“Well, Tracy, we won’t be leaving anytime soon. But, really, do we want to?”
“Yeah, I’m pretty sure we are exactly where we want to be. Shall we continue?”
***
The party had explored all of the other doors within this chamber, and so now it was time to explore the last. As was becoming habit, the party crept silently to the threshold and took turns looking beyond. It was the entrance to a corridor, just like the others had been, but this one was very different in that it was quite long, and the party’s torches did not reach its end.
One would not be judged for thinking that this wasn’t a problem. That the party could just march forward, bold as day, torches at the ready. Plenty of adventurers do, and they do not pay for their folly. But this particular party had other ideas.
Tracy spoke first, though the pause before his words showed that they were all thinking along the same lines.
“Guys, we’re gonna have to douse the torches. We don’t have any view of the end of this thing, and this isn’t one of those dice-and-parchment games where if you get hit you lose some hit points. Everything has been too easy to this point. We need to be careful and protect our skins,” Tracy said.
While the half-orc and other half-elf nodded, Bern frowned. Bern Sandros was a human, and so, he was not blessed with the catlike dark sight gifted to so many of the humanoids that shared these lands. Still, he was quite skilled at navigating and discovering things in the dark. If he hadn’t been, he never would have quested for a job in which many other beings had such powerful genetic advantages over him.
“Yeah, guys, I’ve got this. Piece of cake,” said the human with the calm and assured demeanor of someone who has done this routinely. Within his thoughts, though, he wondered about it. It was hard to tell if he was attempting to assure the others or himself.
“Are you going to be okay with your, you know . . .” Yenrab asked in that always awkward attempt to not be disrespectful while pointing out a rather obvious fault.
“Yenrab!” scolded Carric, his eyes begging mercy from Bern.
“With my what, Yenrab?” the rogue asked menacingly.
“You know, your, uhm, disability?” the half-orc pleaded, his arms waving awkwardly about as he struggled to figure his way out of this surprise encounter.
“Are you saying humans are all disabled?” Bern said with a glare—and then he broke into laughter. Carric looked unsure, but Yenrab was visibly relieved, and his body seemed to settle back into itself.
“Yeah, we aren’t the best at seeing in the dark. No worries, guys. I’m not offended by obvious truths. Just be direct. And, no, it isn’t a problem. I’ve trained to do this, and besides, I have a plan,” Bern continued on in a both lecturing and scholarly voice.
Tracy watched and took notes as his companions shared their guffaws. Then he looked up and murmured thanks to Coraellon.
Turning to his friends, he noted, “Things are so fascinatingly exotic and folksy outside of Elfsmeet.”
***
The rogue padded ahead, his disappearance quick and stealthy. Sliding against the wall, Bern Sandros took great and exacting care in each motion, ensuring that he made no noise. The way was dark, but in his mind’s eye it all came into focus. The shape of the corridor and the nearness of his target stayed fixed and well diagrammed in his trained and talented mind. He did not hesitate as he scouted ahead.
Sisssssssssssssssss.
The assassin stopped, for he could hear whispers in the distance. The sounds sizzled and hissed, leaving a pleasant auditory aftermath that Bern could well imagine falling asleep to in different, more comfortable, situations.
His brain embraced it, giving it a quick look over.
That’s rain, he thought.
His thoughts raced ahead and traced the echoes and reverberations. Gently but thoroughly, a new mental picture was composed. There existed some sort of hole, a rather large one, in the top of this place. The rain was sluicing through cracks, sprinkling and flooding down to strike the stone floor of the place. The sound was foreboding, and his mind felt a spark of horror.
No, no, no, no, no. If there is a hole in the ceiling, then other tomb raiders might have beaten us to the rest of it! The rogue felt angry and cheated, though he supposed that if it had been looted, it probably occurred centuries ago and well before he had been alive.
He let his mind go back to its canvass, trying to get a better feel for the state of the large room that he was now absolutely sure lay ahead.
The rain was streaming through at quite the rate, he thought, as it battered itself headlong into old and cracked floors of stone. There was a swirling and slushing quality to it after it hit the floor. That is almost definitely a drain, Bern thought, now satisfied as to why the whole building hadn’t transformed into one giant water tank.
Also, there was something else. As he approached closer, moving around a bend in the otherwise gently curving passage, he could hear voices, gruff and guttural, making conversation. They spoke some strange, mouth-full-of-rocks nonsense language that generally indicated a darker soul, or so had been Bern’s experience through his almost two dozen years living in this world, listening to tales of such from other boys crowded about trash fires in the alleys of Nemedia City. There were at least two humanoids ahead, his ears told him, near to that hole in the roof that was cascading torrents of rainwater into the chamber.
That’s enough time here, the assassin-in-training thought. It is time to head back and report.
***
“So, you are saying there are humanoids ahead?” Carric frowned a bit in thought, the dream of looting an unoccupied ruin shattered.
“So, you are saying that humanoid languages sound like people chewing rocks?” Yenrab was still jovial, as always, but he had a bit of a narrowed shape to his eyes as he said it.
“Nah, dude, bro, no, not like that. What I mean to say is that there is, well, a more guttural edge to the words, and well, screw it. Yes. They sound like people chewing rocks. Sorry not sorry,” Bern stated in a firm stand-his-ground manner.
Yenrab pondered that a bit.
“Yeah. I guess you’re right. I don’t suppose you know what type of rocks the said guys were chewing?”
“Nah, mate, I just know they didn’t sound friendly!”
“Right, right. Alright, I’m thinking maybe you all should just let me go talk to them. They might actually be good people.”
Carric himself looked thoughtful.
“You know, in the ballads, the brave adventurers stride heroically forth and slaughter the monstrous humanoids for, well, being the wrong color with the wrong language. Or so it would seem thinking about it in a different light. Yes. Yenrab, I think you should go forward and talk with them.”
Everyone turned to look at Tracy Riley. The elven sorcerer looked behind him, then to both sides of him.
“Don’t look at me. I don’t care.”
Yenrab lapsed into an authoritative tone. “Alright, guys, let’s do it then. I’ll carry some light with me—Bern, you hang to the shadows and keep out of sight. Carric, you can come up lightly from behind me, not hiding but obvious and waiting in reserve. And, Tracy, I have no idea of what you can do and where I should put you so, you know, you do you.”
The party moved ahead down the corridor at a nonthreatening and steady walking pace. Weapons were stowed by all excepting the roguish, hidden Bern. They moved forward in a crisp and official manner that could not at all be mistaken as warlike, but could also not be perceived as weak.
Rock-chewing voices greeted them.
“Duun agaan o kuur ac dec magaan o shuulkaan duun an?”
“Hallo, vriend. Ek praat glad nie jou taal nie. Kan jy myne praat?”
The half-orc peered on, his face stony but stern. His torch light flickered and gasped as he continued forward, bringing a pair of well-kitted hobgoblin fighters into its radius. They stood firm with weapons ready and faces tense.
“Ja. Kabouter is nie ‘
n verfynde taal nie, maar dit is ‘n algemene genoeg parley. Wat doen jy hier in hierdie graf?”
Tracy tried to follow, and failing, turned to the bard.
“Hey, man, do you have any idea what they are saying?”
“Actually, yes, I kind of do. They have agreed upon speaking Goblin for this parlay.”
“Ek hoop regtig dat ek hierdie storie betyds vir Kersfees voltooi, want ek wil hê Robert moet dit lees. Dis ‘n bietjie van ‘n Paasei vir hom en ander uit Suid-Afrika.”
“Plus dan sal ek weet of hy die storie eintlik lees of nie as ek hom daaroor vra nie.”
Carric smiled.
“What are they saying now?”
“It’s a joke, friend Tracy, one that I don’t quite understand, but it is certainly friendly in feeling. Yenrab, is there anything you aren’t good at?”
The large half-human, still deep in conversation, simply turned and smiled at them before turning back to continue with the conversation.
The talk lasted a surprising amount of time, though the formalities were done within the first five to ten minutes. After that, it was simply chummy monster time, as far as Bern was concerned. And why not? What was it about all of the stories that made everything humanoid a faceless monster to be butchered and bled to the tune of glory? Enough stories existed about the selfish and lazy poor, and he had never been either.
He nodded a bit to himself and then made a decision. Stepping forward he folded back into the group from the darkness of the shadows. He looked a bit at them all and then simply pulled out a whetstone and started seeing to the edge of his blades.
Tracy, the sorcerer, glanced at him, but his thoughts were obviously elsewhere as he looked back away out further into the darkness of the tomb.
***
The party was all sitting in a group, staying well clear of the hole in the roof, when Yenrab and the hobgoblins, their weapons sheathed, came over and joined them.
“Guys, I’d like you to meet Aronak and Dorduken, ronin of Echo Troop, First of the 3rd Battalion, Tiger Squadron.”
The plated soldiers bowed as their names were said, their distinctly angular features and brownish-orange flesh seeming to writhe under the torchlight. Hobgoblins normally looked angry, but these ones seemed downright jovial as they sat down next to the rest.
“Aronak and Dorduken here left their unit in pursuit of treasure, and well, they found themselves in bad weather the same as us and, ya know, found a hole and rushed through it,” Yenrab informed them, a bit excited. “So we talked, and well, they’re gonna join our group.”
In a world full of gods whose favorite pastime is watching mortals, it should be no surprise that splutter-worthy words are most often spoken when one is captured in the act of doing something that allows them to splutter.
In this case, it was Carric who, having felt a sudden onset of dry throat, was busy drinking water from his cache.
“Splght Ugh Thwhat?” the bard said noisily and with a death rattle.
The hobgoblins looked delighted and began to talk to him, apparently mistaking his nonsense for their own language. Bern saw the discomfort in the bard’s eyes and began to chuckle.
Chapter 15: A Loss and a Win
Within our adventurer’s guide, How to be an Adventurer, there exists a section well-labeled as “The Adventurer’s Guide to Sentients”, detailing a larger and larger list of beings that are capable of speech and creative thought. Looking at any of the entries within from an unexpected angle might reveal a series of strange numbers coupled with letters, like STR, AC, or CON. Or perhaps a STA, instead, if you are the sort who is rather unconstitutional. But, for those who do not sneak up upon its contents, it is quite the useful section full of beings that it is good to be educated about.
Under the heading of Hobgoblin, we find a race of sentient humanoids that should be rather fearsome. They are a people who are legendary for their drilled battle prowess and martial upbringings. They are often honorable, though they also tend to be quite selfish and unnecessarily cruel, and they tend to stand in the perfect and rigid postures of a warrior elite.
Jerold Frey, the author, states that “their lean and muscled bodies hold feline-like, angular heads and stern faces. The only outside indicator that they are sentient, living, beings and not some sort of automatons is their tendency to laugh in the face of pain. Unlike many of the humanoids, the hobgoblins are a superbly disciplined bunch whose battles against novice adventurers often, strangely, do not reflect their aptitude in combat.”
***
The hobgoblins spoke their guttural tongue at Yenrab, who translated it.
“They say equal shares for everyone from here on out; keep what’s been grabbed personally and . . .”—Dorduken interrupted Yenrab, speaking some more, and they both grinned in happy approval—“what a godsbeblessed great find!”
I like these guys, Bern thought to his surprise as the rest of the party voiced their jovial approval over the sentiment expressed. A monsterless dungeon full of coins, jewels, and who knows what else, all ripe for the taking? Godsbeblessed indeed.
The mood continued as they picked their packs back up off of the ground, worked out a marching formation, and began the trek deeper into the dungeon. The storm, behind them, lessened to a light patter as they marched forward, almost as if it was blessing their wonderful journey.
But, of course, such things aren’t meant to last. The wonderfulness of good times is to understand them by the sadness that rolls out when they end.
Dorduken called out, annoyed, from up ahead.
“O kak. Wat is hierdie? Ek sit vas.”
Shuck!
“Fricken. Ek is gesteek. Ek bloei. Speider. Reuse-spin. Vorm rangen. Dood hierdie baastard!”
Despite the powerful night vision possessed by a great deal of the nonhuman sentients, spiders are a truly powerful adversary. Their ability to hide both themselves and the traps that they weave is legendary; they might well be avatars of that stranger trickster god Loki for their powerful deceits. They depress themselves into cracks and crevices well smaller than themselves. And their webs—well, has a more perfect trap ever been devised? The adventurer’s guide warns in its bestiary that to adventurers, whether they be the professional veterans of the hobgoblin armies or else the more individual heroes of the human and demihuman races, they are often an absolute nightmare.
A series of webs tugged this way and that as drafts pushed and pulled them. The hobgoblin soldier named Dorduken, so happy and accepting, had walked into them and was now ensnared. To his credit, though, he struggled little.
“Guys, to battle! Take the initiative!” Yenrab bellowed, rage sweeping through him.
A huge spider, the size of Yenrab, danced through its web with amazing grace. The crunch and gasp that followed was almost poetic in its darkness. Dorduken screamed as venom gummed up his arteries, and his heart pounded in a terrified frenzy.
His companion, Aronak, screamed in anger.
“Jy sal gewreek word!”
Silent tears washed down his reddened cheeks. He slashed his longsword ahead with decades of martial experience. The tip of the blade found its target, tearing a hole into the monster’s side as it tried to pull Dorduken back into some unknown recess.
Yenrab howled in rage and fury. Reaching back behind him, he grabbed two battle axes out of the back holsters. Fiery instinct guided him well as he threw them with ferocious accuracy into the meat of the insectile beast.
Bloody hell, Bern thought as he stepped back into the shadows, cloaking himself from sight. That was bloody quick.
His short bow at the ready, the human stretched his bowstring taut and fired. The arrow was silent in its trajectory and struck with a muted squelch. He gave himself a humorless smile as he locked that shot into muscle memory, and let the rest fly the same route.
The spider was bleeding from numerous wounds, and it tried to scurry backward. Carric blasted it with a torrent of sound from his harmonica, dazing it. Then Tracy seared its ey
es with rays of flame, cast in streams of force from both his hands and eyes.
The web went up in flames, and the spider bubbled and scorched where the intense heat flicked over its insectile hide.
The spider, however, was not yet gone. Animals have a tendency to go into a desperate fury as their life force depletes and steams from their bodies. Spiders, giant or otherwise, are in fact no different in this regard. The hairy behemoth before them, staggering and shaking, dropped its prey and struck out, grabbing up Aronak and tearing him in two. The bloody chunks splattered crimson over Yenrab as he howled again in venomous rage.
The mighty barbarian dived under the spider, its lunge having put it outside of the burning web, and he sliced upward with all of the two-handed might of his great axe. Sticky innards and strange goops plopped out onto him as the thing shuddered and died, its legs beginning to curl up in final supplication to those who had bested it.
As the hairy corpse steamed in the humid air, still twitching a bit here and there with the release of its soul, the muscle-bound hulk turned to the rest, his faced still strained with anger.
“I commend the spirits of our new friends to the Great Bear, patient, wise, and strong, forever hunting in the great forest of eternity,” said the half-orc, emotional at losing these two so quickly after having befriended them. He bowed his head, and Carric followed suit, while Bern and Tracy looked on, not nearly as impacted by this loss.
After having his moment, with the bard at his side, knee next to knee, the two arose.
“Alright, guys. Let’s loot them,” Yenrab proclaimed.
Carric looked surprised and confused.
“What?!” he asked in outrage.
“Friend Carric, we honor our fallen by using all of their parts.”
“What?!” he asked again, his outrage turning to obvious horror as he pictured what was coming next.
“And no, we don’t eat them!” the barbarian said in sudden comprehension. Bern chuckled a bit from the shadows, and Tracy simply moved forward and began to strip the dead.
***
The party finished stripping their allies of usable gear and then stacked them in the corner, Yenrab thanking them for their sacrifice as the dying flames of the terminated web flickered away into nothingness.
How to Be an Adventurer- World of Gimmok Page 11