulb, but here we were. Not only that, but glass was critical to a bevy of space-age technology as well as being more scratch-resistant than mild steel (though less resistant than ceramic). Plus, it was transparent. And I was getting tired of the dry eyes from flying. I wasn’t the only one, either. I’d seen other pilots rubbing red eyes after long flight sessions.

As far as the ingredients go, glass is actually one of the least material-constrained to acquire. Sand with high silica content lined small beaches along the river north of the village, and sand with high quartz content lived in the badlands. It was just a matter of sifting them together, firing molten glass, and shaping it. Syrians had been blowing glass into jars and vases since the days of the Roman Empire. While sheet glass was a tougher process, it wasn’t out of reach. But blown glass was what we needed now.

I explained the process to Promo and Sally, who looked at me as though I was crazy. But Promo set a few of his igni to the task. The good news was that we could use the kilns we already had to process the silica sand, so by early evening we had dozens of goblins with metal pipes ready to dip into the molten glass.

I took the first one and dipped the tip into the glowing solution inside the kiln, pulling it out and putting the end of the metal rod to my lips. I puffed, forcing air down the tube and into the glass to give it shape, spinning the pole as I did. The glass cooled quickly. More quickly than I’d have thought. And I realized I didn’t know how to actually detach the glass from the end of the pole. They’d done that for me in the class.

No worries. I let it cool still attached. I had hoped for a clear bulb shape, but it ended up looking closer to a diseased eggplant of a dusty yellowish color.

<Goblin Technology Unlocked: Shiny blowing>

I beheld my creation at the end of my pole, lamenting the imprecise nature of the Goblin Tech Tree. This would make a terrible light bulb. Though, in retrospect, this wasn’t too dissimilar to the product of the ill-fated aforementioned glass-blowing class.

<You can’t blame everything on the Goblin Tech Tree.>

Shut it, System!

Still, the technology propagated through the tribe, and the goblins around me fought to be first to dip their hollow poles into the molten solution—near to the point of shoving me into the kiln. I managed to get back through the press, admittedly applying the pole in my hand to some effect in the effort. Breaking free, I looked at the end of the pole. Promo waddled over, his own tube in hand waiting for a turn at the forge. His bonus to heat crafting would make him and the other igni skilled at glass blowing, I had no doubt.

“Don’t think it’s supposed to stay on the pole, boss,” he said.

“Yeah?” I asked. “Well, you just got the technology. How would you get it off the pole?”

Promo held out his hand, and I gave him my eggplant bulb. He waddled over to a workstation for a couple minutes, and came back with the bulb—still with a bit of the pole attached, but it had been sawed off a couple inches below the point of the glass.

“Huh.” I said. Actually a somewhat elegant solution that made it look even more like a light bulb. At least it made a natural place to connect a ground lead. Maybe we had a chance of this.

A squawk of alarm drew my attention, and I turned around to see a flaming goblin running toward the water tanks, arms wind-milling above his head. He was still holding his pole, and his flailing flung droplets of molten glass every which way, inciting a near riot at the kilns. The smell of smoldering fur burnt in the air.

Maybe a chance was generous.

Toward the evening, we had everything we needed to put it all together. Sourtooth had made a trio of shallow draft boats using the whistler carapace metal (which I’d taken to calling whistlite) with fans and pylons to mount the new lights. The bulbs themselves used a simple circuit, feeding current through a teased filament of the whistlite between two copper wires. We arranged the bulbs in a cluster, inside a polished, copper-lined cone.

“Fire it up!” I shouted.

Sally dropped a rockette into the new generator, and a shower of sparks shot out of the wiring terminal. One side of the generator pumped current into the incandescent bulbs, several of which flared white-hot and then burst immediately. The rest glowed with a fiery orange light that, at first, I worried was fire. But it was just the flicker of a cluster of unevenly burning bulbs in a copper mirror.

<Goblin Technology Unlocked: Search shiny>

On the other end of the boat, the electric motor connected to a lightweight fan blade kicked on, spinning the propeller and kicking up a storm. It continued to spin faster and faster as the motor whined and sparked. With no electronic speed controller, the motor’s speed was simply a factor of the current being pumped through the terminals. Although, it shouldn’t have worked at all. The generator was putting out AC power at an inconsistent frequency and the motor wasn’t tuned at all. Yet, it was still spinning. That’s the Goblin Tech Tree for you.

Spinning too fast, if anything, now that I thought about it. Faster than it would be if hooked up to the engine shaft directly. The boat began to rock, and then tipped forward, digging its nose into the ground. Mud began to fly, churned up by the fan and flung out in a dirty, brown spray that coated several of the Huntsville structures.

“Shut it down!” I yelled, but no one was willing to approach the vessel. I watched as the fan motor shook itself loose from the housing, warping the whistlalloy hull from the torque. It cleaved through the housing and whipped through the air a few meters overhead. Most of the goblins watching dove for cover. The fan blade whirred a tight circled, pinged off a brick tower, and shot out into the swamp. The sounds of its spinning away lasted long after it had left sight.

The boat, meanwhile, had tipped completely over, smashing the bulbs. Loose wires whipped and sparked, and at least one of them sliced across the fuel bladder for the engine. The whole ensemble burst into a roiling inferno of intense heat. But the engine finally gave out, and the thing turned from a rattling, vibrating deathtrap to just a burning one.

I pushed myself up off the ground and surveyed the remains of our first patrol boat. “Alright,” I said. “That design had issues. But we’ve still got some daylight left. Let’s iterate.”