Part 3: Taming the wilds

Chapter 2: Taming the wilds

All was well in Litchopolis. The tower was still floating, favorable winds were blowing goblin stank away into the mountains where it was seriously damaging the goat population, slightly drunk gnomes were breeding and erecting new buildings to drink and breed in, greenskin troops were dying in some frozen, faraway ditch... King Litch V could just relax, study spell books and leave the state to Lucius and the assembled Council of The Slightly Intelligent Goblins And Not Morbidly Obese Gnomes (sometimes mockingly shortened to “Council of the Wise”).



But no, there were always interruptions. A goblin steward was shouting from the last step of the staircase of the non-floating part of the castle: a visitor who wishes to see his majesty! King Litch just sighed a ghastly sigh, closed “Musings on Goblin Vivisection” and floated down to his kingly hall where he would sit on his throne to listen to another complaint about goat marriage or something else as trivial. Instead, a human dirty disheveled human was unceremoniously dumped on his royal mixture straw and mud that existed instead of a carpet.

“What is your name, living one, and why do seek the audience of Litch King V?” the king asked with a voice that sounded like it came from the beyond the grave, which was technically true.

“Excuse me, your highness, my name is Melchior Tanenbrook from the University of Ridgebrook. I come here to offer my services!” the guest answered while he brushed muddied straw off himself.

“I see. But why did you leave the confines of your comfortable alma matter? Why didn't you stay to drink away your days and harass tavern wenches?”

“Well, you see, m'lord, I and, uh, the other academia had sever disagreements about the appropriation of funds, use of quarters and controversial paper that states that there's no correlation between the ginger population and the appearance of imp portals. Those louts stated that this was a frivolous paper and that the only part that rang true was my statement that gypsies were definitely tied to demons. While, in my entire life!...” Melchior was now red and gyrating arms very fast, which made some of the goblin “honor” “guard” woozy and one of them fainted.

“Stop your prattling, human! I don't know what use I could have for you. We have no universities here and no easily impressed noble ladies to swindle coin from”.

“I could always be your majesty's scribe”.

“But I already have one. Why would I need you?”

“Well, for starters, I know that there's no 't' in “lich”...”



All was well in Lichopolis. A goblin scribe shaped splat was being scraped away at the bottom of the tower...



And the heroic goblin forces of the Golddale campaign were sent East to get rid of the Ogre menace, before more of them are lured there by the wondrously placed shack. Citizens of Golddale lined the one street that the town had, happy to be rid of their heroes, prefering to take their chances with wild monsters. Alas, their celebration was incomplete since one company was left behind to wait for reinforcements and bury their dead in an anonymous roadside ditch.



Meanwhile, goblin archers were making their way through the frozen wasteland, their skin too thick to freeze, their nerves too dull to feel cold. Green leg after green leg trampled the snow underneath, leaving behind a road pockmarked by discarded goblin ration bags.

Said rations were offal, goat joins and other food detritus, mixed with 50% of moss and wrapped in whatever filthy rag or rotten skin was nearby. Despite such horrible packing conditions, it neither rot, nor took maggots since it was disgusting. On the other hand, goblin religion revolved around the idea of eating the whole world. This suited King Lich V just fine since it saved foodstuff for other, more respectable troops, like ratmen or so.

Unfortunately for the less valued troops, one of the forests along their path burst and an ogre surged forth, its skin marked with scars and healed-over arrows from their last meeting. And as quickly as that, most of the company was flatened by vigorous hits with a tree trunk, sending others fleeing back.



But running a kingdom responsibly can't be all fun all the time, and King Lich was forced to leave the Crystal Ball. Matters of the state required his attentions!

First of all, Lucius had some concerns about the gnome population. His suggestion was simple, elegant and cheap: sent them off to build another city. He had already made the necessary preparations – ordered cart building and told some influential gnome women that the women of other clans have secretly been sending lard to court their husbands.



Then, a clearly uncomfortable elven envoy arrived and with a great dramatic sigh announced that Amberon the Dark is offering an alliance to the heathen monster kingdom. Since this meant some safety from their closest neighbor and a sweet spell that protects from arrows (a natural predator for some of the more monstrously inclined citizens of monster kingdoms), King Lich V signed it posthaste and sent the envoy on his way.

Some of his retinue looked like they were about to pass out from the smell, which could have lead to diplomatic troubles, which was way more than the infant military could bear, even if they armed infants.



After the elves had made their hasty retreat towards more civilized land, a small and dirty trader, his ramshackle gonkey drawn wagon (which looked like an inverted hut since all manner of daily appliance hung from its sides) parked in the castle “yard”, scurried into the hall.

“M'lord” he said pressing his toothless mouth into a semblance of a smile “m'lord, I have wondrous wares for you to see! I have traveled far and wide, searched high and low, and thus I present the fruit of my labor to your highness!”

“Oh for Krypta's sake... what is it that you're peddling, old man?”

The trader rummaged in his potato sack coat and held out a gnarled wooden stick – which was magical, as indicated by its glowing end (it was either that or some oversized glow bugs were tied to it with very thin string”.

“Behold! The Gnarled Staff! It belonged to a witch, oh yes, a powerful witch! Mean and old, but filled with folksy wisdom and profane magical power! Some say she could call lightning down from the sky! Others say that she could turn into a dragon and meddle in the affairs of mortals even while professing disdain towards them! Oh yes, a bitch of witch she was...”

“Pray tell, if the witch was so powerful, how did you get the hold of her staff?”

“Well, by plain fortune I rode her down with my wagon. She was exhausted from a fight with a hero sent by her daughter. Luckily enough, the staff remained intact, but the hero had already ransacked her hut, so this was the only thing that I got. But it's powerful and I am willing to sell it to you, m'lord!”

This was a bit of a conundrum for the undead monarch. On one hand, he hadn't hired any heroes yet, so the staff was useless. On the other hand, you never know what mage would visit their far off lands or be resqued from some bear den. And the money just sat there in the treasury, not being used for anything good...

“Alright, salesman, we'll take your trinket staff”.



Plaguetail Ratterson had enough of this frozen north. First, they crashed on some tundra, then they built the city on some frozen rock – a suboptimal place to build severs, ratmen habitat of choice – and now he had to go even further west, to scout out a new place for the settlement. And there was nothing interesting here, except for the elven domain to the south, and that place was weird – even looking at the farms made his head hurt. And on the other side of the hill there were more frozen forests, running up to the Impassable Magic Barrier at The End of The World. There was nothing else to do but jot down the approximate contours of the surrounding area on a piece of parchement.

And then he smelled it.

Bears. The natural predator of colonists.

Surely as he smelled it, the Lich King saw it in his crystal ball.

“Bloody hell, another monster hunt...”





Meanwhile, on the front of the current monster hunt, thing were going quite smooth. Sure, goblins were getting squished on a regular basis, but the ogre was getting hurt, too. Sometimes it would step on a spear of a dead goblin, sometimes it would slip on a dead soldier and fall. Hell, once in a while a goblin would even manage to hurt it intentionally.

For the survivors, this was paying off in spades. One of the goblin spearmen companies came up with the idea that presenting a unified line of spear tips towards the enemy would help to deter attacks and make them more costly to the enemy. This was proposed by Horts the Goblin, who noticed that pricking your finger on one thorn was less painfull than grabbing an entire branch of thorny bush (he was trying to find a place to poop when he noticed this). Sadly, he bled out and died after the presentation, but this only helped to reinforce the idea.

Goblin Archers had advanced, too, by discovering actual aiming. By a stroke of luck, one of the archer's eyelids froze open, so he couldn't close his eyes before firing (a common goblin practice thought to bring good luck and hide them from the enemy retaliation). To his surprise, shots started landing where he wanted, so he taught the trick to his comrades. Eventually it was discovered that this could be done even without using snow to freeze one's eyelids.

And the actually smart troops were learning lessons even without taking casualties in the process. Ratmen bandits were starting to feel comfortable in the wilds and eventually started coming up with ideas on how to use the surroundings to their advantage. This mostly involved using terrain features and foliage to bypass enemy attentions and especially to effectively escape after an attack.

This also served to bolster their spirits, as it reminded them of darting in and out of sever pipers way back home, only this time logs they hid behind stank less.



Back on the eastern front, King Lich came up with a cunning maneuver – by using some of the goblins to draw the ogre's attention, he'd slip another company past the beast and use it to loot the creature's house. This plan set in motion, he returned to his books, where he finally cracked the secrets of a new spell, the humble lesser fireball. Sure, “Cooking with Extradimentional Beans” wasn't a book he expected to have much use from, but here he was, again able to shoot balls of searing hot magical gas.



His celebration (trying to shoot goblins in the streets below with smaller versions of fireballs) was momentarily interrupted by a gust of wind that brought vile smells and content oinking. The Ardanian wild domestic pig was a mystery to all who tried to study as something else than a haunch on a plate. It had no masking colors, wasn't exactly fierce and used to stay in one grazing spot no matter what. Any nearby settlers only needed to built pens around them and the pigs would provide a lot of food to feed the hungry bellies of the expansionists. One such pig 'deposit' had been discovered near Lichopolis and the King had ordered sties built in order to feed his growing armies. Pig hooves and tails were also a new, nutritious part of goblin provisions, which allowed to cut down the portion of the expensive mosses.



In the meatime the Goblins in the east managed to bypass the ogre and found his house unattended. After scaring away some redhead would-be princess (who insisted that the ogre was the only one who loved her), they went to do some proper looting and pillaging. Beds were chopped up, linens - eaten, books - burned, curtains - used to wipe goblin posteriors, goats – made love to... in the end, valuables collected from the Ogre's dwelling were deemed to be worth about 100 gold pieces.

As for the dwelling, it was demolished and shat upon, which made this place no longer attractive to would be ogre colonists.



But this is overshadowed by even more important events. Through the back breaking, painful mutation, madness and death inducing labor of goblins who will never be remembered (because nobody wants to) barrel upon barrel of mana has been transported to the cellars undead the tower in Lichopolis. Finally, the magic reserves were large enough to cast one of bigger spells – Harvest Blessing. Sure, this would cost some mana to keep, but the resultant increase in food (and, consequently, population) growth more than made up for this.

Beeswax candles were lit. Carved tablets with likenesses of lesbian nature spirits were anointed with scented oils. Pouches with dried flowers were placed around the room. Soft, effeminate words were spoken.

And the air in Lichship Down crackled and turned green with virile energies of nature. Turmors and broken bones disappeared from goats. Mushrooms sprouted from the ubiquitous dung piles. Vines and other greenery, killed by various pollutants secreted by the green fold, sprang back to life. Beer turned into less-patriarchal cider. A single flower bloomed somewhere out of the reach of nincompoop citizens.

Downian Goblins looked around, then up and, taking in all the green, thought in unison

“Who farted?”



Ratmen scouts, on the other hand, had some more important things on their hands. For example, maps and reports that showed that bears not only infested a treasure site (probably some poor caravan they ambushed and ate), but also had a bear den nearby, which meant more bears. Then again, King Lich remembered the disdain he felt for most of his subjects and colonists continued on without any knowledge about possible bear-related death.



The scouts, however, were important, thus they were sent south, away from bears and their rodent rending claws. There they found an independent monster settlement... which the elves were successfully besieging. Huts burned, field rot unattended, hostages hung from the trees, ritual sacrifices to the Elven One Truth lay in circles of unardany symbols drawn in blood.

Basically, it was what they deserved for striking independent, so Ratment didn't really bother with it. They had lunch in a nearby burned farm, pointed out a cellar full of refugees to an eleven patrol and went on their merry way east.



And soon Gnomewall fell in blaze of fire and orgy of violence, the survivors damned to spend their days under the harsh whips of the elven overlords, who'd flog anyone deviating from the One Truth (for all had to follow it) but never explaining what it was exactly (for many were unworthy).



But while one city fell, another rose nearby – Dragonhall was established on the foothills of frozen mountains, nestled between a vein of iron and a vein of magic.



It also acquired the proper name of Lichholm, because, as the King said, “Dragonhall could jinx the town and attract dragons. I don't want to see any dragons anytime soon”.



These great news were made even greater since one of the goblin companies found the ogre passed out from blood loss. After they were sure it wasn't moving, they attacked it and after three hours of vigorous stomping, slashing, poking and gnawing, the beast died, the whole operation costing only ten goblin lives. The goblin forces were then ordered to head way east, to clear the bear menace or/and die trying.



Unfortunately, not everyone were as incompetent as goblins and Ratmen, in an attempt to scout more area faster, overextended themselves. Sure, they found a nice place for a city or two: the lands were somewhat fertile, another magic vein was there, ruins promised knowledge of bygone eras and a distraction for buxom female archaeologists, there was mooing of minotaurs to be heard and, just on the horizon, a faint glimmer of elven female city shimmered with gentle lough and sudden spikes of menstrual violence.

Yet this placed ratmen too close to a den of monster eating spiders – who, due to their size, made away with camouflage and were horribly blue -, a holy site guarded by a fire elemental, an imp portal (already with imps) and a bear den.



Not long after a nightly assault by the spiders, with the rat survivors tending to the wounded or seeing if pieces of chitin made for good armor or just dinner plates, the Fire elemental roared over the forest. And in his fury over having to guard a holy site (fire elementals were agnostic at best, although most of them thought that there are no gods, only fire), he bellowed a great cry and sent forth a huge fireball. Ratmen were charred to the bone where they stood. Thus with nary a squeak and drenched in the stank of burning fur, ended the story of the first scouts of King Lich V's army...