The fellowship of the shiny

You slowly awake...

You yawn loudly and stretch...

And then you finally stand up from the hard (but thankfully not cold anymore) floor. Looking around, you see that your fire has burned down. With nothing to do in the cave itself you follow through with the rest of what one would do in the morning, you wash yourself with the spring and then have some breakfast, tasty unseasoned Rabbit and yummy (really not bad and quite refreshing) spring water, once that is done you fill your new moss pack with water. Prepared like that you walk outside.

Where to turn today? You should try levelling up so that you're ready and able to defeat a player when you meet one, yesterday has been calm and without players, but they should be done downloading the update now, and if a new crowd is brought in they are probably gonna show up starting today or tomorrow. In order to level up you need to collect xp, either by killing targets or through crafting. Going up into the mountain would probably be better for hunting, the mountain goats rely on their ability to easily get away from attackers and the fact that it often just doesn't pay to hunt them as the loot is hard to get, they are very good climbers after all and mostly spend the day on almost inscalable mountain walls, your crossbow and climbing hook should be immensely useful against them though. If you go down into the forest again you might be able to gather more materials for crafting, you might "farm" (a word sometimes used like that by players) your way to level 3 with more climbing hooks and maybe another knife, if you find more tree sap, the forest would also allow hunting as well, the bigger (and therefore hopefully more valuable xp-wise) game might be more hidden than goats but maybe your perception can help, plus you could set up your new traps which should take away a lot of stress bound to the question of food. After weighing the pro's and contra's of your options you decide upon the forest once more, a broader variety of prey, the opportunity to set up your traps and the danher that it's easier to run into more powerful monsters and other npc's higher up in the mountain convincing you.

As you arrive, you set your traps, somewhat scattered but still not that far away from the path up to your cave you normally take, at least that's what you plan to do, but as you set number 4 near a small creek, hoping to catch some small animal while it drinks, maybe even a bird, something happens that you might have anticipated but, truth be told, simply forgot about: you hear goblin voices again "(goblin #1, you remember the voices from yesterday, they seem to be the same goblins) Stick-bow-humans back." "(goblin #2) we tell tribe now boss?" "(the "smart" one) we wait, see first what Stick-bow makes now." seems like your being watched again, you just hope they don't disable your traps. As you set up number 5 some minutes later you hear them again, "(Goblin #1) hes doing weird thing, you think he dumb?" "(the smart one again) i seen that before but doesn't matter i think, Stick-bow-human returned, boss said to go and tell if does, you follow Stick-bow, i tell boss, but PSCHHHT(he says that literally louder than normal talking)", it sounds like "smartie" is a bit excited as you can hear a bit of rustling in the underbush while he sneaks away. Just as you get to the desired location of your last trap (number 10) another rustling indicates the smart ones return, "(smart goblin) there he is, thing in his hand is what he made." "(a new goblin who almost manages to speak quietly enough) I know the thing, that's trap, used to built these to catch animals for eating in village." "(smart guy) in village! think he can help tribe?" "(the trap knowing goblin) maybe..., will ask when he done, you, you and you stay hidden, don't want to think human we want to attack.". Now that's interesting, they want to ask you something and the newest, and smartest one so far, sounded almost afraid of scaring you away with too many goblins at once, anyways, he seems to want to wait until you set that trap as well, you decide to indulge him. The surprise you show when a voice suddenly openly talks to you, "uhm, hello, me not enemy, me just have question" is only partly played, you had strained your ears to hear him get nearer but picked up absolutely nothing.Perhaps your somewhat real surprise is a good thingy as your spinning around to face the goblin definitely looks real now (you don't want them to know you heard them). What you see is a small humanoid figure in the lower 4 foot range, with green skin, yellow eyes, black hair and somewhat pointy ears sticking out sideways (longer than a human's but shorter than an elves), you guess he looks passable for goblin eyes, for your human ones, well, he's a goblin. The only pice of clothing he wears is a brown pair of pants, a bit frayed towards his feet, nothing apart, not even shoes, he does however have a quiver full of arrows slung over his shoulder by a strap with a stoneknife strapped into it, his left hand holds a shortbow, although not in a threatening manner, more like he doesn't know where else to put it. "Yes?" you ask inqusitively after a few seconds of both of you sizing up each other, "what do you want?". "Me thinking, maybe you can help us, gobbo tribe has problem w-" he gets suddenly interupted by two more goblins breaking out of the bushes, wailing "DEE-OOH" and "bad, bad, bad" and the likes, only for a few seconds though as another slightly taller goblin emerges, grabs each by an ear and pulls them away saying loudly, almost yelling, "he says we stay hidden! he says we no scare him! what you do? you jump out! you do scare him! you stupid! you dumb! you no can think!?" while quickly getting out of earshot. You raise an eyebrow at the, you guess, hunter, who nervously stammers out "w-we try build h-hut, w-we hammer a-at ghost hut, b-but s-s-suddenly DEE-OOH and ghost hut is is is gone! W-whole v-village g-g-gone, all gone! All we get is DEE-OOH and squigglies! But we don't know what means, please, you's smart human, you's must know what means, please help us!" while you're still busy taking in the litteral begging from the little creature kneeling in front of you sobbing, he brings out a bit more, "we be thanking you so much, we do everything for you, AND pay, you just help us, please!". As he says even more with his his half-crying voice without giving any additional info you just tell him to, "shut up", which he does, instead starring at you with downright puppyeyes. OK, from what you could catch from his begging it sounds like the goblins didn't fare much better than you did, their village reset, but they're not smart enough to read the message telling them they need a claimant crystal, apparently they just tried over and over again and worked themselves into a terrified frenzy by now, terrified enough to ask a complete stranger for help, just becausce he happens to be a human and sets some traps up in the woods. The way you see it, there are three choices here for you, 1. you refuse to help them, 2. you just tell the hunter that they need to use a claimant crystal and leave the rest to them (how helpful that would be is questionable), or 3. you go with them to their village to either really help them, or trick them into actually helping you, your manipulation may be shitty, but he state the goblins are in and their stupidity should help you....

Shortly after you hurry through the forest with four goblins, a hunter, an angry tall one (for goblin standards) and two absolutely typical ones, apart from the red goblinhand-shaped marks on their cheeks. After a bit below 20 minutes you arrive in a small clearing that would apparently normally hold their village, now there are just piles of ressources and about three to four dozen goblins standing around the outline of a hut one of them is slowly crafting, but their faces betray a mix of despair and a tiny little bit of hope. As your little troupe enters the clearing the hunter calls out, "booooss, we're back, and we brought Stick-bow-human", ohhh boy, if the guy who got called boss by the guy who got called boss by the two idiots calls someone boss you might actually meet the goblins boss now! Everyone turns to look at you, some running around the half crafted/half outlined hut, and after a few moments of silence a female goblin right next to the builder speaks, "Stick-bow-human, we **** for your help", "yes, ****", "help", "Stick-bow!", after the chorus dies down the chieftess continues, "when we wake up village gone, not come back since, we try but we fail", "DEE-OOH", "Gods angry", "all gone", "what's that on feet?", "called shous i think", "what should we do Stick-bow-human, please help us.", you raise your hands just in time to prevent yet another chorus of goblins, and tell them to continue on the house, you want to see for yourself, all the while not taking your eyes of the chieftess. Admittedly it might be better if you actually watched the biulder continue on the house, but your libido didn't really have much to do for the last four months or so (ever since you were outlawed) and doesn't let you look away from the gobliness, the gods were very generous with her, she might clearly be a goblin, but she is an absolute stunner for that, her large breasts looking as though they might spill out of her fur vest any momet (a vest made of lynx fur as you notice, she either spawned with that or let her whole tribe work on bringing one down), her slender waist reminding you forcefully of what well-off people, nobles and players often more or less reached and others just hoped for, her hips covered in a short skirt (lynx again, likely the same one though) that clearly showed her massive rump, and on top of all that beautiful body a similarly beautiful face. However, all of that is still a goblin, which means green skin and smaller than humans, her almost gigantic looking chest and the generous cleavage (that are almost a bit too big to be perfectly honest) would probably be just a bit bigger than usual on a human woman, the same goes for her butt, and her face doesn't look like a perfectly beautiful face either, it definitely looks hot, but beautiful would be something else, all put together, she's a stunner for a goblin, but more hot than pretty or even beautiful. After a few seconds you apparently oggled her (well, mostly her boobs) enough to toggle her character sheet:

Boobsies, Level 6 Chieftess
Goblin, Monster, Explicit
currently friendly

well, the name fits..., apart from that her being friendly towards you is nice, although the currently does put a limitation on that. With your looks induced lust-trance broken by her charcter sheet appearing you finally start paying attention to the builders doings. He seems to be doing everything that he's supposed too, he uses an actual tool, not his bare hands or just stones, but rather tools fashioned from stones, and as far as you can see he even has the corresponding skills. But still, as soon as he completely filled the progress bar a system error sounds and a message you already know appears instead,

System Error
You have not claimed this land and cannot build here. To claim land, find a Claimant Crystal

the goblins seem to momentarily loose their minds, you hear cries, groans, swears, sobbing and more, some even beginn drumming their fists on the floor. After the goblins have calmed down again somewhat you already have a half-formed plan in your mind, you'll try to get the goblins to help you in your plan, with a rasonable strong group of them you might be able to not just hunt for deer, but rather low-level players, and if that doesn't return a nice amount of xp you'd be really surprised, and hey, maybe you really will be able to help the goblins as well, so that both sides actually win, and if not, well you do come from a (former) military background, and although a commoner like you may not climb that high on the career ladder, you still know the phenomenon of acceptable losses, and if you have to decide, you will pick yourself over these goblins, as harsh as that might be. According to that plan of yours, you begin speaking to the goblins, "I came here, to read the sqigglies for you, they tell me that the gods are testing you (you rise your arms to silence any goblins that would have interupted otherwise), use a claimant crystal to please them, and they will let you build again. (that speech could have probably been done better, but your manipulation is at 9, which is very bad for a human)", as you draw breath from your speech Boobsies speaks, "you mean shinies?" and comes closer to you, taking a small pouch out of her inventory, "like these Stick-bow-man?", you do note, or perceive that she calls you man, not human, but those gems and the like are more important, a big clear one with only a slight pinkish glow draws your attention, noticing what you look at the chieftess takes it from her hand and places it on top of her breasts with a small giggle and some affectionate licking of her lips, your dick grows stiff again, but you keep yourself focused on the crystal until you finally see the pop-up with its description,

personal claimant crystal
This crystal allows any player or npc to claim the surrounding area as their own and turn it into a house, dungeon, lair or similar.
Unlike normal claimant crystals this one may not be stolen and may only be used by it's rightful ownwer.
Owner: Chieftess Boobsies, Chieftess of Gobbo Tribe [217]

this will make things more complicated, but only if you allow it to, you look back at Boobsies, not the ones you can see through the crystal but the chieftess herself and ask her, "can you read this?", "no, I can't read human squigglies Stick-bow-man", this time she almost purrs the "man" and moves a little, causing her tits to jiggle and the crystal to slip a bit deeper into her cleavage. The two of you are talking about how to save her tribe, and all she can think of is extra sexually flirting with someone towering over her (you might be of average height, but for a human, not a goblin). But even though Boobsies would simply be too small for you in most regards you somewhat indulge her and take the crystal from between her boobs, grazing them a bit with your fingers in the process, you then hold it in front of her eyes and speak again, loudly enough for all goblins to hear you, "Yes, this is the stone, the shiny, you need, but a ritual has to be done with it first, do any of you know the secret magic of the rings of power (you're just making this up, but you are pretty proud of your idea to give them this illusionary "hope" of being able to deal with this themselves) no? Then i will perform the ritual for you", as you say this, you hold up your left hand for them to see and react to their confusion at your perfectly ordinary hand with a slight chuckle, "i forgot, you can't see my ring, if you could, you could perform the ritual yourselves", you turn your attention back directly towards Boobsies, "to perform the ritual i will need another stone like this, I can get them from adventurers, but will need the help of your most brave warriors for that", as you had hoped, the goblins are immediately fire and flame to help you, not knowing that this whole charade is just to get them to help you get a claimant crystal as well. You let Boobsies choose your warriors as she knows her tribe far better then you, although you still make sure you get the kind of goblin you're after, strong and resilient melee warriors. After ten of the best are selected and placed under your command by Boobsies you lead them into the woods, looking for any possibility for you to get kills and xp that is aviable to you, now that you have a small army of your own.

It is about noon, you spent the last hour or so learning more about your soldiers and completing the half-baked tactic you had in your head. The goblins are all very similar to each other stats- and equipment-wise, the little or more of clothing they wear adds no viable armor value, their weaponry constists of a stone-tipped spear and a stoneknife (a better one than yours by the way), their stats and skills being what one would expect of goblins at levels three and (in two cases) four, not much to speak of, although you know from experiences of past lives that goblins are considerably more powerful in groups, they probably have a feat or multiple for that. Your stategy will be rather simple you'll use the goblins to keep any enemies busy and occupied while you snipe them, hoping that you will deal the killing blow as that results in getting the lionshare of the xp, you are also going to try and use your climbing hook to get to better sniping positions, where it's possible and makes sense of course, effectively using your group of goblins as tanks should hopefully make up for your lack of fast movement and health (your dexterity is only standard after all and you endurance abysmal, which does effect your stamina as much as your health).

In the early afternoon your group is disperesd in a small grove on top of a great boulder lying in the forest, almost a mini-mountain even, when you suddenly hear a pained yelp, footsteps running at you and one of the goblins shouting, "Boooooss, i found one, hes after me! We can fight him now!". And what breaks out of the wood behind him, trapping you and the few goblins near you between itself and a cliff behind you? A vision of **** and despair: you had activated to automatically see the name and healthbar of enemies, which means that you immediately see what your dealing with,

Shadowhunterkillerofawesomeness

strange name, but that happens with players sometimes,

Level 15 Warrior

and that's why you're definitely dead, a warrior at a reasonable level would be bad enough, high strength and endurance combined with heavy armor and powerful weapons? No thank, you. But at level FIFTEEN? No chance at all, even if all goblins were right by your side, period. You are so far outleveled by that red fifteen (the red signaling the danger, thanks would've never known otherwise) that you don't even try to fight or run, not that you could, you're standing right on the edge, and yes, it is too high to jump and there's no time to climb, so you just wait for him while you already begin missing the life that went so well until now. The warrior breaks into a charge, right at you, while shouting, shouting in a strange way befitting his name, surprisingly high-pitched at first, then rapidly dropping, almost failing, stopping momentarily and being replaced by an audible intake of breath, only to return at it's low state and now climb the scale upwards. Suddenly though, something even stranger happens, a completely different voice suddenly comes from the terrors mouth, not one sounding like a teenager going through the change of voice of a maturing boy but that of a grown woman, "Cedric! Why are you shouting like that?", the warrior comes to a complete halt, seems to completely forget the world around him, is this some kind of trance, should you be worried about his wellbeing (although you wouldn't exactly be sad if he suddenly dropped dead or something), and then shouts intelligible words as well, still with his strage voice though, "Sorry mom, playing a game.", "I understand that, still try not to be so loud doing that though, ok?" "Ok mom, sorry mom.", "Also, come down for dinner.", "But mom, I'm in the middle of something, please?", "Well, if you want to miss out on the chicken wings, we won't wait then.", "Chicken wings!? I'll be there in a sec' mom!", the shouting of two differnet voices talking to each other ends and the warrior takes out a scroll, unrolls it and begins to read, as shown by a progess bar above him, just as it's almost filled he suddenly says in his scaling voice again, "Wait, what am I doing, I don-" and disapears with a faint pop. It takes you all a few seconds to fully (as far as possible) understand what happened, but when the goblins finally pick up that they'll survive and their enemy "fled" they beginn cheering and hollering, which sets you off, and you beginn shouting at them, lecturing them about just how close you all were to certain ****, how you survived on pure chance and can never let something like that happen again, period. After this fateful event you make sure that everyone understands that they must not attack, engage or do anything alse with any Heroes they find, instead they should come to you and tell you.

It isn't until over two hours later though, that you meet Heroes again, the region still seems to not have that many players yet, this time it's you who sees a group of three in the distance, travelling on the same path you are on, towards you, although they won't arrive before twenty to thirty minutes and can't see you yet. You quickly shush your goblins and activate your Eagle eyes to get a better look at them, a level 2 sorcerer, a level 2 Amazon and a level 3 priest, none of them enogh for a claimant crystal, but they should provide excellent training for you. You order your goblins to hide along the road and jump out to ambush the enemy, immediately AFTER you shot at them, and to completely focus on the woman (the amazon), you'll climb a nearby rock with some trees on top meanwhile, you plan to take out the far more squishy sorcerer and priest from there. After a few minutes (you took some time before you set the ambush so the goblins don't have that long to grow nervous) the players near the ambush point, you carefully aim at the sorcerer, taking him out first so he can't use his powerful magic to get you into trouble or make short work of the goblins, and finally shoot, Tschu, the bolt flies, and you're glad you have your Raised position feat, that makes you more calm about hitting your target, very shortly after you hear a faint sound like Tschak, and receive a notification,

Stealth Headshot, 168 damage dealt

that sorcerer is dead, there's no other way. It seems like your goblins are on point, they jump out of their hidey-holes and immediately surround the amazon, following your plan. While you hastily reload your crossbow (which is definitely it's weakpoint, you already know from your rabbit hunting that this will take almost a three-quarter minute, and that's only due to your skill and the fact that your crossbow is a relatively lightweight and small one) you think about your tactic again, letting your goblins fight against an amazon (similar to warriors, but exclusively female, with lighter though still pretty good armor and swifter movements) that is supported by a priest is somewhat mean, perhaps even cruel, but as you decided back in the goblin "village", your primary objective is your gain, and the goblins are acceptable losses for that cause, plus, there is a good chance they will only be wounded, not killed. Over these thoughts you soon have your crossbow ready to fire again, take a few deep breaths to calm down and fire at the priests head,

Headshot, 84 damage dealt

good news, your aim was true, bad news, the priest's clinging on to live by a thread of green in his healthbar. You quickly decide that reloading would give the priest to much time to heal himself or take cover behind some trees (what he currently does, being so forcefully reminded of the presence of an enemy sniper), so you climb down your rope as quick as you can and run towards the battle, holding your now fired crossbow in the left and drawing your stoneknife with the right. Just as you arrive at the battle your first goblin sinks to the floor, beheaded by the amazon, but nine goblins should still be enough for her and you continue running as fast as you can towards the priest. He did heal himself, but it looks like he used all the big healings on his teammate, his health is still very low, and now you're here, let me put it like that: "if someone runs full-speed at you, and slams a crossbow right into your face, that hurts", his health is even lower than after your bolt hit, and you still have that knife in your right hand, which you know ram into his chest, taking away his last hitpoints and sending him to the ground, some kind of pop-up appearing before his eyes, but you don't have the time to read that, something is happening behind you. Just as you killed the priest you heard some kind of furious shout from the amazon, she's now a lot more angry than before and some kind of red light shines from her eyes, she's also aparently much stronger than before, the goblins visibly shake under her hits and fall after one or two. You thought you were hastily reloading before? Well in that case you are now reloading superhastily, if she runs out of goblins to kill before you can reload you have one hell of problem, and although your reload speed might set a new record for this model it's still not fast enough.... While you still have about a second or two to go, your enemy simultaneously hits the last two remaining goblins in the stomach with her broadswords handle or bare fist (her sword can be used with one or two hands and she fluidly switches between that) while already turned towards you and jumps, one giant ragefueled leap. It's like time slows down around you, the amazon flies at you at a ridiculously slow speed, giving you time to notice her beautiful face and vividly red hair only somewhat tamed by a light helmet as well as the hump her chainmail vest forms on her chest, but those are things you only notice matter of factly, what matters far more is your hands finally reloading your crossbow and then raising it, the sound of it firing is garbled by the seemingly slowed time, your bolt hits the still flying towards you female on her forehead, right underneath where her helmet starts,

Headshot, 84 damage dealt

the notification is gone as quickly as it came, giving you an almost unobstructed view of your bolt, bouncing off of her skull, her healthbar may be reduced to the smallest amount you have ever seen, likely just one single hp left, but that doesn't matter, even like that, you are no match for en enraged amazonian warrior like that. The slow-motion still continues, she's almost at you when multiple things happen almost at once: her shout that still fills your ears loses some of it's rage and become a bit more high pitched again, the red recedes from her eyes, you can suddenly think clearly again (you didn't even really notice that you couldn't) and things getbfaster again. While the (felt) flow of time returns to it's normal state you half conciously/half instinctively dive to the side, evading her body and the wide swing of her blade as you have already fallen down enough to no longer be as high as her sword. It seems like it causes a problem or two if you leave your rage mid-jump (or -flight) and the target you were supposed to land on moves away, namely: you fall flat on the floor and are temporarily too stunned to get up again, even if "you" are an amazon and the actual you was the target that moved away. You didn't come out of a rage right now, aren't momentarily stunned and reflexively use the chance you have here, you jump on top of the "heroine" laying face-down on the floor where her little flight ended, hold the knife you got out during your jump against her throat and whisper in her ear, "one wrong movement, and you. are. dead., now, I'm gonna remove my knife from your throat, but don't get any ideas, I can still kill you just as easily", with that, you grab hold of her arms and tie them together behind her back with one of your remainig ropes before she catches on to the fact you need both hands to do so and could not in fact kill her "just as easily", once her arms are restricted though, it is not difficult to tie her feet together as well and even use your last rope to tie the two bindings together, practically leaving her as helpless as you can right now.

Somewhat lightheaded with your immense victory, killing two heroes and capturing another one? That's awesome! you quickly check on the only two still breathing goblins, both out cold but not requiring additional attention right now, and collect any loot from the eight fallen goblins and two dead heroes without even noticing what it is, you do remember to run back to your sniping position to get the climbing hook and rope you left there though and even see the bolt that bounced of your captives (!!!) head upon returning, the last thing you do is to drag your defeated enemy into the woods where she won't be immediately seen and then return to the scene of attack twice more for your still **** soldiers. With all that finally done, you take a moment or two to just enjoy success and then direct your attention towards the redhead captive who has been quiet thus far, questioning yourself what you should do.

(proofread now, fixed some grammar issues and missing letters, also rephrased a few things but didn't change anything of the story. I apologize for the sudden "oh, btw, she's gorgeous though you can't exactly see that through har armor", I daresay you can about imagine what the next chapter will bring and I did some preparations for that with that little inset, I just forget to mention it earlier, I was tired and I'm sorry. All in all: I still hope you enjoyed the chapter.

PS: don't get pissed at me for making a joke or two about tolkien, love him as much as other fans do.)