CHAPTER 1. 20 - THE GOBLIN CAVE: III
The old goblin begins his tale. Of a peaceful goblin tribe. Peaceful, Rian clarifies, DOES involve stealing from Highbarrow, but within limits. A happy group, with a just king, living in peace. Again, a very goblin sense of “just”. Ans a “peace” that involves fist fights but rarely ever murder. Inside this status quo, goblins like Glorp and Fart – so, Fart is deemed intelligentsia, a double threat – were unimportant, left to tend their farm. Even allowed to reshape life in the cave in small ways. Turns out, goblins take quite easily to shitting in a specific place if they can eat a mushroom or two while they strain.
So on, so good. Life under Brog, the old king, was dull but stable. And then, a few weeks ago, Graasht showed up. There’s some intense negotiation between Glorp and Rian, until the man turns to them, clarifies that Graasht is a bugbear. A large, bestial goblinoid, brute force and ignorance distilled. And with him, a hobgoblin whose name is as yet undetermined. Thae fills in that hobgoblins are human-sized goblinoids, better soldiers than goblins and far stronger. These two show up, and life in the caves changes dramatically.
Again, Rian fills in details in his clipped way. Knowing that Glorp can understand him, the man clearly states that goblins are built to be ruled, to kowtow to authority. Or, pretty much, anything big enough to bully them. Anuk keeps a watchful eye on the old goblin’s response to this. Even if he’s only catching one in three words, Rian’s review of his race is an indictment. But Glorp just reflects regret as he nods along.
First thing Graasht did was kill the king. Glorp shrugs at this, some sadness but a definite sense that this is simply how things go. Killed a couple of the old monarch’s most favoured, too, but as Rian puts it “They’re content just serving. Doesn’t much matter who.” As Glorp reached this point in his discussion with Rian, a deep sadness seemed to grip Fart, the girl’s eyes drilling into what Anuk’s instincts must think of as the soil. She suspects that the king’s ‘favour’ probably manifested similarly to the favour of powerful men everywhere. And if you’re looking to make an example of someone, you may as well start in your enemy’s bed.
Still, even with a sterner boot on their throats, life didn’t change too much in Filthstink. They learnt to hunt more effectively, less a casual ‘whatever prey falls into my lap.’ And, of course, Rian’s sideline explains that with goblins, this also implied ‘specifically non-dangerous prey.’ At this, Glorp gives his harrowing version of a winning grin, states proudly that he has never been maimed while trying to wrangle a mushroom. Fart still seems locked into the recent tragedy but gives a tight smile. The collision of opposing emotions grants her elastic face an uncanny quality.
Detour completed, they return to the tale. With the new tyrants in place, the clan had to provide bigger beasts, more meat. Annoyingly, Hugo pops in, suggesting this might have elevated Glorp’s standing. Dishearteningly for Anuk, Glorp rewards the halfling with a beaming grin. “Yes, when bad at hunting and all meat for Graasht, many goblin decide mushroom tasty!”
The turn, as it approaches, becomes increasingly predictable and tragic. The tribe adapts to the new reality, even improves their diet and community with co-ordinated hunting. And Graasht and his lieutenant, plus some bullies and bootlickers, are pretty much off everyone’s backs. That’s easy when they’re living on the fat of the group’s toil.
And then the forest went insane. Both Glorp and Fart are emotional, haunted by the experience. From their account, as Fart is occasionally adding a few words between truly horrifying blowings of her nose, most goblins held tight to one another. But Graasht and his lackeys went predictably ballistic. The outsiders didn’t value the community, and their lackeys feared losing their position. Paranoia and mistrust erupted into violence, purges of ‘rebellious’ groups (usually just goblins trying to assist one another) in cycle after cycle as the forest convulsed with Thaesurala’s contractions.
Worse still, when normality settled again, Graasht was convinced that his actions were the cause. Or, more dangerously, his inaction. The barbarity, the culls, the mistrust all fitted with his bestial philosophy. The ‘blips’ were the price paid for living soft. This, of course, ignored how hard the entire tribe had been working to keep him in his ‘sinful’ comfort.
And then there was Fruk.
At this name, Glorp spits a monstrous...glorp...of phlegm into the shit pile. Fart discharges another nostril shakily, and Anuk sees Rian, deep in concentration translating, idly stroke the tiny woman’s bald head. Fart freezes in shock, then Anuk sees her eyes roll up towards the bearded man. Oh dear.
Fruk, it turns out, has some magic to him. Nothing learned, studied. Nothing terribly effective, even. Under the old king the weird (even among goblins) little bastard was tolerated but mostly ignored. As Glorp describes Fruk, Anuk recognises the type. Secretly hopes her disdain isn’t the shock of recognising herself. No, she’s certain no.
Fruk, able to perform some petty magics, made them his whole fucking personality. Fruk thinks he knows things even though his logic doesn’t hold against the barest scrutiny. Fruk capitalises on the change of leadership.
Worse, Fruk has some Frucking ideas.
Strangely, Fruk’s ideas very much mirror the shapes of Graasht’s paranoia. Stranger still, the advice given always seems to plant Fruk squarely at Graasht’s right hand. Graasht is religious, religious enough to be manipulated. Anuk sees Thae look to Rian with surprise, the beginnings of hurt, but the big man catches this, hurries to clarify.
Goblinoids, it turns out, have a host of their own gods, and they’re as messed up as one might imagine. Glorp nods along sadly as Rian states “Goblins’ main god barely gives a shit about them.” Glorp isn’t certain of Graasht’s particular deity but Fruk’s imaginative brutality fits into the thing’s worship just fine.
Anuk feels she’s as inured as anybody to the cruelty of the world. “Hence my sunny disposition” she thinks. But even her mind recoils at the image of a tribe who’ve already lost half of everyone they knew and loved over a short time. Of those grieving wretches being pressed to the task of extracting the bones from their loved ones’ corpses. And then discarding the remains into the charnel pit the party had found. At the behest of Fruk, it seems.
And then, when they were at their lowest, a new command from Graasht. Believing all the tribe’s children to have been lost in the chaos of the ‘blips’ – and in rounds of Graasht eliminating ‘future rebels’ – the bugbear declared that human children would solve the issue of...issue.
The discussion takes on urgency now, Thae querying if every goblin child was lost. Fart breaks her romantic reverie to look truly distraught, but thankfully Glorp clarifies that they have hidden the couple of surviving toddlers deep in the caves where the ‘bosses’ never go. It’s a tiny happy face painted on a huge tragedy, but Thae nods tightly.
The tribe agonised over the order, despite knowing that Graasht had little patience and less compromise to him. Fart, despite having a great line into current events, discovered the kidnap plot just too late for them to mount any sort of plea for sanity. Anuk’s eye is drawn to Hugo. The little man looks like he’s about to burst. Rian had used the term ‘caught wind’, and she feels she can read the minstrel’s mind. He probably wants to call it ‘second-hand news’, maybe suggest that the goblin girl’s information is ‘shit’…? Of course, the little man speaks. She can see his face twisting as he tries to control the tone of his voice, but shocks her when he controls a giggle and instead asks “But could you have reversed that order? Really?”
Fart and Glorp eye one another seriously. Gods, the tragedy was bad enough expressed on Fart’s face, but the old man looks to be holding back tears and Anuk feels her own eyes prickling. At last, Glorp says “No” in Common, a choked whisper. “Goblins too scared” he finishes, eyes downcast. As both Thae and Rian appear to digest this, struggle to form a response, Hugo is already on it. “There’s nothing you could have done, either of you.” Glorp’s apparently getting the halfling’s gist, but Rian rushes to translate for the younger goblin. Anuk shakes her head slightly, grateful for something else to focus on. She’s certain that while young Fart is hearing Hugo speak, she’s accepting the message as from Rian. Grudgingly, she must also admit that he’s good. Delicately, Hugo reminds them that they had already been through too much. They knew that Graasht couldn’t likely be talked down at the best of times. If he was enacting purges then they knew what punishment any rebellion would face. And ultimately, weren’t the pair here trying to preserve life, rather than spend it?
The old man gives a strangled cry, babbles to Rian in goblin. Anuk doesn’t need a translation. Rian’s tone is gentle, soothing. And then suddenly, Fart’s joining in. From the tempo, the matching intonations, the way one finishes speaking and the other takes over, the giant man and the goblin girl could be supportive parents telling their aged, ugly son that the sky isn’t really falling. Anuk hopes that it isn’t, anyway.
Hugo certainly seems self-assured. He pats Glorp on one shoulder, spores lifting as he does so, and looks him in the eye. The effect is somehow not diminished by the fact the halfling is obviously holding his breath until the unwholesome cloud disperses. “Together, then.” He looks around everyone in the room. “Together we can fix this.” He even eyes the erstwhile runner, despite Anuk’s belief that the little guy can’t understand a word and has furthermore been been focused on the tunnel to the main cave this whole time. Of course, the little scout’s actions make more sense in context of an angry bugbear and his posse monitoring the tribe.
-x-
Glorp has gathered himself, and between them the goblin farmers fill in strategic details.
The kidnap group returned maybe an hour and a half, two hours ago. And even then, they didn’t take the kids immediately to Graasht and Fruk. Glorp looks defeated, but less so than before. Eyeing Hugo, he explains that throughout Graasht’s reign he and Fart had become trusted confidents to the tribe at large. They had reasoned, pleaded even, for the children to be turned loose – even, Fart added, just one of them. But Graasht had been wanting several children for Fruk’s plan, and the clan were worried that even this paltry offering would incur wrath.
The goblins assured them that the children were uninjured. Thae and Rian negotiate some diagnostic questions simple enough for the pair, and Thae’s quickly heartened that some cuts and bruises aside, they might only have to deal with the emotional damage of the children’s experience. All going well.
Ultimately, the goblins seem more imminently terrified of Highbarrow. Their fatalism in the face of bugbears and hobgoblins seems natural to them, like the weather. But the response of the village, the village Anuk can’t help but recall as deflated, defeated themselves, holds the goblins in a holy terror. Then again, maybe the old man has a point. As Hugo puts it, Graasht will always keep some folks alive to keep him fed. But humans responding to goblins? Goblins kidnapping kids? She’s witnessed too much of human nature to discount a fantastically over-the-top reaction from a group of people who just survived a calamity. And she remembers that all of her plans for addressing this cave involved violence. Right up until these little devils showed themselves to be actual people.
Anuk lets her mind freewheel through the part where it lists that they are revolting, ugly, stinky little people. She knows enough humans who share those traits…maybe not all at once, nor as emphatically… The point is, she reckons, they’re as much victims as the couple. As Rach and Jeran.
The children were safe recently, and the few insights Glorp has managed from goblins entering the old throne room on other business suggest that they might be safe for a while yet. But, he urges, Graasht is increasingly unstable. The old goblin doesn’t need to re-iterate his fears if it turns out that they’re too late.
Besides, Anuk thinks, I need to get out of this stench.
