Samuel Fields was the owner of several properties in a certain suburb that abutted the industrial area of the Connecticut town of Pinedale. A few weeks back he’d started getting weird calls from his tenants about hearing odd noises in the walls. He was sixty-two years old, just old enough to say, he was done with all that running around nonsense.

After all, that was why he’d bought all the properties. So he wouldn’t have to bust his hump as much as he used to. Normally, he’d call up his son Jerome or his nephew Anthony and have one of them go check things about. However, Anthony was on his honeymoon, and was one cruiseship touring the South american coast. As for Jerome, Jerome wasn’t speaking to him lately.

The kid was always too damn sensitive. Something Samuel blamed his wife for. Jerome and Samuel had not always seen eye to eye about some of Jerome’s life choices. Like his decision to leave school and go into music, or the way Jerome called it quits with his college sweetheart and taking up with a fellow named Rick who ended up being alright, for a damn tax attorney. Now after one little comment about the way Jerome and Rick were raising their kids, Samuel and Jermone were on the outs again.

The fight would eventually blow over but Samuel wasn’t going to be the one to try and mend fences. He was born shortly after the great rebuilding and fought in three wars, he didn’t have time for his son’s namby-pamby modern childcare nonsense. Nor did he want to have another argument where things blew up and the boy brought up troublesome things like his issues with alcohol and that one time that Samuel kind of...sort of walked away from the family.

Now here Samuel was, slowly and bitterly, climbing down the basement steps despite his bad hip. Trying to keep from falling since holding two sets toolboxes got in the way of being able to hold their stair railing. After a tense sixty-five seconds, Samuel finally made it to the basement landing. He reached over the light switch to turn on the light.

“Damn. Seriously?...Fucking tenants stealing the damn lightbulbs.”

Since the lights wouldn’t turn on Samuel turned around. Dropping one of his toolboxes on a stair that wasn’t so low it would make him have to bend on unnecessarily. He got out a flashlight. He shook it hard just in case the supposedly long-lasting, self-recharging, battery cell had gone dead. Then he thumbed the power switch.

“Ah, much better.”

A nice clear cone of light poured from the bulb. Samuel took a look at the basement and was bemused to see that everything was covered in dust and litter. Not that this was any business of his. He just rented the house out. If the tenants couldn’t be bothered to clean that wasn’t his problem. Though he’d probably pissed if they moved out without taking their crap with them, because then he’d have to pay to have someone else get rid of the crap so that the next tenants would have a spot to dump their own sundry unwanted but still potentially useful items.

Samuel took a moment to orient himself then he found his way to the water boil and heater. Then he made his way over to them. Pointing his flashlight at all the appropriate dials, switches, and gauges. Doing all that he needed to confirm that both hot water and central heat were working.

Fortunately, it seemed they were which was a relief because it always cost an arm and a leg to hire a repairman. The devices were too modern for Samuel to fix himself and none of his children had ended up going into the same field of work as their dad.

Something dripped from over head. Cold and wet.

“A$#D$&H!” Samuel yelped. Startled and then immediately embarrassed and angry at having been startled.

“Hmph!” snorted the old man. Touching the back of his head and feeling a strange sticky liquid dripping through his hair. Looking at the substance under the light it was clear and faintly green.

Samuel brought the sticky goo towards his nose and found that it smelled a bit like sewage. He pointed his flashlight at the ceiling saw that it had come from a pipe and saw a whole lot of the stuff leaking from out of a corroded hole. Following a hunch, Samuel went to the place where the building’s pipes connected to the sewer line and found yet more puddles of green ooze.

“Tch...Fucking hell. As I haven’t paid enough for this damn house already.” snapped Samuel. Imagining how much it’d cost to hire a plumber to come and repair the pipe.

Samuel stepped away from the pipe watching it drip. Then he heard a faint sound. A faint banging. A sound almost too low to be heard over the roar and rumble of the boiler and heater.

Something about it set the old man’s hair on end. Samuel might have been able to ignore the soft creak of the floorboards above his head, and the baleful sound of the heater, but there was just something about that banging. As the old man stood there the banging got loud. Raising in tempo. Getting almost frantic.

In an earlier time, in an earlier age, Samuel might have been able to talk himself down. Telling himself that it was just the pipes acting up. That it was probably whatever obstruction had managed to make its way into the pipes of the house banging around, if not the pipes themselves banging around due to water pressure problems and the water.

After the ENE, the age of telling oneself comforting, lies to explain away the strange had died a brutal death. Now mankind knew that sometimes when you hear things go bump in the dark there was often something bumping around in the dark. Thus the old man got himself up the stairs and out of the house, bad hip be damned. Warning his tenants not to go into basements till he could contact the proper authorities.

Later that night, old Samuel would go to his own home. On the other end of town. He’d finished his rounds checking all the basements of the other houses he owned on that street. Confirming that the same green goo was leaking from one or more of the pipes, even if only half of the other houses had their pipes turn frantic while he was there.

After concluding that whatever this was, it was probably far outside his pay grade and obligations as a landlord Samuel had called the city to complain that there was something up with the sewers for that part of town. Now Samuel was home. He was sitting on the toilet for his 7PM bowel movement. After that he’d watch the news and then go to bed a bit earlier than usual. Today had been tiring.

Samuel presently sat on the toilet reading one of his wife’s tabloid magazines because sometimes the stories were actually a bit interest. As he read, he started to hear something. Something he’d been hearing all day. A dull banging, that gradually rose in tempo, growing frantic as time passed.

“Aw, shit...Really?!”

Samuel could vaguely recall that the same plant that managed sewers for the part of the town where lived also treated the part of the town where he lived in, because his properties and the plant were both located along the same river bank. Another newer sewage treatment center managed the posh center parts of the town.

Samuel heard a shifting of the toilet water beneath. He looked down confused because he hadn’t even done anything yet. Then he saw that the water turned green and was slowly rising. Samuel jumped up, off the toilet, and watched with befuddlement and fair bit of dread as the sticky green waters overflowed. Spilling from the bowl.

Five days later, Samuel’s son Jerome would report his father missing. Six days later the request ticket that Samuel made with the city’s maintenance office would finally make it through the bureaucratic process only to be rendered moot, because three days ago one of the old man’s tenants had already reported the matter.

A young pharmacy student, who happened to have just a bit of a magical background, had gone down into the basement despite the landlord’s warnings had been able to identify the green ooze. Reporting an infestation of slimes in his house’s pipes to the town’s police department. Who then made a request for the Players League to come and handle the whole issue.

Now here Margot and I were, in the town’s oddly spacious sewer. It had been two weeks since the slimes had been discovered and the league hadn’t finished clearing the sewer out. The best they’d able to do was use some cleaning spells to kill off the slimes in the houses and setup some wards to keep them from coming back.

This wasn’t enough because slimes were fast breeders and even if they couldn’t get into the house through the pipes any more, that didn’t mean that everything was solved. It was only a matter of time before people started seeing the jiggling abominations making their way down the street. At which point the town would be screwed because slimes were like termites only stupid, harder to kill, and capbable of eating literally anything. Assuming the municipality couldn’t pay for a high-level player to come and resolve things,...and assuming there were no local superheroes who’d do the job for free,... the people of Pinedale would be literally be eaten out of house and home if they were lucky, and if they were unlucky they’d simply be eaten.

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“[Aether bullet]”

“[Aether bullet]”

“[Aether bullet]”

I trailed behind my contractor with my hands in my pockets and my hoodie up. Watching with growing boredom as she sent blasts of fast spiralling, magical energy, and kinetic force, flying into blobs of jiggling green goo. I was a little impressed the first time I watched Margot successfully pop off a spell. I was also happy for her, because I could see how very excited my little magic-otaku was to finally be able to do actual magic.

Alas, watching someone else kill low level monsters like slimes was a bit like watching a kids’ little league soccer game when your yourself used to play pro. Yes, you’re aware that it’s a big deal for the kids but eventually their sloppiness on the field starts to grate, and the low stakes makes your attention wane a little.

There were two brightsides to all this though, the first was that killing simpler, low-threat, monsters like slimes was a great way for any adven-…*cough*...Player to build up his or her confidence and competence. Which meant it was a great way for Margot to get used to her powers and some of the skills and training she’d absorbed.

The second brightspot was that even killing slimes had its own reward. The job coming with the duel reward of paying $400 dollars for every ten slime cores we brought back. The act of killing the slimes served as reward in of itself because the aether that flowed out of them would be beneficial for Margot’s growth, which in turn would be beneficial for “my” growth.

“Oi...Head’s up, M. I’m sensing some non-slimes approaching our six.” I said. My posture straightening as I prepared to throw up a kinetic shield to protect my young contractor if she couldn’t handle what was coming.

Margot turned around facing a tunnel entrance on her right.

“[Ice Arrow]!”

“[Ice Arrow]!”

“[Ice Arrow]!”

Margot quickly rattled of a triple chant. Three sharp spikes of glowing white ice flew from Margot’s hand and flew into the tunnel. Followed by two cries of pain and the sound of falling bodies. Margot and I walked over and confirmed the kills. I whistled in appreciation because Margot had been able to get off headshots for both her targets.

I knelt, tilting my head as I scanned the two diminutive, wart covered, humanoid bodies. These things were trogs. Ugly, stupid, thieving, rapacious, murdering little fiends. Feral, hateful, little monsters born from a variety of sources, on a variety of worlds, with an ability to mate with nearly anything and make more of themselves. Don’t ever call them the g-word(rhymes with hobblin) because that was a great way to royally piss off a whole bunch of our short green brothers and sisters in the magical community.

Besides, it wasn’t even factually accurate. Genetically sampling of trogs mysteriously found them to be related to nearly all humanoid species. Including the alien races that occasionally popped into earth. I have a bro who’d know more about this sort of thing because he’s bookish like that, but apparently trogs are a kind of cosmic hate crime.

All you needed to do to create a new variation of trog was to take a race and degrade it into something lowly and foul. Then you’d take the resulting creation, set it loose and let it kill and corrupt its fellows. Afterwards, you torched the planet before the cosmic community caught onto what you’d done because even the devils spooky, power mad, and violent as they tended to be, were disgusted by this type of thing.

As to why everyone is at least partially related trogs. That’s simple. Infinite realities means infinite possibilities including the best and worst possible of outcomes. Which in turn means that every race has been trogified at least once due to the simple fact of the possibility existing.

People being amoral opportunistic shits and capitalistic greed doing nothing to help that, means a lot of people started taking already troggified peoples from other worlds and ‘using’ them. Which unfortunately wasn’t a cosmic crime so long as you showed due care.

They’d either put the trogs to work as disposal shock troops because the creatures were cowardly, violent, and could often be trained to follow the simple instructions.

Or alternatively, they’d use the trogs as lab rats because as I’ve mentioned already, the one thing the creatures were good at is reproduction and genetically and anatomically they were similar to a lot of races. It wasn’t hard to find a variation of trogs that was similar enough to your race to make them into the ideal test subject.

Naturally, murphy’s law would happen in either case and you’d end up with a trog outbreak. Where either a handful of the population would slip free of containment and enter the wild to breed using the local populace as seed beds. Or one or more of the captive trogs would be born with just enough power and craftiness to overcome their idiotic handlers who would then become the first victims of the newborne trog-horde

It was these creatures that were the second reason for the delay in clearing up the sewers. Slimes were slow and stupid but trogs were quick and crafty. These sewers were originally an underground vault, that people lived in during the period of collapse that came directly after the ENE. Meaning there were a lot of tunnels, crannies, and hidden nooks for the trogs to hide in.

I waved my hand and the two trog corpses disappeared. I’d pull them into my inventory. A handy subspace that was just kind of part of me and thus was available for my use. Later I’d print up some drones and have them dismantle the corpses, so we could sell off anything that was of use when we were turning in the trog ears.

The only creature in the world that loved trogs were professionals like Margot and I who could always reliably make money off of their deaths because trogs were such a problem and potential threat that the authorities...in this case CS Corp...were always willing to pay a bounty on them to encourage their wholesale slaughter.

Fun fact trogs hated everything, even themselves and other trogs. There was nothing good in them. This isn’t bias. They were literally a race created from hate, to hate, and be hated. Each variation of the formula’s very existence was meant to be a cruel sick joke. A final insult meant to drive a people in despair as they were murdered and raped by insane, twisted, caricatures of themselves.

There was a very good reason that any being found responsible for creating a new breed of trog variants were punished thoroughly. When possible perpetrators of this cosmic were often killed...horribly, and consigned to oblivion so that it’d take nearly forever for their souls to recover. The reality of trog existence is terrible..., -even for the trogs, especially for the trogs-,... that everyone in the cosmos agrees with this.

“Let’s go?” said Margot.

“Let’s go.” I said. Nodding. All my sensors online because where you see one trog there was always at least ten others nearby.