Part 2: A Growing Backwater Empire.

Chapter 1.5: A Growing Backwater Empire.

A shorter update this time, since this and chapter 1 initially were planned to be a single one, but my writing got out of hand and I was afraid it would be too lengthy. Yet it had such a well placed dramatic ending that I loathed to lengthen it

Sieges! Now that's a thing that Undead did quite well. For the obvious reasons, the shambling armies didn't need that many supplies to keep operational – this meant they could stay outside a castle till it crumbled from old age. Also, skeletons didn't have much in the way of the flesh that could be pierced by arrows, the weapon of choice in all besieged cities. This made small villages especially vulnerable, since that usually meant that their first, main and last line of defense was useless. And only a bit annoying to the undead - those rib cages full of arrows made the most horrible of racket!



Alas, King Litch V now found himself in a situation where he had to make use of live troops. Sure, goblins were more expendable than skeletons – at least skeletons were loved when they were still living – but this didn't make it any easier. Then again, this was a but a small human settlement, so two companies of goblins would be enough. Sure, both of them were highly untrained and the second one was raised after a particularly dense goblin fletcher affixed arrowheads on top of broom handles, but what was one to do? The severely flattened company of archers would later on provide support, but they're of little use since even turf huts provided good cover for the defenders and allowed them to show all sorts of obscene hand gestures through their pig bladder windows.



With the assault on Golddale laid out in simple terms (“attack it until the town is taken or you all die) and left to goblin commanders, the King had to take care of some other things. Climbing into his royal palanquin (as a litch, he would never tire and could float, but he somewhat enjoyed causing misery to goblins), he ordered the greenskins to take him to the eastern edge of the city, where a new project was almost complete. The stunty smelly oafs complied and trundled down the uneven streets laid with all sorts of waste. Only the cold of the north held the horrible stench at bay – combining it with the vapors of the nearby swamps would cause sensory overload even to a litch.

With scenes of abject poverty that passed for comfortable goblin living passing by, the small group climbed on top of the hill that housed the city's market – a wonderful place that sold hooves, tails, bones, smelly mold and moss and other essentials of goblin daily life. Ratmen stood out here and there, visibly nervous: there was difficulty in explaining what “protection money” is to such a dull crowd. Eventually the clatter and the clamor of the would be marketplace was past them and the small procession descended from a hill towards the massive construction at it's foot.

A sort of shoddily made massive copper plate was placed, at an incline, on a huge stand and held in a wooded frame. Magical sparkles danced around the dish and smelly goblins milled around the base. A few mud hut surrounded the whole strange building. Of course, King Litch knew what it was. Regular mages fired thunderbolts and pantaloons ripping wind relying on their own reserves of mana, the strange, unknowable substance that enabled magic. Fiver, on the other hand, was no ordinary mage. His shadow bolts needed to kill more people and his magical winds had to knock down more that a straw roof of a peasant's hut. Thus, they needed a lot more mana for their spells. That's where mana traps came, used to collect ambient mana and store it in silver lined barrels for use later on, or, in case of accident, to rapidly mutate a goblin into a mass of mysterious appendages and gibbering mouths. You don't become a Great Mage just because you can collect a lot of mana; you become by being skilled enough to use those huge amounts of mana without becoming a human candle.

Usually, mages have a few of them, but with the new settlement and his powers still at relevant infancy, the King only had one. Still, it had to suffice for some time. In the mean time, the day had to be won over the corpses of goblins.
After the inspecting the mana trap and happy with both the collection rate and goblin casualties being within the acceptable limits, the King turned to leave when he heard a dreadful sound...



"When goblins reappeared in Ardania once more, following a long absence, gnomes were also spotted amongst their number, and were seen building a quite different style of architecture than was formerly typical for goblins. Arguments immediately broke out across Ardania over what could be hace reconciled these long-warring races. Some argued that the gnomes must have been enslaved by their green-skinned enemies, while others suggested that gnomes quite simply did not care what, or for whom, they build."
From the collected works of His Majesty's Advisor.

“Oy, you sorry lot, pull yer pants up, we're to see the royalty”

Fucking gnomes.

Gnomes were the actual life and blood behind the monster cities. While the goblins provided disposable low skill workers and even more disposable troops, the actual stuff happened because gnomes had something to do with them. Gnomes had a monopoly of mushroom farms. Gnomes commanded the brewing of beer. Gnomes made sure that goblins were armed with spears that would not crumble on first impact. Gnomes cleaned the gutters one in a year. Gnomes expanded consciousness.

Trouble is, they were fat, drunk louts that only ever cared for living in a city, eating, drinking and producing as much offspring as gnomish childbearing hips could bear. And they could bear a lot.

It was said that goblins met gnomes on their self imposed (i.e. they got lost) exile from Ardania. Now, gnomes were a disorganized bunch of small people in a world where even cockroaches grew to respectable sizes and knew rudimentary military strategy. That's why a lot of gnomes got eaten by all sorts of nasty creatures. But from the goblin tales they learned of magical places called “cities”, where a lot of gnomes could live in one place, grow food and procreate to their hearts content. If worst came to pass, they could be defended by city walls and even troops, such as goblins. That's why they traveled with the green doofuses and eventually accidentally returned to Ardania.

And now they requested the attention of Litch King V.

“Oye, boss, listen up!”, - said the fattest of the bunch, while holding his pants with one hand and scratching his chest hair with another. “Them turnips lads turned this place real sour”

“Turnips what no...”

“Yeah, the Westhill Turnips, those assholes! They refused to marry...like... eight of our daughters!”

“More like nine!” - added a very hairy woman while stroking her moustache.

“And buggered Jibby while they were drunk!”

“I still can't sit!”

“And they shat in our smokestacks!” - said another gnome woman, reinforcing her point by giving birth on the spot.

“And they stole my dirty pants!”

“You know how hard it is when you can't sit?”

“And they take all them building materials, our lads have to sleep in the mud!”

“And they cut off...”

This continued for a bit. Fiver sort of phased out – not literally, of course – and just waited for all the clatter to stop. Once he noted a lull in the clatter – one of the gnomes passed out drunk in the middle of a complaint – the litch gave out a ghastly sigh, rubbed his eyeholes and asked

“What do you want me to do?”

“Well, mount an expedition, 'course!”

“Yeah, give us wagons! And goblins! And gonkeys!”

“And beer!”

This proved to be acceptable solution, thus making this a self solving problem – also known as the best kind of problem in the circles of lazy mages and bureaucrats. Carts could be liberated by a royal decree delivered at spear tip, the goods for the journey would probably be collected from houses of the leaving clan (and those unfortunate enough to get in the way) while gonkeys, the sort of animal that resulted by leaving a lonely donkey and a lonelier goblin alone in stable, were never in short supply.

And thus, in a week, a clattering mass of gnome and gonkey left for the west, where a nice place with easy access to pigs and magical sources had been noted by the ratmen scouts.



Eventually, the King was able to return to his magical tower, built as well as possibly can be built by goblins – and with regulation compliant floating top, too! Here, in his Crystal Ball of Limited Seeing, he was able to watch the ongoing siege of Golddale.

A magnificent thing was happening. After a few forays and some losses, one of goblin companies came to a sudden realization that closing your eyes and wildly stabbing towards the presumed direction of the enemy was not the best course of action. In fact, it seemed that running towards the enemy and pushing him relentlessly was the way to go! Of course, this revelation only came after one of troops got his ass engulfed in flames (sieges provide ample fires everywhere) and ran towards a well to douse himself. In his mad charge he didn't even notice how he scattered a band of peasant defenders, but the other goblins took note. They were so happy with this discovery that they decided not to share it with anyone else.



And thus, using these revolutionary new tactics backed with wave after wave of goblins, Golddale fells. Corpses of peasant militia lined the impromptu barricades on the edges of town. Others had been trampled into the mud of the streets. The last lay in huge pile in the city square. Eventually, one man was sent by the survivors to declare their surrender and beg for mercy.

Luckily for them, among the goblins a werewolf was embedded. Lucius Rendclaw, esq. Had disgraced himself by showing unfitting amorous advances towards human females and thus was driven away from the high werewolf society. With little other options – a lone werewolf was prone to death by werewolf hunters or nymphomaniac forest maidens – he had gone to Litchopolis and pledged his service to King Litch V. Thus he had to supervise the Golddale siege and accept surrender, which he had most graciously done out of his perverse fondness for humans.



Meanwhile, on the other end of the explored world, the Ratmen came under attack from cockroaches... the most horrible foe of all! Well, they weren't that combat capable, but gigantic roaches were ugly as sin and many ratmen perished in disgust. One would thing that as a sever dwelling species they would be used to such things, but the messy appearance of the sever entrances was just a ruse to scare away tax collectors. The inside was actually clean, even if not that well lit and stinking of wet fur.

After the short and squicky battle, the enraged ratmen, still furious about such a gross out scare, found the cockroach nest. With their men away (and now dead), only cockroach females, babies and eggs remained there. The perfect targets for a retribution run! In the end of the day, every full grown cockroach had been eviscerated, all the eggs – smashed and the babies roasted in pans, coated in honey and sold to a traveling merchant, thus earning a few gold pieces.



The news of valiant defeat of the cockroaches and the profitable retribution reached Litchopolis, where the goblin “merchants” had a new idea.

“Now, see dere, boss, if we had port, we could make ships. We could put cockroach on ships. And sell. Make money! Buy mushroom beer and pretty goblin women!”

“You do realize that we may not see cock...”

“Naw, boss, we new you ran a hard barge-ing. So here, we collected some gold and mana barrels. Build port, make merchants happy, merchants give it to you”

The material rewards seemed quite nice and maybe the goblins would smell less if some of them “accidentally” fell into the sea, so Litch King V agreed.



The King had more important matters to attend to, anyway. A deep study of the book “The Living and Their Strange Predisposition Towards Eating” revealed to him harvest spell. It, miraculously, improved the food production in any city. The crops would grow harder, faster, stronger and would be all but immune to various bugs and weeds. Pigs would bloat to incredible sizes, full of bacon and little piglets. Mushrooms would sprout everywhere. And thus, adding food to the simple goblin population equation, would meant a booming population, too. Of course, this meant using of that mana flow to keep up the effect, but faster growth of cities was worth it.



Meanwhile, the western colonization effort had just crossed mountains and wanted to settle near a natural source of pigs. But this was protested by the Commission for Drawing Magical Border Lines, so the goblins had to move back a little.



After reaching the shores of the sea again, the gnome grandpappy Preyton decided he wouldn't move another inch, so the expedition had nothing else to do, but build their city between too magic sources that, while not as appealing to gnome as pigs, were still of great use to their King, so what were they gonna do? Just build some turf huts, call the new city Preyton and get drunk.



Of course, the King didn't want the city to be named after some lazy old gnome fart, so he ordered the previous name to be stricken from the records and replaced by “Litchship Down”.

“This brings a certain grace to the city and commemorates the beginning of our glorious nation” said Fiver and Lucius heartily agreed.



Later that evening, the litch was studying various tomes, scrolls, book, charts and other implements of definite magely importance when he felt the tower shake. Some bauble slid off the shelves and shattered, releasing fumes that were probably harmful to the living. A huge elf skin bound tome “Ardanian Tax System: A Primer” fell off a table and flattened a panicking rat. Crystals rattled and gave of sounds that could only be described as fitting for an age that was interested in space.

The tremors had barely subsided when Lucius, panting and with his tongue hanging out of his mouth, burst in through the door.

“My lord!...”

“How did you pass the floating section of the tower?”

“My Lord, cataclysms have been happening all over Ardania...”