Jon’s POV, two days prior

“Uncle Jon’s back! Uncle Jon’s back!” Several of the goblin children shouted as one of them managed to spy me as I came across the hidden cave system. I couldn’t help but smile at their infectious enthusiasm. The got excited over anything too, just like. Stop! Best not to go down those roads again Jon.

“Hey guys, I got something special for you!” I yelled out, knowing it would get all their attention.

A chorus of “What’d’ya get us?” came from every direction as he was mobbed. He had enough strength to stay upright, but just barely.

“Calm down, calm down. It just so happens that I came across a sweetberry bush today. Picked it clean too. So, do we want to see if they can bake it into a pie or should we eat them now?”

“NOW! NOW! NOW!” Chuckling at what I knew they would say, I started handing out sprigs of the orange berries. Each sprig had five to seven of the super sweet berries, and would probably sate the kids for the rest of the afternoon.

“Ok, so now that we have treats, how did you guys spend the afternoon?”

“Balan and the others practiced their teamwork, but Varias and the girls only worked on their hiding.”

“It was sneak, not hiding doofus!” One of the aforementioned girls ‘gently’ corrected the speaker.

“Same thing!”

“Is not”

“Is TOO!”

“Stop! Stop! It’s ok, I know the difference between the two, you don’t have to fight over it.” I interjected, stopping what I knew from past experience would be a fifteen minute brawl of tiny bodies that couldn’t be separated. Well, you could, but they would just dive right back in. “So Balan, how did the hunt end?”

“Good. We gots five and five rats.” A goblin stepped forward that was a slightly darker green and much bulkier than the other children said. “Doran and them gooder shots.” He gave a slight nod to four goblins behind him, each armed with a sling.

“Nice, very nice. Ten rats is a very good haul, the village cooks will be very happy with you.”

“Balan, Balan lookie! Another rats is over there!” One of the children pointed to a level two rat that had unwittingly entered sight range.

“Good eyes Arlen. C’mon, we kills it.” Balan said, serious all of a sudden. He took the lead, with two of each of the ranged attackers on each side in a slight arc behind him. Once they were within range, Balan raised one arm and looked to his slingers as they each loaded a smooth stone and nodded at him. Once he got all of them to nod their readiness, he turned to the rat and waited a second before dropping his arm. Four stones shot out nearly simultaneously, slamming into the unfortunate rat broadside. They did it smart, aiming for the main body instead of a critical headshot, and the rat squealed in rage and made a bounding charge. Balan nodded, took a half step forward, and readied his weapon. His weapon of choice was a vicious axe, well child’s axe. I had taken a rail fence that had split on one end and jammed a piece of shale into it. A bit of rope to ensure it stayed together, and a few hours chipping it into a serviceable blade finished it off.

Holding his axe slightly behind him at waist height, he let it do one last bound to bring it into range. As soon as it launched forward with its back paws, he raised his axe and brought it forward into a brutal, well-practiced slam right into the top of the rat’s skull. His timing was impeccable, landing at the same time as the front paws. The skull split open in a gory shower, and Balan raised his axe in victory as the crowd and I cheered him and his warriors.

“Fantastic Balan, absolutely fantastic! How long did it take you to get that timing down to where it had no chance to evade?”

“Meh, a hand of days? Two hands?” He was going to make a fantastic goblin warrior someday, but definitely not chief material. Of course, while this was going on and Balan was enjoying his victory cheers, I saw a dark shadow disappear with the body of the rat. Varias had gotten pretty good at her stealth, and her timing was just as good as Balan’s. I mentally shuddered at the image of what she could become with practice. She already had the stealth and timing to be a decent assassin, and she wasn’t even full grown yet!

“Pretty slick Varias, although you need to work on blending back into the crowd a little better.” I mentioned as the girl was hovering on the edge of the crowd. I saw her confusion, and almost believed it for a second. “You have to be more careful with a kill like that, the body bled on your leg a bit.” I pointed out to help her. “But you almost convinced me with that confused look, well done.”

The poor girl looked down at her legs, then scowled in anger. “Damnit. How did you see that one splash of blood from way over there?” While she was mentally berating herself, Balan finally realized that something happened to their kill.

“Huh? Whazza? Thiefs! Gives us back our rat Varias!” He bellowed.

“Calm down Balan, she’ll be giving it back, won’t you Varias?”

“Yes Uncle Jon.” She said dejectedly. “I’ll get away with it next time, Balan.” She swore and I just chuckled.

“Ok guys, Uncle Jon has to go and talk to the Chief now. You all behave, and I’ll see if I can keep finding treats for when I come back.” I left to a chorus of okays and promises to be good, but I knew better. If those kids found something interesting no amount of rules or threats of punishment were going to stop them. I still ended up chuckling to myself as I headed towards the main living area of Home Cave.

Home Cave was a cavernous room in a medium sized cave system where all the goblins lived in mud huts. They were arranged in three concentric rings around a gigantic firepit. Inside the three rings were two huts facing the mouth of the cave, one for the chief and one for the shaman. It was a simple setup, with single warriors around the outside and families towards the center. The weakest warriors would be cannon fodder, giving the stronger ones a chance to mount a defense. It was a brutal system, but it worked well for preserving the goblins.

Waiting by the fire were two Hobgoblins. The heavily muscled one with the twin battleaxes was Chief Volick and the one wrapped in animal skins with the deer skull staff was Shaman Norikk. “Greetings Chief, Shaman. You asked for me?”

“Jon, good you’re here. What level are you at?” The chief asked.

“Nineteen. Halfway to twenty, why?”

“Damn, we hoped you were ready to evolve. Norikk here came across something disturbing. We were hoping you would be willing to evolve and go check it out.”

“Well, I’ll be willing to go check it out even before evolving, what happened?”

“Norikk?”

“A few days ago I felt a tremor run through the ley lines. I tried to see what it was, but my sight was blocked. All I can see is a sphere of black.”

“Sounds ominous. Is it growing?”

“If it is, it isn’t doing it fast enough for me to notice. The only thing I can tell is that it is a concentration of dark energies. Will you still check it out?”

New Quest alert!

Shaman Norikk has detected a large amount of dark energy appearing near the Home Cave and has asked you to investigate. Will you do this for the clan?

Quest

Rewards

Failure

Investigate the cause of the dark energy

Increased relationship with Shaman Norikk and Chief Volick, rare piece of equipment

Decreased relationship with entire clan

“Don’t worry, I’ll be more than happy to find out what is the cause. Is there any clues you can give me on where to start my journey?”

“The caves to the east were home to some large battles in the distant past. I would start there.” Obviously dismissed, I headed towards one of our prepping caves.

“Good afternoon Grelda, how are things at the cooking fire today?” I asked the head cook, hoping to sweeten her up before asking for supplies.

“Oh, it’s you Jon. What you wantin’ today?”

“Well, I got a quest from the chief and shaman. I think it will probably take a few days, and was hoping you could give me some supplies.”

“Always wantin’ supplies. What you got for trades? The more I gives you now, the less we gots for dinner.”

“How about these two stone deer haunches?”

“You no hunter, how you get stone deer meats?” She asked while jabbing a bony finger in my chest.

“Well, they were too busy attacking a lone wolf to notice me. I think it worked out rather well.”

“Then why there not stone deer meats and lone wolf hide, hmmmm?”

“Yeah, well. . . see the deer, sorta tore up the wolf too bad…”

“This why you no good as hunter. Can’t kill deers before deers ruin wolf. Volick would have deer meats AND wolf pelts.” She said as a dreamy look came over her. “Volick real goblin.. .”

“Yes, yes, of course I can’t compare to the Chief. He chief for reason.” Damnit, the longer you end up talking with goblins the more likely you are to start dropping words in sentences like they are. Gotta watch that Jon! “Anyway, he wants me to scout out for something dangerous, and I’ll probably need food for a few days. So, will you give me some food for the deer meat?”

“Ya ya, you gets your food. HURD! BRINGS JON RATIONS!”

“HOW MUCH RATIONS? . . . AND WHAT IS RATIONS?”

“RATIONS IS. . . IS. . . JUST BRING RAT JERKY! FOUR DAYS WORTH!”

“CAN’T CARRY THAT MUCH JERKY. YOU KNOWS HOW MUCH RAT JERKY WE MAKE IN FOUR DAYS?”

“NOT WHAT WE MAKES! ENOUGH FOR EATING FOR FOUR DAYS!”

Dear lord, hearing them argue back and forth was painful. Couldn’t they just walk over and talk?

“Where you goings Jon? You still need to gives meats.”

“Oh fine, here you go Grelda. Two stone deer meat.” I tossed the meat at her in a surly manner, not looking forward to eating rat meat for the next for days. Marty gets to stay at an inn and have them cook for him, how the hell come the goblin starter city can’t have an inn? At least I wasn’t as bad off as Derrick, poor bastard was living in a cave and forced to eat raw meat. Trolls fear fire so much that the one time the unlucky bastard lit one to cook dinner they beat him to death.

Grabbing my lovely rations for the next few days, I went ahead and grabbed a few canteens of water as well. I would have loved to grab a few silver or enchanted daggers, but goblins can’t produce them at all. I did manage to grab a few spare steel daggers and a short sword. I hadn’t explored the eastern cave area yet, but knew of the two major predators that lived there from the community hunters. The lower caves tended to house bears, while above the treeline belonged to the griffins. I also grabbed a single tent, and headed out.

I exited out of the cave at sunset, nodding at several of the returning hunters. “I’m heading east, anything I need to be overly worried about fellas?”

Several just shrugged, but nobody gave me a direct answer. I guess the goblin hunters were just a bit insular. Oh well, they would have told me about anything too dangerous. I silently headed through the forest, darkvision and the small stature of goblins giving me an advantage. Two hours of swift travel left me at the foothills of some of the greater mountains, and I decided to eat dinner before exploring.

One of the greatest things I had discovered about goblins was that instead of claws, they had fingers like a gecko. This let me silently and swiftly climb a tree without leaving any traces. Once up there I took a fifteen-minute breather, eating a bit of my rat jerky with a few swigs of water. Refreshed once again, I headed down and started searching for caves. What I wouldn’t give to be adventuring with Phoebe again. She almost always had a magic caster, and would have been incredibly helpful finding dark magic.

Instead I was searching cave by cave under the assumption that the dark energy would drive whatever lived there out. Most of them had some rather grumpy bears hiding in the back of most of them, which was absolutely fun to run when I messed up my stealth. The bears were only a few levels above me, so I could probably end up killing them but I was on what I assumed was a time sensitive mission.

Six hours of fruitless searching was frustrating to no end. I was midway up the mountain, just below the tree line. I really needed the cave to be found first, as I had absolutely no desire to try and sneak around the nests of creatures that were 10 levels or more above me. The current cave seemed to have a dried spring somewhere in it, and I was using the dried bed to sneak past a level 25 bear, the biggest I had seen the entire night. I had just gotten past him when the side of the waterway collapsed beneath me.

I dropped a few feet, nothing that would have injured me except I didn’t land on flat ground. The steep incline of what had been an underground waterway was incredibly smooth, and I inadvertently rolled and started a wild slide. My first instinct to slam a dagger into the rock to slow myself ended up with the dagger getting jarred out of my hand and lost. I picked up a lovely array of bruises from hitting the walls as the bed drifted back and forth before it hit a rather steep corkscrew. I had no idea how far I had slid down, but I was travelling at an incredible speed when the bottom finally spat me out into a pool of water a few feet deep.

Soaked and sore, I clambered out of the pool to see just where I was. Lovely. A bridge spanning a dark abyss, far too deep for my darkvision to penetrate. With no choice but to move forward, I headed across the bridge.