“The best scouts might well be ghosts. You won’t ever find them unless they want to be found. That’s just how good they can be while hiding, at times in plain sight, in ways nobody else would have even thought about. Really, if you want to get your best scouts somewhere visible, call them to report and save yourself the trouble.” - Ingvar Oleson, retired former general of the Clangeddin Empire, circa 322 VA.

Ruca of the Yellowtooth was one of Egil’s granddaughters – one amongst over two dozen descendants of her generation, as the old goblin patriarch was quite popular amongst his fellow goblins in the company – as well as one of the best young scouts in his platoon, which was the main reason she was amongst the group of six were tasked with scouting out the enemy that night.

She crawled slowly amongst the tall, unkempt grass of the plains, utilizing every little bit of cover in order to prevent herself from being discovered. The skills she used were ones passed down through her family from generations, ways to use disguise and cover to prevent someone from noticing their presence. The darkness further helped as well, as humans like her present foes were notorious for having poor night vision.

The young goblin had smeared dirt and grass all over her body, though her naturally yellowish-green skin tint also provided some decent camouflage against the grasslands of the plains they were sneaking through. She and the others in her group moved slowly, with utmost care to conceal their movements, to the point that even someone looking at their direction would mistake their passage with that of some small animal at best

Just like that, the goblins snuck until they were no more than a hundred paces away from the perimeter of the enemy camp. They did not dare sneak in closer since even with poor night vision, the sentries on guard might still notice them if they went too close. Either way, it was enough, as even with the distance, the goblins could rely on their superior night vision to observe the going-ons of the camp.

Despite its seemingly haphazard layout, with the soldiers sleeping in their armor directly on the ground for the most part, the camp turned out to be quite meticulously arranged at closer inspection. The sleeping soldiers did so in groups with enough room between each group for people to walk past unhindered, while patrols actually went around regularly, in teams of five.

Atop the watchtowers, the goblins noticed that the invaders positioned sentries in teams of five as well, with four of them constantly keeping watch of the four cardinal directions around them and the fifth positioned near a hanging bell. The bell was likely used to sound the alarm should it become necessary, and with five people together, it would be difficult to silence them all before they could sound the alarm.

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Not to mention that each watchtower was positioned so that it was constantly being observed by another two while at the same time also kept watch over the ones that watched it.

From the smell, they could also judge that the invaders had dug latrines at regular intervals for their soldiers’ usage, which signified good army discipline and practices. Some less disciplined armies and mercenaries often just answered the call of nature wherever they happened to be, which was an easily noticeable telltale sign.

There were no signs of granaries or warehouses or anything of the sort, which meant that their enemy likely also possessed spatial artifacts in enough quantity to store their rations that way. Some of the group had harbored hopes that the foreign invaders might not have enough spatial storage artifacts like most modern Alcidean armies do, but that turned out to be a vain hope.

Since it was unlikely that these invaders traded for their spatial artifacts, chances were that they were capable of its production, or at least inherited enough of them from their previous generations to use for military purposes. Neither were pleasant possibilities, as even nowadays people who could produce larger spatial artifacts were relatively rare, while the other possibility meant that the nation these invaders came from was wealthy to the point that they rivaled the former Clangeddin Empire.

The goblins remained where they were near the camp’s perimeter, watching and observing, all while making their own deductions based on the information they managed to gather from the close observation. They pretty much confirmed that the invaders relied mostly on their poor night vision to watch out for threats, which was a good thing.

Some armies brought dogs or domesticated wolves with them to battle and used them to patrol during the night, relying on the sharp noses of such animals to detect threats that their eyes and ears might have missed out on. Fortunately these invaders did not seem to possess that sort of practice, nor do they have people of Therian heritage who could serve a similar function.

It was not until a couple hours before the sunrise that the goblins slowly and carefully withdrew back to the forest, creeping away from the camp with the same care they had shown on the approach. Nobody in the camp had been the wiser that they were being watched from a close distance by enemy forces, nor were the miniscule signs of their presence noticeable to the invader sentries.

The invaders seemed to have minimal experience in dealing with non-humans, which was a vital information that the combined forces fighting against them could make good use of, doubly so when reinforcements from Knallzog made their way to the west.

After all, in a battle there was no shame to be had in pursuing every advantage one’s side could achieve. When it fell to matters of life and death, pride and shame often took a step back and made way for pragmatism and efficiency. The goblin scouts naturally reported their findings to Erycea and the other mercenaries waiting in the forest, and they planned out their future course of actions based on that report and the other information they managed to acquire so far.