MBGSP Chpt 23 thru 26

Hey guys! Getting this up to date to make sure the advanced chapters are available through the weekend. Thanks to everyone who subscribed so far. The number is small, but growing faster than I honestly expected. That holds true for MBGSP on Royal Road as well, and I'm blown away with the amount of community engagement swapping theories, ideas, and other comments on each chapter.

Chapter 23 - Remnants

It took about an hour of flight and one additional thermal to the east (off some natural hot springs, I think from the smell of sulfur wafting on the draft) for me to make it to my destination. One of the bluffs I’d seen smoke rising from came up in the distance, and as I drew closer I could definitely see signs of habitation from the air.

I soared wide, banking back and trading altitude for speed. I swooped down toward the thin trickle of smoke rising from the bluff and went low. I swept down over the treetops, head angled down to look for signs of fellow goblins. It only took me about a minute to fly over the village.

It was completely destroyed.

What little mud hovels they had once had were crushed and trampled, and I saw raw materials scattered in a hurry. The source of the smoldering was a pile of spread ashes and a scorched frame that I think had once been a wooden structure—possibly once the pride of their village. Now it was barely a grave marker.

I curled my lip in distaste, feeling a shock of grief. While I’d grown somewhat inured to the loss of any single goblin, the destruction of the collective of another tribe sickened me. It dropped a pit into my stomach that churned. What had done this? Night haunts don’t start fires.

Reluctantly, I banked and headed south. There was another bluff I wanted to check. It was slightly closer to our own. I hadn’t seen smoke, but if there were goblins there was a chance they hadn’t discovered carousels yet.

<Your tribe has increased to 61 members.>

<A hobgoblin scrapper has been added to your tribe. The hobgoblin scrapper is now an available variant.>

<A hobgoblin scrapper has been promoted to taskmaster>

What?

I banked so that I could look down at the ground. Through an opening in the trees, I could see four small goblins, whose fur was slightly greener than that of my own tribe. They were jumping and pointing at my flying machine, but they locked up and went rigid. I realized it was the trance of technology—everything I’d unlocked was flooding into the survivors of whatever cataclysm befell their village. I leveled out and made a buttonhook turn, hoping to find them again. But the four had moved back into the trees.

So, they weren’t all dead. That was good news. Great news, even. Plus, apparently finding different goblin variants would unlock them for my own tribe, much the same way unlocking technology did. That added an additional imperative to discovering additional tribes. Scrappers were probably useful, too. I wondered if they specialized in breaking down tech into component parts and cobbling it back together. I grinned and leaned into a turn to catch the hot-spring thermal again and then headed south.

The moon had passed overhead, and its pull had a noticeable effect on the performance of the glider. I was holding altitude longer, but once the eclipse passed over the clear areas, I would lose the benefit of those thermals.

The whole time I was flying, I felt the distinct impression of attention on me. At first, it made me paranoid. There are, after all, myriad predators interested in goblins. Some of them fly. And I couldn’t think they’d look kindly on me making a flying contraption with their buddy’s desiccated hide. But the presence wasn’t hostile. It took me a little while to figure out that the extraneous presence I felt was the system itself devoting extra attention to my efforts.

“System, are you watching me?” I teased.

<Always.>

That was honestly more that I expected to get from the recalcitrant entity. I had always imagined it as a chubby CS engineer typing out snarky replies to me from the other side of a keyboard. This was the first time I felt it as a tangible presence in the world.

<What does it feel like?>

“Flying?”

<Yes.>

I thought for a moment. “Like distilled freedom. Like all the worries of the world just become so small as to not matter. Up here, it’s just you and the air currents.” I squeezed the handles of the control system. “I always preferred gliding over powered flight. The wings are like a part of you. It’s amazing. It’s always been amazing. And it will always be.”

The System didn’t answer me I did feel the presence lift somewhat, though not disappear entirely. I suppose it had other tasks and couldn’t afford to spend all its processing power on one little goblin glider, no matter how novel to this world. If this was some sort of alien simulation, maybe the bug-eyed gray alien administrating the whole thing dreamed of piloting a UFO one day before he settled for a life of computer nerd-ism. I could relate. For a long time I never thought I’d get my chance to go into space. Fate had conspired to give me that opportunity, then take that opportunity away from me—first in the accident, and later in the explosion. Some other force had intervened to give it back.

It took about an hour to reach the other plateau to the south, near the border of an arid, desert area. I’d ear-marked it for survey, betting that the sun-baked desert would give me enough thermal lift to easily make it back. I was delighted to find that an active goblin village thrived on the bluff, and there was a frenzy of activity. I dipped down for a lower pass over their plateau.

The frenzy of activity turned out to be a war of sorts between the tribe and a large type of pale, frilled lizard. The goblins were holding their own, but they were doing so with sticks and thrown stones. Once the shadow of the eclipse passed, the lizards retreated, scaling down the shaded face of the cliff on the side that blocked the sun.

I banked and followed the lizards from the air. They were quick little devils. They were only level 1 or 2, but there were a lot of them and they moved as a pack back to a dry, dusty area on the plains with lots of cracks and crevices. I lost them there, as they slithered into tight burrows and disappeared. I made a note of the area and rode the thermal coming off the baked ground of the plains until I’d regained enough altitude to return for a low pass over the village in peril. They spotted me instantly, and pointed and shouted. Two of them threw rocks that fell hopelessly short.

<Your tribe has increased to 73 members>

That was the biggest single jump I’d seen yet. So, the warring tribe had only 12 members, currently. They lost at least two warring with the lizards that I saw carried off the cliff. Without enough goblins to replenish losses, they would lose the war of attrition. Especially if the lizards came at night as well as during the eclipse.

As much as I wanted to stay and see how the next battle played out, I was losing light, and with it, the thermals. I still had to make it back to Village Apollo. If nothing else, the 12 remaining goblins on this bluff now had fire, spears, and other technology to give them a slight edge. Who knows, if the lizard skin was photosensitive, the fire alone might be enough to deter them.

I angled back toward the hot springs I’d passed over earlier. Even with the sun dropping, they should give me the boost I needed to make it back to Village Apollo. But my mind kept wandering to what I’d just seen.

I was so lost in thought about how I could help the goblins on the bluff that I didn’t see the shadow pass over me.

Chapter 24 - A Missed Engagement

I don’t know if night haunts had a skill that let them paralyze prey with their screech, or if that was just a part of my goblin physiology. But when I heard the noise directly behind me, I locked up.

I’d never seen the night haunts around the village before full dark, but apparently, they began patrolling the skies near dusk. Or maybe this one saw me from its roost and flew into a rage. Either way, it tore a gouge in my left wing on its first pass.

The glider bucked and dipped to the left, having lost a good portion of its lift on that side. I  cursed, and tried to level out, looking around for the night haunt. I spotted him gaining altitude off to the north, preparing for another strike.

I dumped altitude, trying to build up speed so I could get low and fast over the tree tops. The glider was completely defenseless against the aerial predator. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw it tuck in its wings for a stoop and come at me again. I yanked back on the controls, exposing the underside of the wings to the buffeting wind and slowing drastically.

The night haunt overshot and ended up in the trees. I leaned my weight forward and banked to the right—but my turn was sluggish.  And I now had a huge problem: My glider no longer had the energy to make it back to Camp Apollo.

I saw a clearer stretch of woods off to my right and leaned into a turn. It was sluggish, with my left wing struggling to maintain lift, and I lost a lot of altitude adjusting my heading. The tops of the trees started to slide past, and I flared off high to avoid impaling myself on the tallest branches. Unfortunately, the wind in my wings tore the left membrane further, and I started to spin left.

I shouted and braced for impact, but the tail caught on a branch, and I was ejected from the glider with a snap of the cords tying me down. I shot straight ahead, bounced off my head, and dug a head-width trench in the dirt when I landed again.

Right. Fall damage immunity. A crash like that back home would have been immediately fatal. I gave silent thanks for my new goblin body and pushed myself over onto my back and propped myself up on my elbows. Looking down, I immediately took it back.

One of my prosthetics had come off. A single running blade doesn’t do much good on its own. I thumped the back of my head into the dirt and groaned. I was going to have to make a sticky-stilt and hobble all the way back to Village Apollo. It was at least five or six kilometers away when I’d been struck by the night haunt. That’s a long trip through untamed lands as a healthy, adult human. As a goblin? Well, for all our wanderings, we’d never gone more than about three or four kilometers from the bluff. The woods were just too dangerous. If anything, I was closer to the first bluff I’d visited with the completely sacked village.

That wasn’t a comforting thought. Village #3 was at war with lizards. I still didn’t know what had destroyed Village #2. I had my guesses, but this land was full of so many threats to a tiny goblin tribe that it’s a miracle they survived at all.

A crash on the other side of the brush drew my attention, and I saw a pair of bright yellow eyes in the dimming light. The night haunt pushed its way into the clearing, and I scraped at the ground, trying to pull myself away.

I might not be able to die while members of my tribe were there, but I could still feel pain. I didn’t much think the feeling of being torn at with the long, sharp beak and claws would feel great. And there was nothing saying I couldn’t lose more limbs.

“Look,” I said, scrabbling. “I didn’t mean to make your friend into a glider. It just sort of worked out that he was there and I had the tools and needed an airfoil. No hard feelings, right?

The night haunt crawled forward on the claws at the ends of its wings. Its head was low to the ground, and it growled. Its tail was poofed  up like a startled cat, and it approached me in a serpentine, pacing back and forth as it drew closer.

“Nice monster… niiiice monster,”

I could see the muscles in its haunches bunch up. It snarled, dug its claws into the turf, and then flinched as a spear embedded itself into the ground between its front paws. It yowled, hissed, and began to back away into the foliage.

My blood went cold. Goblins didn’t scare night haunts. Which meant it hadn’t been a goblin that threw that spear. That thick, heavy spear with a metal cross-bar. I rolled my head back, fixing my eyes on the four broad, bearded forms of the javeline rutters that had come out of the woods. Three of them came into the clearing, and the System helpfully put their levels at 7, 8, and 11. One looked down curiously and nudged my prosthetic with his spear. Another went to retrieve his own spear. The last started poking around the remains of the Mk. 1 glider.

“Hey,” I said.

The one with the spear pointed at me stumbled back, drawing the attention of the other two. “It talk!” he said. His voice was a low rumble.

“So what?” said the one at the wreckage. He picked up my other prosthetic, looked at it for a moment, and then discarded it. “It vermin. Kill. Take tongue.”

“Wait! I’m not—hyurk!”

The pigman standing over me thrust his spear down into my chest. It was like lightning zapped through my heart. Every bit as painful as the accident, and then some. I could feel the blade going into my lung.

<Your tribe has decreased to 72 members.>

The rutter pulled the spear out. I gasped, rolling onto my side. I pressed a hand to my chest, and it came away bloody, even though the wound had transferred to another member of Tribe Apollo. That didn’t lessen the pain, though. Tremors shook through me, and I had trouble drawing a breath.

The one at the wreckage stomped back. “I say kill, Mitri! I have highest level. You listen me.”

“I did kill, Rotte! Look!”

The one called Mitri held his spear up, where wet blood glistened in the moonlight. The others looked at it. Rotte, the one that seemed to be the leader, rolled me onto my back with his hoof, looking down at my chest. He grunted, angling his spear down.

“No, please!”

He brought the spear down and I screamed as it bit into me again.

<Your tribe has decreased to 71 members.>

The pain was a searing, white-hot rod. I’d already died once, and now I wanted to do it again. Would they just sit here and keep stabbing me until they killed every member of my tribe and then me?

I couldn’t bear it. Buzz, Neil, Sally, Chuck. I couldn’t lose them like I’d lost Dave and Sandra. I couldn’t take any more loss, and I couldn’t take any more pain. There’d been too much already.

“System!” I gasped. “I renounce my job! Make me not a king anymore!”

<I’m sorry, Chris.>

The spear fell again.

Chapter 25 - Javeline Hot Potato

“We take it,” Rotte growled. “Kill later.”

Mitri reached down and scooped me up, throwing me over his shoulder. I winced. The pain of the Javeline spears was still fresh. But the bastards trussed me up like, well, like a prize pig, and cantered back into the woods.

We didn’t go far. They must have seen the glider from the ground, just as the night haunt had, and come to investigate. I started to smell sulfur and feel humidity dampen my fur, and realized we were heading toward the hot springs that I’d flown over. We broke into a small clearing with several steaming pools and a campsite nearby. Their camp was small and disorganized, with three small hide tents and some supplies. They’d left a fourth, smaller rutter to guard it and cook dinner, by the looks of things. It had a metal cook pot hanging on a hollow iron pole. The tender looked at me curiously.

Mitri tossed me down onto the ground, knocking the wind out of me.

“Tie up.”

The smaller boar-man went to the packs and retrieved a length of chain—real metal chain. Not the rough cordage we were working with. God, the things I could do with a metal chain. They looped my wrists with the chain and then strung the whole thing around a branch, hoisting it to where I could barely sit.

“My tribe will come for me,” I said.

Mitri looked up at the last of the fading light and made a rude noise. “Is night. No goblin come.”

He was right. Goblins are chaos personified until about an hour after eating. When they crash, they crash hard. The javelines disregarded me for the time being, busying themselves instead with scooping whatever stew they’d brewed out of the cook pot into wooden bowls, which they slurped from, slopping half of it down their bristly flavor-savers. That finished, Rotte trotted past me into the woods, and a few minutes later, a stench wafted out that made even my raw-meat-eating goblin throat clench up and gag.

Rotte came back into the camp, trailing the stink along with him. He huffed a laugh. “Was bad one,” he said, and then went to the cook pot for seconds. Disgusting creature. Once the hunting trio had eaten their fill, they sat back on their haunches and began to joke and laugh while the camp tender ate what little burnt scraps clung to the bottom of their pot.

After a few hours, the third javeline, the one that had scared off the night haunt got bored or restless and wandered over to me. He prodded my sloth-claw blade with his hoof. “Is truth you talk?”

I debated staying silent. But I had a feeling it would just lead to me getting the business end of a spear, again. “Yeah,” I said. “I talk.” I looked up. “My name is Apollo. What’s your name?”

“Muthus,” said the javeline rutter.

“Why are you keeping me prisoner?”

The javeline shrugged. “Is strange, goblin that talk. Don’t die. Maybe is worth sell.”

“We don’t have to be enemies,” I said. “If you take me back to my tribe, we could trade. You have metal. I’m sure we have things you could use.”

 Muthus shook his head. “We trade goblin for metal. For spear. For pathfinding needle.” he stuck out his tongue and pulled his ears. At first, I thought he was just being rude. Then I remembered what Rotte had said at the crash site. Kill. Take tongue.

I shivered. “Why would anyone want goblin ears and tongues?” I asked.

Muthus rubbed his belly. “Tongue is good to man for cure poison.” He flattened his hands and raised them up. “Ears to elves for make potent.”

“Make… make potent?” I asked. Then I realized. “Oh… oh… Oh, no.”

Muthus squatted down on his haunches. “But goblin that talk like man? Goblin don’t die? Worth ears of twenty goblin. Maybe ten and twenty.”

“Is this what you do?” I asked. “Hunt goblins for a living?”

Muthus shrugged, getting back to his feet. “Hunt what need hunt. Goblin good. Goblin vermin. No one miss.”

No one miss. Again, I was reminded just how alone goblins were in this world. How dismissed and discarded they were. Elves were huffing our powdered ears before sexy-times to raise their pavilions. Javelleros rounded us up for sport and profit. Lanclova was a harsh land, untamed and coveted by jealous eyes. If I was to have any hope of achieving my goal, or even living long enough to have a chance at it, I had to secure Tribe Apollo’s place in the shadowed lands.

The javelines retired to their crude tents. I pulled at the chain, but the branch held firm and the chain just rattled loudly in the night.

“QUIET!” Rotte shouted from his tent.

I settled back, thinking. The tribe would be fine. For now. In the morning they might come look for me. Javelines were strong, and if I interpreted the situation correctly, they could gain levels through this world’s System—unlike goblins, who were perpetually destined to be the weakest creatures. We were the joke, the speed bump for adventurers on their way to the real challenge. Well, there were 70 of us, and only 4 javelines. We may not have levels, but we’re legion.

The only problem was, how do I get them to come find me? Where would they even start looking? If the javelines broke camp and moved out early enough in the morning, they’d simply out-pace any goblins on foot, even with the benefit of flex-a-pult assisted launches and wranglers. No. I had to do something.

Chapter 26 - Gorn in Sixty Seconds

I tried everything I could think of to get loose, even gnawing on the chain. Goblin teeth were tough, but not chomp-through-iron tough.

Even with the imperative of escape looming over me, there was nothing I’d be able to do if I couldn’t get free.

The sun dropped well and truly behind the horizon, opening Raphina’s eye over the camp. I heard rustling in the brush and froze. The nocturnal predators of Lanclova were many, and I wasn’t safe at the top of a fenced bluff.

The rustling grew louder. Could it be one of those photo-sensitive lizards had followed me? Maybe the night haunt the rutters had frightened off had come back for his stolen snack. I clenched up.

A goblin tumbled out of the brush, he came to a sitting position, slightly dazed, stared at me, and then pointed and opened his mouth to shout. A pair of thick hands reached out of the brush behind him and clapped over his mouth.

The hands were thick and knobby, with large, furry knuckles. The hobgoblin they belonged to was also thick and knobby. Whereas Chuck and his Wranglers were lean and wiry, this one was built for power. He had a hide cowl wrapped around his face, and a pair of flint cleavers tucked into a corded belt. He was level 6, which was higher level than the wranglers.

“Quiet!” he hissed. “You tryin to rouse the piggies?”

The smaller goblin got the message and when the hobgoblin removed his hands, the smaller one clamped his own in their place. With a glance at the hide tents, the hobgoblin dropped to the ground and low-crawled to my tree. Past him, I could see the moonlight glinting off two other sets of eyes in the bush.

Since I hadn’t acquired any new tribe members, I had to assume these were the four survivors I’d flown over.

“You still wiv’ us, boss?” asked the hobgoblin, who must have been my very first scrapper. He sounded like he spoke around a mouth full of gravel. The scrapper motioned for one of the other goblins, who crept out of the bush holding my missing prosthetic above his head.

I nodded and held the chains out of the way as the scrapper slipped the socket over my stump and started to lace up the clamps. A regular prince charming, this one. The metal clinked slightly as I shifted. “Can you get me out of these?”

“Inna pinch, king.” The scrapper licked his lips and carefully began to pull the chain loops. But the sound of metal grinding against metal was too noisy.

“Stop!” I whispered, looking at the hide tents for any sign of movement. I heard something shift inside one of them, and the scrapper ducked low. The movement stopped, and he issued a low growl. “Even if we do get these off, they’ll come after us in the morning. And they’re faster.”

“Bad news, that.” The scrapper cracked his knuckles quietly. “I could take one of ‘em in a square scrap. But four’s aft o’ too many,” he said. “We need sommat to even them odds up. Got any o’ your contraptions what could help?”

I thought. A few of the rock slingers would have evened the odds a little. Or some of the bomb fruits. But there was no way the four of them would be able to craft slingers without first crafting a set of tools, and that would take too long—hours to navigate through dangerous terrain and retrieve bomb fruit just to most likely blow themselves up on the return trip. Projectiles or other distance weapons would be ideal. But the javaline didn’t carry bows or crossbows that we could steal, and their spears were much too heavy for myself or the other small goblins. Shame we didn’t have the slingers, because there were plenty of small, smooth stones on the banks of the hot springs.

One of the other goblins wrinkled his nose and waved his hands in front of it, sniffing.

The scrapper noticed and shushed them. “Rutters like to camp wiv the springs ‘cause they’re the only things wot stink more’n they do.”

“That’d be the sulfur,” I said. “Smells like rotten eggs where the—”

I stopped. Sulfur. I looked at the softly-glowing coals of the dying rutter fire. Charcoal.

Hmm…

I had no idea if the chemical reactions of this world bore any resemblance to that of Earth in my home universe. It stood to reason the periodic table would have differences in a world where magic and rule-enforcing omniscient Systems existed. But chemistry had never been my forte anyway. I hoped a little Goblin Tech Tree grease would smooth over the gaps.

Everyone’s got an episode of a TV show that was always on whenever they were channel surfing. For me, it was a certain episode of Star-Trek where Kirk got stranded on the planet with the weird, diamond-eyed lizard. Now, I know what you’re going to say, he’s an astronaut, of course he’s a Trekkie nerd. But the truth is, I was always more of a Battlestar guy. I’ve barely even watched Trek. Except for that one episode, which seemed to always be on, and has lived rent-free in my head ever since.

If it was the same episode for you, then you probably already figured out where this was going.

I motioned the goblins closer. “We’re going to need a few things,” I said. I looked at the first goblin. “By the springs there should be some yellow, stinky stone. I need powder from it. Can you scrape some off and bring it to me?”

The goblin pulled her knife and lifted it overhead, keeping one hand over her mouth to stifle her own excitement. She vanished back into the brush.

I pointed to the dying fire. “I need some of the charred wood from that fire. Make sure you don’t grab anything glowing!”

The second goblin nodded enthusiastically and dropped to a low-crawl, serpentining his way into the rutter camp. I looked at the remaining small one. “Sorry to do this to you. But I need some of the javaline scat from their latrines.”

I pointed, and the goblin wilted, looking at me with an expression of pure betrayal. But he stomped off into the forest. It wasn’t hard to tell where the latrine was. It was the only thing smelling worse than the sulphur.

“Wot of me, king?” asked the scrapper.

“The rutters had hollow poles holding up their cookpot. I need those poles.”

The scrapper looked at me skeptically until I explained to him what they were going to do with them. Then the hobgoblin grinned. “Oy, sounds like a proppa’ lark.” He turned as if to leave, then hesitated. “This name fing, boss. I fink I want one.”

The first name that came to mind, looking at his muscled frame, was, of course, Armstrong. But I’d already named one of the goblins Neil. Ah, so what? I feel like the first man to walk on the moon deserved a two-fer. Besides, the goblins all had single names anyway. Like Cher, or Zendaya.

“Armstrong,” I said.

Armstrong flexed his biceps and grinned. I watched as he dropped to his belly and snaked into the camp. The tubes had been stowed with the rest of the cookware on the far side of the clearing after the camp keeper had cleaned them. He went slow, taking his time and staying as quiet as possible. He was oddly stealthy for a goblin. I pulled up his info in my tribe as I watched.

<Hobgoblin Scrapper

Hobgoblin - This advanced goblin is capable speech and reaching level 5.

Nocturnal - These bad-boys like to stay up late and get into trouble. Their eyes are tuned for low-light. The downside is that they sleep until mid-day.

Scrappy - These hard-knuckled bruisers love a good fight—especially if the other guys doesn’t know he’s in one. Scrappers have a bonus to surprise attacks.

Sneakers - These light-footed goblins are capable of getting in and out of tight spots without detection.

Track-em - These goblins excel at following trails left by other creatures.

Blast-boy - These goblins love anything that goes ‘boom’ and have a bonus to dealing blast damage.>

I’d been expecting a machinist or an engineer when I’d heard the term scrapper. But this guy was basically the goblin equivalent of a special forces commando. Of the two, this was exactly what I needed. Thanks, System.

The goblin with the scat returned first, carrying the pungent droppings on a flat rock. Then came the goblin with the charcoal, and lastly the one with the sulphur. Now, I didn’t know the finer details or ratios of making black powder. But I knew its basic components. The only one I wasn’t completely clear on was salt-peter. But I remembered that they used to get it from bat guano in the civil war (thanks Mr. Clarkson’s 10th grade field trip for history that I never thought I’d use). I figured the rutter scat was probably foul enough to explode on its own, so it might have some of that third ingredient or something almost as good.

In true goblin fashion, my newest tribe members used sticks to mix the concoction into a big, smelly mess. By the time the scrapper returned with the tubes, we had a weird, greasy putty that looked like vomit and smelled like pure death.

I had them break it up and feed it into one end of the tubes, and then take rocks and pebbles and feed them down the other end and tamp them down with sticks. Goblins, being what they are, got immediately over-excited, and missed the mouth of his tube entirely. The rock pinged off the iron exterior, and we all froze as the metal rang like a tuning fork. Armstrong lanced out and grabbed it, stopping the ringing. But the damage was done.

The rutters began to stir.