A Dream of Dawn

“It was a beautiful dream, and we were so close to it. But now it ends.”

You awaken, bleary-eyed. You stumble over to where your water should be, but find only stone. That’s right, it vanished when you claimed the barrow.

“It was arrogance, I suppose. That is the other side of glory.”

You stumble outside and drink deep from the stream, before washing the sleep from your eyes.

“If I had only been a little more cautious…”

As the sunlight and water pull your mind further from sleep, the memories stop. The words came with flashes. A sliver sword. A spray of blood. Eyes that shined with the golden light of dawn.

It’s coming back to you, little by little.

Right, first things first, you need to find food. In all the excitement, you’d forgotten to eat breakfast yesterday, and your lunch and dinner had been meager. You could probably go for a light breakfast, but you need a proper meal sometime today. You draw your sword from its scabbard, sit on the bank of the stream, and wait. The silt settles, and little fish begin to swim about your feet, as you sit unmoving. Before long, a larger fish passes by, large enough to satisfy you, and you thrust your word into the water.

A sword is not as suited to the task of spearing fish as an actual spear, but you made do with it.

You catch another two fish this way, and decide that will be enough. Now you just need a fire to cook them, and you know where you can find one. You need to go to the goblin village, anyways.

You dip back inside to grab your now-dry gambeson, and stow away your blankets, before setting out into the forest. You divert your course to pass by a few different bushes in the area, with a few different types of fruit; you pick a few from each, eating as you go.

It takes a couple hours, but you wind your way down game trails towards your destination.

As you approach, you hear voices—but far enough out that you shouldn’t be able to hear anyone in the village. Drawing closer, you can actually make out details. There are two of them. The first is the voice of an old man, rasping out syllables like someone scraping two pieces of gnarled wood together. It is a voice you recognize.

“Grab it at the base,” says the old voice, “we need as much of the root as we can get.”

“Yes sir!” The second voice was clearly much younger, and higher pitched. “Grab plant from root.”

“Grab the plant from the root,” says the old voice.

So he’s trying to teach one of them to speak properly, is he?

Once you imagine you’re close enough for them to hear you walking, you call out. You find two very, very different goblins. One, the taller of the two, is wrinkly, knobbly, and rough. He is sitting on a rock, with a rough-spun wool cloak, dyed red, draped around his shoulders, and a stick laid across his lap—long enough to be a staff, for someone the size of a goblin. His skin is a sickly green, his eyes a yellow of similar character. His face is probably misshapen and grotesque, but most of the hideousness is covered up by a labyrinth of wrinkles.

Gromgol, Level 4 Goblin Shaman

Monster, Goblin, Explicit

Gromgol is one of few goblins you actually respect, because he's smart—not just smart for a goblin, but actually intelligent. He can also speak in complete sentences, which makes dealing with him much less annoying than his peers.

His eyes go wide looking at you. His Perception must have triggered around the same time as yours. That was probably quite the surprise.

The other goblin, the only possible owner of the young voice, had skin which is a much healthier-looking shade of green. Her body was much curvier than goblins usually had, with wide hips and a full chest. She's kneeling down, next to a basket part-way filled with freshly-harvested plants. Her face is surprisingly free of blemishes or bulges—a rarity in goblins. She's wearing simple clothes of plain linen, but also bears a small, black, metal ring, loosely fitted around the base of her neck. Iron.

Level 2 Goblin Apprentice

Monster, Goblin, Explicit

Apprentice? Gromgol has an apprentice? And one wearing an iron collar?

It’s around this point that said apprentice’s perception catches up with yours and her master’s. You can tell, because after a moment of shock on her face, she jumps behind Gromgol. For his part, once he recovers from his shock, Gromgol laughs. It’s a shallow, raspy sound, but he’s definitely laughing—it almost sounds like he’s ****, but there isn’t anything for him to **** on.

“This,” Gromgol says, “is quite the surprise.”

You smirk back at him. “I aim to please.”

His apprentice peeks out from behind him. “You know him, sir?”

“Do I know him,” corrects Gromgol, looking behind him, “and I do. But he didn’t have a name then.” He looks back to you. “I’d imagine that’s quite the story.”

“Oh, I don’t know about that,” you say, “I only had to fleece one group of adventurers.”

Gromgol laughs again at that. “Well, there will be time enough for that.” He nudges his apprentice back towards where she had been kneeling. “He’s a friend, so there’s no cause for hiding. Get back to picking.”

She rushes to follow his instructions, and you lean against a tree. As she gets down on her knees in front of him, Gromgol brazenly ogles her ass. You have to admit, it’s actually not an unappealing sight. As she turns to place more plants in the basket, she sees you looking at her, before quickly turning away, blushing.

“We need more plants than will fit in either of our inventories,” says Gromgol, “so we’re using the basket to carry them un-stored.” Ah, so that’s what that was about.

“You know, Gromgol,” you say, “I can’t help but notice something that you didn’t have the last time we spoke, either.”

Gromgol sighed. “That I do. She’s the silver lining in this whole mess.”

Mess? You ask him what he means.

“It started after the update, yesterday,” Gromgol continues, “the whole village had been torn apart. Each building was a pile of components on the ground, and nobody could put anything back together—it opens an error message, and makes a riotous noise. Nobody was sure what was going on, but it didn’t matter to Brogung. He whipped everyone up into a frenzy, and set nearly the whole tribe out on a raid.”

They raided Thaeldir’s Crossing right after the update? Their village was closer than your lair, but you can’t have missed them by very much.

“The whole village was in the middle of celebrating—despite there not being any buildings—when a group of heroes appear out of nowhere and kill Brogung.”

Ah, yes, the party you ran into yesterday. Odd that he didn't mention the bird.

“I can’t imagine he was very pleased when he got back.”

“That’s the trouble,” says Gromgol, “he hasn’t respawned.”

What.

“The rest of us with names have been able to keep the whole village from tearing itself apart,” Gromgol continues, “but it’s still a very tense situation. We are without a leader, without shelter, and rapidly running out of time before more heroes show up to take advantage of our weakness.”

You take a moment to let that sink in. As you’re processing it all, something occurs to you.

“You want my help,” you say.

“We have no wall or palisade, no roofs, and precious little order.” Gromgol sighs. “The truth of it is that I was sent out here to fetch ingredients for poisons. With fewer numbers, we might have enough control to marshal an actual defense, even if that might leave us with too little strength. But if you know a way to resolve the issue without that much ****–“

“Do you recall what the error message said? When you tried to build something.”

Gromgol takes a moment to think. “Not word-for-word. But I’m sure some fool is still trying back at the village. Do you know how we might solve this?”

“I may,” you say.

“There is no need to be coy, Merovon.” Gromgol says your name clumsily, clearly not used to it. “I know you are a creature of bargains. I am sure we can find a price to satisfy you. I am not asking for a gift.”

“I don’t doubt that,” you say, “and I’m not being coy. I have an idea of what the problem may be, and if I’m right I know the solution. But I can’t promise you anything until I know for sure.” You give him a small smile. “Literally can’t. That would be a lie.”

He snorts at that. “It would. Still, it’s more than I had hope for before coming out here.”

“Um, sir?” You both look down at his apprentice, still kneeling next to the basket, now much more full than it had been before. “The resources go– are gone.”

“Nodes have limited uses. They’ll refresh, but we’ll not get any more from them today.” He regards the basket for a moment. “That should be enough. Did you get any unusual herbs?”

“Yes, sir,” she says, “I put in inventory, like you say– said.”

He corrects the mistake she didn’t catch, almost like it were instinct. As the three of you walk back to the village, the apprentice carrying the basket on her head, Gromgol explains that he’s teaching her the common tongue because she’ll need it as a shaman. Not for any spirits—apparently they’re quite flexible in terms of language—but because she’ll wind up dealing with outsiders a lot, like he does.

You fill the rest of the journey with idle chatter.