MBGSP Chpt 35 thru 37

Hey goblin fans! I'm back in the US and cranking out more chapters for MBGSP. Right now I'm working on Chapter 58, so while I spent more time relaxing on the beach and consuming my weight in alcohol over the last week, I didn't fall far behind on my backlog of chapters. Anyway, here's chapters 35-37. Enjoy!

Chapter 35 - Multi-Crude Aircraft

The rocket boosters burned for several more seconds before the flames fizzled, and the two pods fell away from the soaring aircraft while my ears rang like telephones. The nose started to pitch down, and Eileen raised both flags over her head. The goblin at the back of the aircraft hauled on its levers, raising the elevator until our pitch stabilized. Then, she thrust one flag out to the side, and the goblin at the end of the wing lifted its aileron. The wing dipped on that side and we established a gentle bank to the southeast. The glider was too big and too heavy for one goblin to control it alone. Eileen needed her whole crew operating the individual control surfaces that kept the aircraft aloft.

I heard the Shwoosh roar of another launch behind us and twisted around to see a smaller glider riding up into the sky behind us. That would be Chuck. I wish we had radios to communicate with. But at least if we went down, he’d know exactly where to bring the rescue team. And I’d have a scrapper with me from the start. I looked at the burly hobgoblin holding on with white-knuckled fervor. She wasn’t quite as solid as Armstrong, but I had no doubt she would throw herself at any threat.

The rockets burned for less than a minute, but they had gotten us almost a third of the way to the bluff already. As we passed over the hotsprings, three of the goblins bailed out, EEEEeeeeeing down to the forest canopy below. They’d be harvesting more of the sulfur that we needed for the primitive rockets.

We kept going, getting lift off heat still rising from the flats. The bluff was coming up, and Eileen was doing a good job managing the glider’s energy. I lowered my head for a closer look, and it seemed like the lizards were already swarming out of their desert holes and moving for the village. They weren’t high level, but there were a lot of them. With the sun behind Raphina, they were taking their opportunity to raid the village.

The village itself was in much better shape than when I’d come by in my first glider. A palisade had been erected, and goblins stood atop in helmets made from lizard skulls, equipped with long spears and slingers. Traps and weighted pendulums dotted the rampart and the cliff face. I spotted several goblins, much bigger than the rest, moving along the wall and getting into position as the lizards hit the base of the bluff. Armstrong waved at us as we soared overhead.

Eileen raised one of her flags, and we dipped to the left, angling over the village. All but the crew bailed out, free-falling down—including the newest hobgoblin scrapper, who shot me a grin and a thumbs up as she fell toward the village. Builders, engineers, and fighters for the war effort against the lizard menace. I wouldn’t abandon these goblins. I wouldn’t abandon this village. It was important. I didn’t have to be a military genius to know castles were built on high ground for a reason, and the plateaus were the highest ground short of the mountains to the northeast. Rather than evacuating, I would fortify this village, just as I’d fortified Village Apollo in my war against the night haunts—a war we might actually be winning, despite the obvious level disadvantage.

“Payload’s away, boss!” shouted Eileen. “But we got another surprise for them, don’t we lads!”

“Yeah?” I shouted up. “What have you got kicking?”

With most of the weight off the glider, our performance increased dramatically, and Eileen directed us in a wide loop, coming even with the side of the bluff where the lizards were starting to climb.

Eileen stowed her semaphore signals and crawled back to where I sat in the middle of the fuselage. The goblins at the wings and tail locked their control surfaces and made their way to the middle of the aircraft, where they uncovered a wicker basket full of small, clay jars padded with moss and straw.

“Are those what I think they are?” I asked.

Eileen handed me one of the small pots, grinning with a mouth full of sharp teeth—so wide that I thought her head might just come right off. “Complements of Neil, ya know? I wanted bomb fruits but he said these would be safer so I had the scrappers whip some up: bomb fruit juice mixed in with the icky-sicky. Best be quick! She won’t hold steady long.”

“That would explain the explosions this morning,” I said. So, Neil had figured out a way to get the explosive juice from the fruits. Though, based on the number of explosions, it seemed like it was far from a sure thing. Probably why Neil was fishing when they’d tried it.

My master hunter had a keen thought, there, in mixing it with the putty. The vibration from the rocket-assisted launch would have absolutely set off a bushel full of bomb fruits, no matter what you tried to cushion them with. I briefly wondered if there was a safe method of stabilizing the juice in liquid form. But that seemed like a dangerous line of thinking. Especially when goblins were prone to drinking nearly any liquid they encountered. I passed the popper to the next goblin, who passed it to the next, until we’d distributed two to the entire crew of the glider. The side of the cliff loomed, and just a few meters from us, the lizards scaled the sheer face of the plateau.

“Let ‘em have it!” shouted Eileen as she reared back and hurled her icky-sicky popper. The rest of her crew followed suit, and I tossed mine as well, one after the other.

The clay jars hit the cliff face, and small explosions rippled against the surface of the stone, dislodging lizards and sending them plummeting down the side of the wall. They reached and scrabbled for purchase but found none as they disappeared below the treetops. An entire wave of the beasties came off the cliff face and fell to their deaths, and falling rocks accounted for several more. But the battle was far from won and the glider was losing energy.

Cheering reached us from the top of the bluff as Eileen returned to the front of her glider and the rest of the crew took their positions at the control surfaces. A shadow passed over us, and I looked up as Chuck did a hairpin turn, knife-edging along the cliff wall and slashing one lizard nearly in half with his cleaver. Others snapped at him as he passed, but the wrangler was too quick to be caught. He pulled his glider out of the dive and overtook us with his lighter craft. I waved to him as he soared on ahead toward the nearest thermal.

<Your tribe has reduced to 73 members>

Behind us, more lizards flooded up the cliff. Some were knocked away by the simple traps and hazards, but the first few had reached the spears and cleavers of the goblins and hobgoblins. They seemed to be without number. But in a war of attrition, I got the sense that you shouldn’t bet against goblins. Not ever.

Not when there was a goblin king in town.

Ahead, Chuck suddenly deviated to the north. Eileen watched the wrangler’s sudden turn and looked back to me. “Should we follow, boss?”

“Can we afford the detour?”

Eileen checked her surfaces, tested her speed by licking a finger, and gauged her altitude by tossing a pebble off the side and counting the time it took to reach the trees. “I think so,”

I had the system’s helpful window showing me all that information the easy way, which made me curious.

System, can Eileen not access the flight data window?

<She has had it active throughout the duration of the flight. But she is, I believe you would call, an ‘oldschool aviator’.>

Not bad, Eileen. Trust your instruments, but back up your findings. I could respect that.

“Get after him, then. His eyes are better than ours. Let’s see what he spotted.”

Eileen raised her flag, and we dipped into a bank that carried us toward the mountains to the northeast. We crossed the river where we’d launched the first of our fishing fleet, and I saw the vessel back in the middle of the river, though we were too high to see the individual goblins crewing it.

We continued on, passing over thick forest with open stretches, and stopped at a sun-baked patch of earth to ride a thermal up for some extra altitude before continuing on. The terrain started to rise into the foothills, and Chuck began to circle. Eileen directed our heavy glider over to the area, and I looked down.

A horde of javeline rutters moved through the woods—at least 50 of the porcine hunters. Some of them looked up and pointed with spears or slung rocks from leather straps that fell laughably short of the aircraft. Given the general direction they were headed, it looked like there was a bluff further east that they had their eyes on first. But they’d come for us eventually. I scowled. Goblin ears and tongues, eh? Well, we’d give ‘em a welcome.

“Hey Eileen. We got anymore poppers?”

She flashed her wicked grin and signaled her crew to lean us into a slow circle. I moved to the armory basket and pulled out a pair of munitions. There were still five left. The javeline watched us with wary curiosity, probably wondering if we were some sort of large bird. I wound up and hucked the first two poppers, then grabbed two more and threw them as well. Baseball was never my sport. I’d always been a rower and a runner—give me a twelve-kilometer shaded course and an EDM soundtrack at 170 beats per minute and I’ll choose it over a diamond and a bat any day. But I feel I accorded myself well with the improvised goblin grenades.

The javeline maintained their disinterest until the first poppers exploded in their midst, shocking and scattering the pig-men. The rest fell in quick succession, wreaking havoc among the ranks as the rutters scrambled away from the danger. But I’d knocked down a few of the half-bacon bastards and they’d had no idea what happened. I could see at least two of the rutters down, and another half-dozen limping or dazed by sharp fragments of the clay casing.

I hope one of them was Rotte. But there’s no way I’d get that lucky.

“Alright,” I said, putting the cover back on the empty basket. “Let’s go home.”

Chapter 36 - Subtle Progress

<2 Hobgoblin Scrappers have been added to your tribe>

<3 Hobgoblin wranglers have been added to your tribe>

<1 Goblin taskmaster has been added to your tribe>

<Your tribe has increased to 124 members>

“Alright, test flight number 9. Go for launch,” I said.

Sally pulled the lever to drop the rock load, and the glider shot forward on the rails. I watched it hit the ramp and then take to the air as the scrapper onboard pedaled furiously. His peddling went to a direct drive wooden propeller at the back of the aircraft that started to spin.

For about thirty seconds, it looked like he might manage to keep it up. But the nose started to dip, and no matter how much the scrapper tried to correct, the prop just wasn’t generating enough thrust to keep smooth airflow over the wings. The whole thing tipped, and the scrapper came out of his seat. Both pilot and plane plummeted to the terrain below the bluff without even reaching the new tree-line that Buzz had cleared to over the last several days. I winced as the sound of the wooden frame splintering reached us on top of the plateau.

“This ain’t it, Boss,” said Eileen, standing next to me with her hand on her chin. “We’re going to need another solution if we want to save on sulfur.”

I sighed. Even the scrappers weren’t strong enough to maintain powered flight. Even with the reduced gravity of Raphina directly overhead, and even launched directly into the wind, a goblin-powered aircraft just didn’t seem feasible. We were going to need either gas envelopes or internal combustion to maintain powered flight. And right now, both were still out of reach.

Getting the lighter-than-air gas for airships was surprisingly easy. I had a test balloon stitched by my most recently born taskmaster, hovering right now—directly over the latrine. It turns out that goblin scat, in addition to making a great base for primitive rocket fuel, puts out an insane amount of methane that could either be trapped in an envelope to create lift, or burned to create hot air. And the solution to needing more fuel was the same as the solutions to most problem as a goblin king: get more goblins. I’d managed to stay out of trouble the past few days and enhance our progress on all fronts except this one, which had given the tribe some breathing room.

The problem with airships was a materials one. Even with the square-cube law on your side, you needed a lot of surface area for an envelope capable of lifting people—even people as small as goblins. I’d mathed it out, and our new clothier division would need roughly a thousand hides from cliffords or eclipse lizards, or other similar sized animals in order to lift up a frame and five goblins plus the weight of the craft itself. That just wasn’t feasible. And I couldn’t rely on Rufus to come back with a wagonload of sailcloth, either. Not when we were in the middle of the untamed forest.

Internal combustion was a more mechanically complex solution that required metal—which was on the docket anyway—as well as liquid fuel, lubricating oil, and a stable source of ignition. A simple, self-lubricating rotary engine had only a few moving parts and could take a hell of a beating. I could build one out of ceramic. But when it failed (and it would fail), it would do so catastrophically and most likely explosively. And it would take several dedicated firings to iterate one that worked in the first place.

I sat at the western edge of the bluff as Eileen and her team ran over to the east side to set up for the day’s transfer of supplies and personnel to Village Canaveral—what I’d named the bluff beset by the lizards. There seemed to be no end to them and reinforcing the village had only brought them out in greater numbers. Even with the enhanced fortifications and a dedicated taskmaster with a militaristic skillset (John) heading up Canaveral’s defenses so that I could give Armstrong some much-needed rest at Village Apollo, an end to the war was nowhere in sight. Which had, ironically, become almost a boon as I needed fewer hunters and fishers to support the tribe. The lizards were the closest thing in Rava to Doordash. Canaveral had started sending back meat and hides via glider for every load of fresh goblins and raw materials. They’d been using those hides to produce more rocket-assist aircraft, as well. But eventually, we’d run out of sulfur.

Below, the open land had started to stretch where Buzz’ timber team had cleared area for Chuck’s paddocks. And rather than a single herd animal, the wranglers had brought back a hodge-podge of grazing savannah creatures and thrust them together to figure things out via spaghetti testing. Essentially, they had thrown the entire biome at the wall and were seeing what stuck in the goblin equivalent of animal husbandry. It had started to attract predators, but Chuck had let the stone-sloth cub have the run of the enclosures like a sheep dog and it kept most other nasties away. It was growing incredibly quickly, as well. The cub now weighed as much as a hobgoblin, and I knew it would only get bigger.

Far beyond that, iron waited for me in the peat bog, and that consumed the lion’s share of my attention and planning. Metal was the answer to most of our immediate bottlenecks. But it was a long way to travel on foot. A couple hours ride on a clifford meant at least 2 days’ walk as the goblin carves. And goblins wouldn’t—couldn’t survive in the forest at night without the safety of high ground. So, we were going to bring it with us. But that would be a multi-day trek through dangerous terrain with heavy supplies.

I’d started inventing wheels, wagons, yokes, and even gravel roads to haul everything in preparation. Luckily, a large enough group of goblins basically carved their own freeway as a matter of course when moving from place to place. Roads were a simple matter of paving that cleared brush over with gravel from broken or discarded construction bricks. When I was going to grad school, they’d shut down one lane of the main stretch outside my apartment for 6 months in order to re-pave 2 miles of asphalt. Give me a dozen of Buzz’ builders and I’d have had it done in 3 weeks.

I sat for a while, considering that iron and the threats in the bog. We’d been there all of 10 minutes and encountered two major dangers—and who knows what else lurked there. I wouldn’t send the iron expedition unprepared. Weapons, leather and ceramic armor, fortified building supplies, and munitions were all going. I worried that the expenditure of personnel and resources might not be worth it if the bog bounced us back as brutally as it had the first time. At least I also didn’t have to worry about things falling apart in my absence.

Thanks to my supervision, the tribe was running like a well-oiled machine—or at least a stack of spinning plates kept aloft by a well-oiled stage magician. Logistics were a matter of raw materials available vs collected vs consumed and left-right limits for the different divisions within Tribe Apollo let things function without my direct intervention in most circumstances without worrying about critical shortfalls. But I’d specialized in closed-loop systems in my engineering classes, and my expertise were surprisingly applicable to the tribal management. At least until the next crisis occurred. And it seemed like goblins lived in a near-constant state of one crisis after another.

<Your tribe has decreased to 123 members>

Case in point. The javeline and night haunts were still out there as well. I’d seen smoke rising from a bluff in the direction I’d last seen the rutters moving and had to assume they’d wiped out another tribe before I could get to them. I needed powered flight in order to rescue the more distant villages.

I brought up the System window and checked the rosters. Looked like Buzz had lost one of his construction crew to some sort of accident.

I dismissed the window and pulled myself to my feet. The sloth claws were holding up well. But I couldn’t help looking forward to the day I’d be able to augment this design with steel springs. And it was coming. I was certain of it. No pig men or croc-knockers or lizard swarms could slow me down for long.

Chapter 37 - Friendly Fire

A glider soaring over the grasslands spotted Rufus coming up from the south. The wranglers went to meet him on cliffords and escorted the trader to the freight elevator.

He looked around, mouth slightly agape at the differences in the village.

“It looks a bit different, I know,” I said. We’d replaced all the sticky shelters with stone and adobe versions—as much as three stories tall. But Rufus fixated on the tallest building in the village.

“A bit,” He said. He pointed to a square tower on the east side. “What are they doing?”

I followed his gaze to a pair of Eileen’s goblins atop the tower with a pair of hide flags. “Directing traffic,” I said. After a moment, a scout glider came in to land, skidding to a halt on the short dirt path that passed for a landing zone. The pilot scrambled out, and over to the pond to scrub the bugs off her face. On the launch rail, a small launch booster ignited, sending the replacement scout craft rocketing into the air.

“So that’s what I’ve been hearing for these two days past. I thought it was earthquakes and thunder, yet I saw no lightning and never once felt the ground quake.”

“The tower was really a prototype,” I said. I took Rufus to the central courtyard of our developing little city, where a shaded pavilion ringed the fire pits with long tables. This was where Sally’s team did most of their work during the day, as well as where the tribe ate after sundown. Two dozen of her engineers were tinkering with various projects or manufacturing parts. “The internal part of the tower has sleeping room for thirty goblins, and the top can be expanded for more. I wanted to try building one here to see how many bricks it would take before we made one down below. But it makes for a great air traffic control.”

“Air traffic,” Rufus said, and laughed. Tabun’ Quo’Horal are not going to believe this.”

“Tabun’ Quarrel who?” I asked.

Rufus unslung his pack, more delicately than I was used to seeing him treat his things. He pulled out a spool of copper wire, the bearing I’d given him, and a few other trinkets. At last, he withdrew a small brass jar and a roll of gauze. I looked at the jar. It was capped, with the first indication I’d had of threading on this world. “Liquor from the artificers?”

“If only,” he huffed. “When I showed the City of Brass the things you gave me and described what I saw here, they insisted on sending a representative in person—so to speak—to confirm things for themselves before agreeing to any long-term trade agreements. The fact they were willing to do so speaks very loudly, Apollo. They leave their city only at great risk to themselves.”

“When should I expect this representative?” I asked.

By way of answer, Rufus unscrewed the stopper on the brass jar. At first, nothing happened. Then, tendrils of pale, blue flame began to creep through its neck. The tendrils felt around as I watched, fascinated. They lit upon the gauze. But, instead of singing the sheer cloth, as I expected them to do, the wraps billowed, and the bottle rattled as fire flowed out of bottle and into the loose shape of a person slightly smaller than a goblin, which stood on the table and bowed to me.

“Good king,” it whispered. Its voice sounding like the whisper of wind through the forest. “We are Tabun’ Quo’Horal of The City. It is our honor to meet you.”

“You’re kidding,” I said, looking between the badger-kin and the new arrival. “The artificers are magic lamp djinn?”

<More like Ifrit.> the System notified me.

What’s the difference? Still, no wonder they were so reluctant to travel out of their city. If they traveled in bottles, practically anyone could promise to take an irfrit one place and then move them somewhere else altogether. If there was value in goblin ears and tongues, a creature of living flame must have demanded a pretty penny indeed.

“We are familiar with this word,” said Tabun. “Djinni. It is a crude, reductive term. We dislike it. Almost as much as we dislike when the newcomers term us demons. We are Ifrit.”

“Sorry about that,” I said. “I meant no offense. Ifrit it is.”

The ifrit bowed again. “Your humility honors us,” it said. It walked across the surface of the table, toward a pair of gawking engineers who were putting together a set of ceramic gears for a winch. It touched the gearing and part of the gauze wrapping deflated. The winch began to spin in the goblin’s hands, much to the creature’s shock. It squawked and dropped the piece. The ifrit flowed back into its wrappings.

“Interesting application of gear ratios. This allows one of your goblins to lift something greater than his own weight, yes?”

“That’s one of the potential applications, yes, Tabun.”

“Tabun’ Quo’Horal. To call us simply ‘Tabun’ diminishes the union of Quo and Horal, whose voice you now hear. I am familiar with the fleshling habit of familiar brevity. If you must shorten our name, please call us Taquoho.”

So there was more than one entity inhabiting those wraps. Made sense, really. I mean, as much as anything in this world did. Clearly these were magical creatures in some way, and this was the first hint I’d seen of its actual existence other than the explicit denial of it to goblins by the System that indirectly implied its presence. Still, several fires can join to become a single blaze, right? “Sure thing. Taquoho. I’ll try to remember it.”

Taquoho bowed again. “When our honored friend Rufus told us of you, we must admit we thought it some strange jest or poison of the mind. It is our great shame that we thought you so. This land has not seen a goblin king in many centuries, and the last one was certainly not inclined to trade or practice artifice. This material you’ve created, we believed it was some machination of the newcomers. We are glad it is not, because we desire more of it.”

He moved on to the next station at the tables. A pair of Sally’s goblins there was assembling an impeller. Taquoho again diminished and flowed into the device. The impeller was much larger, and the ifrit was able to squeeze the entirety of its body into the gadget. It vibrated on the table and started blowing back the loose skin of the engineer’s face like a dog leaning its head out the window on the highway.

A voice issued from the ceramic shell. “Fascinating. Less mechanically efficient than a bellows or a fan blade. It impresses us what you have achieved with such primitive means” He flowed out and filled out the gauze wraps again. “If we provide you with schema, are you able to produce parts in your ceramic material?”

“Hold up,” I said. “Did you just possess my impeller?”

“That is a crude, reductive description. But accurate.”

“Can you possess larger devices?”

Taquoho stopped. I got the feeling of ephemeral eyes on me. “It is the basis of our culture. We craft bodies that let us interact with the world in ways our true form cannot. It is the reason some of the newcomers assume us to be demons. Ever, we seek to better our vessels. Please provide an answer to our query.”

I’d gotten so excited so fast that I’d forgotten the ifrit had even asked me anything. I thought back. “Yes. I can produce ceramic versions of parts you provide. How large an object could you possess?”

“By what frame of reference?”

I looked around at the projects Sally’s engineers were currently working on and pointed to a new iteration of the goblin-powered propeller. I pointed to it. “Could you move something like that?”

The ifrit leaned over, peering at the assembly. He did his vanishing trick again, and the prop began to turn, slowly.

“I’m afraid it is much too heavy and tiresome for us to move with alacrity. Perhaps a stronger Ifrit might. Pray tell, what is this device for?”

Rufus glanced over at me “Are you going to tell him?”

I shrugged. “Easier to show him.” I stood on the table and whistled up at the tower. “Eileen! Prep the heavy!”

Taquoho filled out his gauze wraps again. “You have a working of artifice for us to view?”

Rufus barked a laugh. “You could call it that! Bloody deathtrap, it is. Impressive bit of machining, though.”

“Aww, don’t say that, Rufus,” I said. “You’re coming too!”