MBGSP Chpt 42-43

Hey guys, just a quick update with two chapters for MBGSP, I'll make sure to stay ahead of things moving into the weekend. Welcome to all the new members!

Chapter 42 - Bog Standard

The clay at the stone-sloth den would see to our immediate needs in supplying the ifrit with ceramics. We’d already built the infrastructure to transport it, so it was just a matter of traversing our first road with a wagon, loading it up, and hauling it back to the bluff to be worked. The stone-sloth, as well, had a good deal of the stuff slathered on its hide, cracked and dried like the desert. But it wasn’t cured, just needed some water.

In the afternoon it started to downpour. But Javier’s tailors had made us all cured hide cloaks with hoods for the expedition, so the goblins didn’t even cease working when the rains came down. The cliffords weren’t a fan of it, though. Their matted fur smelled even worse wet than it did dry, with a musty, earthy stink that put me in the mind of a cross between wet-dog and sour milk. I might need material to make them ponchos as well if I didn’t want the wagon teams to mutiny from proximity. Or we’d have to figure out how to rig up some of the grazing animals.

With the time it took to clean and process the stone-sloth and remove the clay on its back for transport, we lost most of the light. So I didn’t bother to have the portable bluff broken down. We took the rest of the day clearing out the area, and then roasted the sloth for dinner. Eileen’s overflight reached us as we were getting the fires going, and several of the goblins rushed to the armory  to be the one to get the signal rocket. I watched the small rocket climb skyward and burst apart. One rocket meant proceeding as planned. Two meant send additional backup. Three meant the goblins got over-excited.

Chuck took his wranglers back to make a report of our victory, after expressing disappointment that he had missed both the battle with the stone-sloth and the haranguing of the javeline maulers. But hunting something much higher level with just your bog-standard, garden-variety goblin had been the entire point.

All in all, it had been a promising day. The goblins sat around the fires, watching the dinner roast as they banged sticks on rocks and chanted in a tune-less, sing-song approximation of music. I’d tried teaching them some Queen, some Beastie Boys, and even some Taylor Swift, but the tribe was in desperate need of an autotune. Still, morale was up, and the goblins were fat and happy when they climbed up onto the mobile bluff. I was hoisted and thrown to the middle of the lattice and given the place of honor at the bottom of the sleeping mound, despite my protestations.

This was the first time since coming to Rava that I went to sleep feeling that life was good, again.

                            *

<Your tribe has decreased to 124 members.>

<Your tribe’s moral is unusually high. A one-time spawning bonus has been added.>

<3 goblin wranglers have been added to your tribe>

<2 goblin sappers have been added to your tribe.>

<1 goblin taskmasters have been added to your tribe.>

<Your tribe has increased to 148 members.>

Damn! 24 new goblins overnight, and a quarter of them were variants. That was, by far, the single best night of spawning the tribe had experienced. Winning battles was good for the mysterious goblin libido, apparently. The mound I woke up in was noticeably bigger than the mound I’d gone to sleep in, as evidenced by the weight squeezing me against the lattice structure.

One of the new taskmasters was even with us on the expedition, so I named him Hadfield (since Chris was technically taken). He pulled me out of the pile himself, extricating me from the late risers.

“Mornin’, boss,” he said.

“Morning. Welcome to the tribe. What’s your poison?”

Hadfield tugged at his cheek hair. “Campin’, explorin’.”

“Boy, are you in the right place,” I said.

He grinned at me. “The System provides! Why don’t you relax while I get this beast movin’?”

Providence had put Hadfield on the road to the bog. So, he’d be the boss of the first remote outstation. The System provides, he’d said.

System, do you give me goblins based on what my tribe’s needs are?

<Denied. All assignments and generations are random in nature. Perhaps you are lucky.>

Lucky. Right. So lucky my rocket blew up on the launch pad. Soooooo lucky!

<Luckier than the other two.>

That was a sobering thought. And System was right. If I was the only one pulled through, then Dave and Sandra really were dead. I had held out hope that the two had somehow also made the jump, and I might find them waiting on another bluff with tribes of their own. That was part of the reason I’d rushed to try and reach the other villages. Now? This was a bit much to think about before breakfast.

System, are there others in Rava from my world?

No answer.

At least having been at the bottom of the pile, this time I didn’t have to clean bird poop out of my fur, for which I was quite grateful. More birds had made poor life choices by making nests on the lattice and filling them with eggs. We had to clear the nests anyway in order to break down the temporary bluff. Win-win, really. We were back breaking new trail by mid-morning. A full day of travel would put us a stone’s throw from the iron bog

One of the wagons broke off, hauling back the clay for refining at Village Apollo. The rest continued on, bumping and careening down the road as fast as the pathfinders could cut and clear it. The cliffords pulled at their harnesses like they had a grudge against the things—which, it was quite possible they did. One of the wagons that carried adobe bricks carried mostly gravel by the end of the day, so we used it on the road.

By the time the sun started to drop in the sky, we were getting close enough to the bog to smell the stagnant water and metallic tang. The book on peat bogs had said the iron was a result of ‘humours in the water’, which I had to assume actually meant some sort of bacteria in the water that released iron as a byproduct of its natural processes. It would collect as nodules on the underside of peat patches, so goblins would have to wade into the bog to get it.

I called a halt while it was still light enough to get the portable bluff up into the canopy. Hadfield took charge, running around in a hat he’d improvised from wetlands ferns until he could get a skull mask. The frenetic energy of the taskmasters got the shelter up in record time, and with only two goblins tangled in the lattice.

I’d lost 8 goblins to attrition elsewhere in the tribe, bringing me back down to 140 members total. The high roll had put me ahead, but I had a feeling we’d lose that and more in the bog striving toward our most important goals yet.

I surveyed the convoy of 13 wagons. Some would take that number as a bad omen. Hell, just look at Apollo 13. That mission had been cursed. Not as cursed as mine, I suppose. But, still. Just to be safe, I had the goblins hack apart one of the wagons leaving us with only 12. Most of these would be scavenged for parts anyway. We wouldn’t need all 12 to carry iron back. In fact, we were going to built the furnace here.

I gathered up the handful of hobgoblins we had with us as the non-variants began to ascend the rope ladders to the portable bluffs. They were mostly scrappers, but a couple wranglers to handle the cliffords. Since the hobbies stayed up late, they were immune to the lethargic effects of dinner, and still alert—if on edge. It wasn’t hard to puzzle out why.

“Look,” I said. “I know it’s tough being away from the village overnight. Tomorrow we’ll start building the permanent tower, and then we’ll have the home away from home. This close to the bog, we don’t really know what’s waiting for us. So stay vigilant. I’m depending on you.”

The scrappers puffed out their chests, proud despite their unease. The wranglers dug their fingers into the fur of the cliffords for comfort. They glanced up at the lattice.

“Don’t worry,” I said. “We’ll be fine.” Just keep an eye out for the cliffords.

Chapter 43 - Welcome to the Jungle

<Your tribe has decreased to 132 members>

<1 hobgoblin scrappers has been added to your tribe>

<2 hobgoblin wranglers have been added to your tribe>

<Your tribe has increased to 148 members>

What in the hell? I opened my eyes and looked through the open lattice below at the carnage that had been our convoy. several wagons were demolished. They’d been torn apart at the frame. Of the cliffords, there was no sign. Which was a bad sign. I quickly realized the hobgoblins were gone, too. Which was a really, really bad sign.

I dragged myself out of the pile and over to the edge of the portable bluff, where Hadfield was knelt down along with several of Buzz’ builders and a scrapper.

“Well, at least one of you managed to survive,” I said, looking at the bigger hobgoblin.

Hadfield shook his head. “He’s new.”

“Oh? Well, happy birthday,” I sighed. What a disaster.

“But, boss, we got a problem.”

“Yeah,” I said. I had to take control of the situation before it spiraled. “The builders are slacking off.”

One of the goblins at the edge of the lattice squawked in indignation, then remembered who he was talking to and acted appropriately cowed.

Hadfield tossed a stick down into the clearing. “They don’t want to go down in case whatever did that is still mucking about nearby.”

“Understandable. I know of this animal that sometimes has to jump into water to hunt food, but they’re never sure whether there’s a predator underneath it waiting for them.”

“How do they get sorted?” asked Hadfield.

I lifted my prosthetic and planted it in the back of the nearest goblin, knocking him over the edge of the lattice. He tumbled, screaming, to the ground below, where he bounced off his head and ran for the rope ladder. It was still retracted from where we’d pulled it up the night before. He started hopping, trying to reach the lattice. It was about 10 meters too high.

“Ah,” said Hadfield. “Straight to the point.” He raised his hand. “Slingers ready!”

The rest of the goblins ran to retrieve weapons, which were conveniently stored away from the edge of the platform. They readied poppers in their sleds and trained them down at the forest below. I had to yell at them to angle their payloads over the edge. If they managed to burn down the temporary bluff, we’d all be on the ground, and with no pack animals, hobgoblins, or wagons to protect us.

We waited for a few minutes until our sacrificial penguin stopped jumping and started trembling in fear. When nothing came out to gobble him up, I relaxed and gave the go-ahead for the rest of the goblins to bail out. Once we’d picked ourselves off the ground, I set to examining what was left of the campsite.

All the hobgoblins had been dragged off. Silently enough that whatever did it left only blood and tufts of blue fur behind. Of the cliffords there was no fur or blood. Their leads simply ended in frayed cordage. But they hadn’t raised a ruckus in the night, which was the strangest part.

We’d had most of the food supplies in the lattice with us, so even though the carts were smashed, they held mostly building supplies, which themselves were fine. Bricks, wood, cordage, tools, and parts to build portable lifts and cranes.

I called over the sapper that had been born in the pile the night before. “Sniff around and see what you can find. Report it back to me.”

The scrapper saluted and, unexpectedly, dropped to all fours, sniffing at the ground as he started patrolling the campsite. I hadn’t meant the instruction literally and was about to correct him when Hadfield stopped me. “He knows what he’s about, boss.”

“I’ll take your word for it,” I said. I raised my voice so the rest of the goblins could hear me, pointing out a couple stragglers. “You six, go with him. As for the rest of you, we’ve got work to do! Unless you want to sleep on the ground tonight, let’s get moving!”

Goblins might not be verbal, but their body language was expressive enough to tell when they were bothered. Honestly, they might as well have been wearing glowing neon signs with their emotions depicted by excited noble gasses. My gaggle of swamp builders were terrified. As their king, I had to be brave for them. But it definitely worried me. What could get in, kill multiple hobgoblins, all the cliffords, and not make enough noise to wake the tribe?

The bestiary was in one of the wagons that hadn’t been smashed, so I dug it out and thumbed through while our builders tore at the clearing with spades to get the area—if not level, at least slightly less lumpy. We weren’t as close to the bog as I’d have liked, but I wanted to make sure we had hard cover tonight in case whatever had visited us could climb. Or worse, fly. Just because the night haunts prowled the heights of the bluff didn’t mean they couldn’t visit a swamp.

Our slingers now had small nets that we could launch skyward to trap night haunts. And I was now confident that we had enough goblins to take them on, even without variants. But this didn’t seem like their MO. Whatever had taken them had gone for the goblins on the ground instead of elevated in the lattice, and the night haunts had only ever taken 1 or 2 goblins at night. Not 5 or more. They’d also never shown interest in other animals, like cliffords or the captive stone-sloth, who had been easily accessible at the village. No, this was something else.

Rufus’ bestiary was incomplete. And that was putting it generously. Rava was still being explored by most of the humans and elves who compile books like these, and lots of the entries were based on hearsay, local legends, and speculation. The only entry that made sense for where we were was an incorporeal night spirit that devoured expeditions who ventured west of the mountains.

By mid-day, the bricks were stacked up almost 4 meters and continuing to grow. The scrapper found me as I was supervising the lifting of a flex-a-pult into position.

“Found, found sommat, chief.”

I left the construction to Hadfield and followed the scrapper and the other goblins. We skirted the edge of the bog, close enough to hear the bellowing of crock-knockers in the distance. After going about a half-kilometer, the scrapper stopped and dropped down, pointing to the mud.

Multiple sets of tracks had come and gone. Small, webbed feet, with strange circular tracks irregularly placed alongside some of them mixed with those larger tracks of a hobgoblin. The scent of blood mingled with the mud and iron from the bog and, curiously, burnt fur. I turned around, looking back at the campsite. You could just barely see the temporary bluff suspended in the canopy from here. I ran a hand through my fur, considering.

“Wotcha fink, boss?” asked the scrapper.

I took one of the spears from the other goblins and set the butt into the mud near the footprints. It was a perfect match.

“There’s some sort of hominid in the bog,” I said. “Did you find any tracks like this closer to camp?”

“Nuffink.”

“And no sign of the cliffords or other hobbies?”

“A paw print here’n there.”

I took a deep breath. “Alright. Let’s head back.”

We’d planned for this. Well, not for losing all our hobgoblins and every animal on the first night. But we’d expected this to be a dangerous venture. Goblins were going to die to get me the iron in this bog.

When we got back to the camp, I began to distribute the rest of the armor we’d brought, as well as padded packs of poppers for the goblins to keep on hand. At the current rate of construction, it was going to take three days to finish construction of the tower, but I could start moving goblins into it tomorrow night. Until then, we had to survive another night in the lattice.

Crock-knockers, tesla wasps, and now a sapient, hostile race. I decided to push up our contingency. One of the wagons had a new experiment. I took the scrapper and two goblins with me and unpacked the balloon kit sewn from the hides of eclipse lizards. It had needed 32 chooms worth of frills, the lightest part of their hides, which equated to about 60 of the lizards. But it resulted in an extremely light, almost foil-like material that weighed very little.

I attached a clay cannister to the bottom and used a coal from the previous night’s fire to start a small flame on the scat contained inside. As the balloon started to expand from the burning methane in the goblin scat, I attached a banner to the tether that had been stained with charcoal. This was the first functional balloon big enough to lift a goblin, and it did so by means of a small platform just large enough for a single goblin to sit on.

Whistling for attention brought a halt to the construction. “Who wants to fly?” I asked.

I might as well have been giving away free hotdogs at Fenway for the riot it almost caused. After the disaster of the morning’s discovery, it felt good to reintroduce a little levity into the tribe. Goblins seemed to have memories similar to that of goldfish, because all thought of getting the shelter up gave way to the stampede of grasping arms and excited squawks. I had to hold the platform over my head to keep them from grabbing at it.

“Woah, woah!” I called. I picked one goblin at random and nodded to them. “You’re today’s lucky winner!”

The goblin roared in triumph and was immediately the target of concerted physical assault as he made his way to the front. Luckily, the armor he wore absorbed most of it. He stripped out and shimmied up the rope to the platform. I passed up a hide flag that we’d stained red with berries for him to wave. Slowly, we let out rope and the balloon began to lift, thanks to the methane flame heating the air within.