Part 4: The Invasion

Chapter 3: The Invasion



And thus, with great clamor and belching and crying and braying of gonkeys, the settlers left for a faraway place they could settle and thus be away from the attentions of King Lich V, who had more important things to do in any case.



For example, he had now mastered a great new spell that did tangible (well, more tangible that charred corpses) changes to the world: Zygfryed the Fryed's Natural Terrain Altitude Enchantment or, as it was known among mages who liked to have friends, „Raise the Land“. It's most interesting property was that when used on the sea, a fresh field of grass would rise from beneath the waves, devoid of now dying fish, stinking weeds or underwater lizard lesbian colonies. This was one of the unexplained mysteries of magic, but everybody was fine with using it anyway. The only people who ever pretended to be interested in this effect were some poor university academicians who needed to show that they're indeed working and worthy of patronage.



And to top it, great news came from Lichship Down. In the local hills, a great project was completed. A dome was constructed over a wast magic node. Inside the building there was a great deal of brass tubing and various arcane machinery (all made from gnome beer stills) that were used to capture and store mana in barrels, that were again handled by the expendable goblins. The smokestacks were there to spread the magical run-off into the environment, where they killed flying snakes, the annoying cliff racers and elf women protesting magical run-off.



Even Melchior Tanenbrook demanded some attention!

„My Lord, if you would so kindly look out of this window, could you tell me what do you see?“

„Some muddy huts“ said Lich and, after doing the undead equivalent of squinting, added „And goblin copulating with a gonkey“

„Well, that's true, but look above it! Look to the north east!“

And then Lich King V saw. At the edge of city, surrounded by the ever present goblin slum, rose a white dome, sort of like an upscaled iglu that one northern tribe used before dragons ate them all. It looked sturdier and great deal cleaner than anything else between the Tower and the new building.

„Well, scribe, what is that thing?“

„That, your highness, is our alchemy laboratory! I took the liberty of inviting some of the other... disenfranchised colleagues and there we will do out magical research. We only ask a pittance for the upkeep“.

„I see. But I'm no fat wife of a fat merchant, I actually know magic. So if any of you tries to present some nonsense as genuine magical research...“

„Oh, My Lord, rest assured, nothing of the sort will happen! All of the disreputable folk who were interested in joining fled at the mere mention of a ruler that knows magic!“

But as all sorts of “science” and “arts” people were moving their meager possessions into the alchemist laboratory, a beasts nostrils flared far away. It bared it's canine teeth, for it was a smell it hadn't smelt in some time: academia.



And then, as if to prove his point about being ruler that is powerful enough a mage to detects shenanigans of people who use grant money to cover up their beer tab and debts to seedy monster brothels, King Lich cast the spell of fertility on the new city of Lichholm. The sky went green, life bloomed, etc.

„What happen? Why sky green?“

„Eh, cousin tell me someone at Litchship fart“.

„Hur, hur, farts...“



One later day, when King Lich V immersed into browsing an old, yet influential lich manuscript called „Victoria's Secrets“, he heard some commotion from down stairs. He immediately floated down to investigate and, in all probability, shadowbolt the offending party.

What he didn't expect was ratman in royal clothing, wearing excessive amounts of jewelry and carrying a golden scepter.

King Lich readied a minor shadowbolt:

“Who are you? What is the meaning...”

“Yo, king bro, I'm yo hommie rrat prince Snoop Jim-s, undigga! I came 'ere to maybe sell you mah services, kno-wut-am-sayin?”

“What? Why...?

“Well, I be genuine rrat royaly, real rat OP, but mah old man, he don't like ma style, so he send me away. Now I be a smart rratigga, so I think 'why not work wit da King Lich, he got all da bitches'”.

“Melchior, what is he and what's this nonscence he's spewing”

“Sire, I don't know what he's saying exactly, but I believe – oh Helia” the scribe fell onto his knees as seized by a fit, convulsed a little, grasped for air and shouted “I BELIEVE HE'S SPEAKING GHETTO”

King Lich flashed his ghostlights in surprise

“Geto? What's that? What happened to you?”

“Ghetto, m'lord. I believe that word means a specific style of talk among the poor and disenfranchised rrat youth and some of the goblin. Might refer to their slums, too. Oh, and that was divine inspiration – that's how we come up with new words”

“Didn't look that divine to me!”

“Well, this was not a very important word that would oft be used by virtuous people. The effects are different with the word type – those naming new sexual experiences have it the best, I believe”.

“Sometimes I'm very happy I'm dead. So, is it safe to shadowbolt the vermin now?”

“Er, no, sire. You see, he's one of the rrat princes. There's usually quite a lot of them, so the excess ones are booted from the court to just travel around and hopefully die. Some might return and eventually become kings. In any case, you should probably hire him – he's a noble and, due to all the rat training, a good fighter! And as the legends tell us, all sorts of wayward princes are bound to become legends, and it would be good to have one of those on our beck and call!”

“Alright, I'll hire him...but send him so far that I would never hear ghetto squeek again”.

And thus Snoop Jim-s became the hero-errant of King Lich V, who would have preferred a wizard.



Or an archer, as the scruffy merchant appeared again and this time wanted to sell a suspicious looking bow he picked up from a corpse of an elf (only elves had truly suspicious bows – most other races carried bows that were suspicious in the “I suspect that it's just a walking stick with some string attached” kind of way). Since the king saw no use for it, the merchant was escorted away and given some offal in gratitude for his service.



Meanwhile, in the north-western expedition, goblins were bravely getting maimed by the bears. The archers, subject to torturous damage from both the elements and things like angry ogres, accumlated enough scar tissue and frost bitten skin that they actually became somewhat resistant to both death and natural damage. They would have celebrated, but their tongues had fallen off.



Their spearmen compatriots, on the other hand, got some more mauling. Well, not as much as the other goblin spearmen company, which got mauled pretty hard. But these goblins found out that while watching others get attacked by bears is not only fun; it's somewhat educational, too! If you look closely enough and maybe even do that “thinking” thing that kind deadguy keeps talking about, you might even come up with vague ideas how not to get ripped apart by furry death avatars.



Unbeknownst to them, King Lich V came up with a great new idea in the field of disposable soldier retention. A long time ago, this one mage was really allergic to all sorts of healing herbs, disliked leaches and found healing potions to be just short of vomit in taste. So he huffed and he puffed and he made the spell that would later on be known as the healing spell, the most basic spell to generals who wanted their troops healthy again or for fat mages who couldn't leave their towers.



But no sooner as his undead highness cough a goblin to thrown down the stairs (to test the effectiveness of the spell) when a messenger arrived bearing news of new construction in Lichship Down. King Lich felt some remorse about swearing to see any new structure that his subjects build, but that was what he had to do. After all, he had to make sure that it wasn't something potentially dangerous before it could be replicated in other cities.

Of course, the thing that he saw was probably too stupid to be built somewhere else.

“Cheese cave, guv'na”, - said a proud gnome with thubs under his suspenders while leading the king down a dimly lit cavern.

“Cheese doesn't grow in caves” - stated King Lich flatly.

“It sure does. Well, it doesn't usually, but this there a special, jinxed place! You just place a bite of cheese in the wall, water it with gonkey milk – and cheese grows!”

“And you eat it yourselves? Not feed it to the livestock or goblins or something?”

“Now why'd we do dat, sira? This is prime cheese, good for all an any gnome!”

“But it's magical, unnatural cheese!”

“I fail to see the point, sira.”

“It's probably for the best that you don't”.

Satisfied with such answer, the cheese foreman sliced a bit of the wheel that was growing from the wall. He broke it in two, eating one half and offering the other to King Lich:

“Cave cheese, m'lord?”



A trip wasn't a total waste of time, though. Lichholm was nearby, and the gnome settlers were temporarily staying at a field near it. The problem was obvious: there was an ogre in region, one that was continuously attacking the elves and was attacked by them in turn. Naturally, a fat gnome caravan full of fat gnome would have been a tempting target for the beast, if only for the food (gnomes were known for their tender meat). This problem had to be rectified, but the goblin companies were busy dying valiantly while fighting bears at the north. The only available asset was Snoop Jim-s and so an order was sent to him by a pigeon. The bird returning with the answer was mysteriously shadowbolted out of the sky and King Lich just had to rely on his faith that rrat prince would do his bidding.



And the royalty even got to watch the heal spell in action! Since he couldn't try on himself (undead and all) and the captured goblin escaped, King Lich decided to heal one of the goblin companies who suffered injury in their cowardly duty in the north.

Visually, the spell was less interesting that harvest – it only produced some lighting effect that even charlatan mages would call “cheap”. The effect, however, was immediate: puss exploded from infected wounds and disappeared as smelly vapour, gashes in flesh closed with horrible slurping sounds, broken bones found their position and re-knit all while shaking their owners bodies in unnatural spasms. In short, a whole lot of goblins were made battleworthy almost instantaneously. This pleased King Lich and was only mildly horribly painful to the goblins.



“Take dis, fatso cracka foo'!” said Snoop Jim-s as he swung his scepter and bashed the battered ogre's head in. And as the mighty mountain of meat fell, Snoop Jim-s felt real proud of himself, and even composed a song that no minstrel would ever agree to sing.

But the way was clear, and both the prince and the settlers were free to move to the new lands.



Back in the old, boring, nobody-is-trying-to-kill-us land, the human citizens finally managed to build a harbor, for which King Lich collected a bounty from the trade guild and kicked some of them about for having the insolence to think that the king can be bought.

The harbor had everything you needed to keep a small fleet going. A huge warehouse housed enough apples to eradicate scurvy everywhere; brothel owners banded together to teach their whores how not to fall down when walking bow legged; pressgangs were preparing their truncheons for recruitment drives; royal inspectors where checking the inns for required seedyness and old sea dogs – for saltyness. Even a fund for widows of sea serpent attacks was put up.

Now they only needed to build a ship. Eventually, when the king deems its fitting.



However, the king trusted humans enough not to check in on the new port (wasn't the case with goblins), so he was able to inspect the first (and most likely the only) Enchanter's Workshop to crop up in the kingdom.

It was run by a gnome – a somewhat twisted of body, greenish of skin, wild of hair, singed and mad eyed gnome. He had a singular task (or wasn't willing to do anything else): to enchant troops' weapons with elemental magic. Research into this field (and gross incompetence) explained the damage that the gnome has sustained. However, he was as magical as you could ever pray – hoping wouldn't nearly be enough – to be and still stable enough to work. King Linch only needed to promise a steady flow of reagents, weapons to enhance and to pick up his tab at the local brothel.

A fair trade, all in all.



The same couldn't be said about what came next. A goblin sharpshooter of unmatched skilled came to offer his services. Alas, the coffers were a bit empty at the time – and the king didn't want to admint that turning down the artifact bow was a worse decision that taking the magical staff – so he had to be turned down. The kingdom still had only one one hero – the ghetto speaking rrat prince that nobody wanted to be around.



The hero that the king DID hire has scouting the way south (also know as “the not-so-frozen direction”) since further west were the already scouted Rat Murder Forests. All the evidence as scouting report from the rrat rretinue foraging parties promised two things: a lot of areal fire (“dem bunch o' flying mofo snakes up in dem hills” said one sooty, smoking ratman) and an ogre.



"They say flying serpents are the reason why heroes who stray too far from their guilds often tend to dissappear."
From the collected works of His Majesty's Advisor.

Not willing to risk his neck fighting flying murdersnakes that breathed fire, Snoop Jim-s turned a little more south east, to maybe scout out the the western border of the elven kingdom (who, according to the reports he was getting, broke the alliance with his king) and maybe hit an ogre over the nogging.

Ogres didn't fly, which made them a more favorable target.



Speaking about ogres... The northern expedition/random armed mob of goblins ran into more of the giant oafs. Before goblins could start having ogre flashbacks, a new battleplan was drawn up: most of green horde would heroically hold the ogres back by providing bodies to crush while one company would try and flank the brutes, in order to loot their dwelling, thus making sure that if the present ogres weren't slain, at least no new ones would move into the frozen forests.



And thus they did. Unfortunately, one of the blocking companies turned out to be the archers, also known for their excessive squishy-ness. Only time would tell if they survived the ordeal!

Meanwhile, the misplaced spearmen were bee-lining for the ogres hut, eager to poop in pillows and steal cutlery.



But watching goblins die all day long might get tiresome, so King Lich decided to attend another building unveiling ceremony. The Lichholmians, having uncovered the iron vein they were actually sent to find, built a foundry and even found a gnome with enough upper body strength to actually work there. He used to a master plate maker, making the finest diner ware out of the finest lead availably, but now his talents would be employed making armor out of iron, for once giving the monster kingdom someone akin to a real smith and armor expert.



The first one to benefit from the gnome's craft was, of course, Snoop Jim-s, who immediately received a shipment of masterwork armor. This proved to be extremely fortuitous to him, since the armor protected from the blows of the ogre and even missiles, the natural bane of the beast folk.

And even before engaging the ogre, the rrat prince had come up on a tent. A lot of halberds were lined outside and men in shining cuirasses were merrily drinking inside. Royal guards found themselves without a job when the last King disappeared, and now sold their services to whoever bought them. Their camp had to be taken into account when settling the next city.



On the topic of rats, squeeking envoys from King Rrat XLII arrived at Lichopolis and announced that, well, his domain was somewhere near by.

Added to the proclamation was a short note saying that King Rrat has heard about King Lich hiring the services of Snoop Jim-s, and, as a prudent monarch, wouldn't hold it against him even if the son perished in line of duty.

“After all, it would probably be only his and his stupid manner of speech's fault”.



No sooner had the rats left (with some magical cave cheese as free provisions provided by the King) did the cryer belch out “His Majesty's attentions are required by Avgustus Fon Wolfhenze and his court of fangs”.

Now, this was a more noble procession – actual werewolves! They walked with pride and stature speaking of good education, great meals and royal upbringing. And even though they looked somewhat worn – not all fur was shining, one ear had marks of bad stitching and they had no servants to order about – but their importance looked palpable. King Lich V was intrigued, if only to speak to some new people who knew how to count and did it without picking their noses.

Avgustus fon Wolfhenze presented himself as the leader of his clan; it was forced to leave it's former lands after the attentions of their king became too demeaning and lewd to bear.

“The poor sod – who's name I won't mention out of courtesy – totally lost it! He tried, tried to seduce our women and smaller runts! He pretended to howl at the moon and say how he felt like one of us! And then he stuffed a fox tail died grey into his trousers, so that he would appear more like us! Eventually, one lad spotted the king making a horrible mockery, a werewolf costume. This just could not do! We had to sneak out and we were on the road ever since. But luckily, we picked up on the scent of academia, the peculiar mixture of craziness and alcohol – and we wanted to see who brings civilization to these desolate wastes. Noble king, I, Avgustus fon Wolhenze, would like to pledge my allegiance and that of my clan, to you and your kingdom!”

This was, indeed, great news. King Lich V read about werewolves being the nobility of monster cities, as well as formidable troops. And attracting any possesing these qualities to the frozen tundra was somewhat hard. Without a doubt, King Lich accepted their pledge, gave everyone titles that were made up on the spot (after all, there weren't that many goblins who could hold a court title; as a disastrous experiment with Master of the Hunt proved, titles don't give much prestige if their holders are utterly incapable of following up on them) and land was given between the castle and the pub. A goblin shanty had to be torn down, sure, but that was easy, since the northern climate made it easy to contain the fire.

And thus, out of the ashes of goblin poor, rose a the Chateau of Loup-garou.



There were other good news, too – the distraction tactic work perfectly in the north, and the goblins managed to raid and totally destroy an ogres den. Among the wreckage they found a dusty old tome that detailed the Firestorm spell (created by Archmagus Yonah The Cinder) and some gold.

The only challenge left was escaping alive.



Back in Lichopolis, the month of drunken revelry (hosted in celebration of the werewolves' arrival) had just begun when troubling news came from the coast. Over night, from seemingly nowhere, appeared a vile structure and started tainting the land.

“Those fleshy heads growing out of the ground do look vile” agreed Lich while looking at the structure from atop a hill. “Is the land around it dangerous?”

“Yes, my liege, we tried it a few times. See for yourself” said Lucius and threw a goblin scout down the hill, onto the repugnant mass of... wrong.

At first, nothing happened. But then the skin of the goblin started to melt. This proved to be somewhat distracting to the poor creature – but not as much as the ground itself starting to consume its legs.



“Hmm, look dangerous indeed” agreed the king “But behold, I learned a new spell! It was made by a racist Grand Wizard to cleanse the land from people he didn't like, but he did mistakes while coming up with the incantation, so it only cleans the actual land. Behold!”



Lightning crackled from the sky and pierced the foul ground. Mysterious cosmic lights poured from the sky, purifying everything in horrible bright flashes. Even the many husks of goblin scouts disappeared as the land was cleansed by horribly powers and restored to it's pristine, grassy state.



With vapors gone, Melchior was able to get a better look at the monsters that grouped around the fleshy, unholy hills on the horizon.

“Hmm” he said while browsing “Monstrous Compendum: A Manual of Rare Mystical Beasts And Eldritch Horrors”. “Look here, m'lord, I think I know what that is”.

The Lich King glanced at the page.



"We know very little about these creatures, as they have appeared in Ardania just recently. They were named "Dremers" for their resemblance to the race described in the ancient prophecy of Koatles. It is said there that at the end of times dremer-worldeates will come from the outworlds and that they will eat the sun of time, and... well, it will shine again but a bit differently. We do not know if these creatures are the said Dremers, or even do they have any kind of intelligence, but it is obvious that they are extremely aggressive strong and dangerous, and tend to attack everything on sight."
(From "The Overall Description of Everything" by Master Alfus Bumblegate)

“Dremer, you say? Well, this means only one thing...”