by Ryan Rimmel
Chapter 10: Outskirts of the Village at Night
Crossing the barrier was a bit of a concern. The barrier required one living human to populate the village and the current resident was a cursed statue. Technically, he qualified, but that wasn’t a great hope to put the safety of the village on.
The goblins had spent the last day gathering up a patrol of wolf riders. They would run around the village every few hours, sniffing the ground and howling. This complicated my escape plan somewhat.
My plan was to leave the village and see if the barrier remained active. If the barrier failed, there was no reason to stay in the village; it had been picked clean. The safety of the barrier was essentially the only real value to me now.
If when I left the barrier failed, I would get lost deeper in the forest. I doubted the goblins would leave the village almost empty again, and there was a pretty low limit on the number of prepared goblins I could expect to handle.
Everything revolved around the barrier. I would know there was an issue when I tried to cross the border of the village; I’d get a prompt telling me that I had to return to the village or I would lose control. At that point, I’d decided my only option would be to high tail it back to the woods.
In theory, it would take the wolves a few hours to find my tracks. By then, I figured I’d be able to lose myself in the forest. Or at least put so much ground behind me that they’d give up before catching me. I had almost decided to sprint past the border to get just that one bit more of distance before the barrier obviously vanished.
However, none of that was required. I crossed the border and nothing happened. I brought up the town menu and it listed the population as one: Good old Toomen. That man could really occupy a population slot. I was still listed as the mayor, but I wasn’t currently in town. Therefore, he was technically the only one there.
Searching around, I didn’t see any wolves or goblins. They had a patrol that had run around the village consistently, but that was actually a pretty big hike based on where the barrier faded, almost a mile from the center of the village. Given there were less than twenty goblins, they could not adequately patrol over 3 miles of border. If one were being especially stealthy, they could easily make it out of the town unnoticed.
Five sneaky minutes later, we reached the forest. Okay, forest was a strong word, but I had decided that the trees were thick enough at the five minute point to forgo stealth and just walk normally. I surmised that the goblins were not going to be able to see me, no matter what I did. Also, I could see their patrol and it was well past me.
Thirty minutes later, I was following the Quest Marker towards the target. The Quest Marker’s functioning was reasonably interesting. It gave me a sensation towards the target and what I guessed was approximate distance. I was heading towards one of the mountain walls out west that seemed to surround the town.
My Survival skill kept firing off too, directing me towards nearby animals, which I shot at with some success. After the first hour, I had to cut back to only firing at rabbit sized creatures, given that most of my improvised arrows did not survive striking a target. I had several carcasses on me and was sincerely hoping that rabbit meat would be tastier than wolf meat. Now, if I could just find some actual rabbits, because I was fairly certain that what I’d shot so far were not. They reminded me more of a certain electric rodent. By the way, electric rodents are pikadelicious.
I encountered one wolf which was very anticlimactic from my previous attacks. I simply snuck up on it and fired at it from about 50 feet. The arrow caused sneak attack damage, which multiplied the damage of the strike. It died instantly.
Damage, I discovered, was different than in Dungeons and Dragons. There wasn’t a random roll for damage. My bow has a base damage of 1-6. However, with all my bonuses applied to it, that damage skyrocketed to 7-13. The damage seemed primarily based on both where you hit and how direct the shot was. I could do 13 points of damage on every strike vs a stationary target, assuming I could aim well enough. A glancing blow would do less damage, of course, but one tried to avoid those.
So, when I shot the surprised wolf, I did 13 damage. This was reduced by 3 from his defenses to 10. Then, he took additional damage from an unexpected attack, which doubled the damage. He also took additional damage because as a rogue, I could perform a sneak attack. That also doubled the total damage. That meant I did around 40 damage per shot, and the wolf had 20 hit points. It got worse. I could aim for the heart, which increased base damage by 50%, or the brain which doubled damage. Neither was particularly difficult to hit in a sitting wolf at 50 feet.
Another bonus effect of sneak attacks was that if a creature died from the sneak attack, they died silently.
The Quest Marker had been growing steadily closer and at one point had seemingly begun to move. That’s when I came to the brilliant conclusion that it was actually moving. The hostages had to be very close indeed. I began sneaking across a ridge and my Perception skill allowed me to catch a few whispers of goblin speech.
I’d found the section on my character sheet that dealt with languages, and it wasn’t on the skill part. Instead, it was on the proficiency tab, which seemed to be a very abbreviated version of the skill sheet. While languages weren’t all or nothing, they didn’t seem to fall under the typical skill rules for whatever reason.
I was listed as having 28% comprehension of the goblin language, which meant I could sort of understand what they were saying in general terms. I snuck to a spot somewhat near the road where I could clearly hear the goblins. They were not quiet. While they actually had scouts out, they were not wildly effective. I got behind one of the scouts and got within eye site of the goblins.
There were around 30 of the greenskins walking down the path. They were a motley assortment, with a few general trends that could be gathered. The bigger ones tended to be the best armed and equipped. In fact, they seemed to be an entirely sized based culture.
“I tired,” called the first one.
“No care. We go on ahead.”
“Everyone tired. We need rest, here safe.”
“Here no safe. Look at ridge, anyone can attack. Move to gully and there it safe.”
“Okay, we rest at gully?”
A general chorus of assent filled their column.
I watched for another minute and finally saw a human woman and two children. They looked rough and were all starting to become emaciated, despite the fact that they were being forced to carry all the food. Whenever one slowed, the goblins would smack them with their short spears or pound them with their shields until they got up and continued moving. It was obvious that goblins were not nearly as good at carrying heavy loads than humans were, so the humans were being treated like rented mules.
There was simply nothing I could do to save people there. The humans were in the middle of the column and the goblins were scouting nearby. I could possibly have attacked them, but I didn’t think that I’d have done more than trifling damage and the goblins would either defeat me outright or kill a hostage. I needed them to be in a position where I could steal away with the people before the fight started.
After deciding that I would save the woman and her children, I started ranging ahead of them looking for that gully. While I wasn’t sure it would be a better location for a fight, I knew that this situation gave the goblins every advantage. The goblins knew where they were going, but their path was somewhat predictable. Maneuvering in front of them, I used my Tracking skill to follow the very old tracks on the obvious path as quickly as I could. I found the gully easily enough. It was only about 30 or so minutes for me, but it would take them longer with their packs and prisoners.
The gully was a good defensive spot, if nothing else. Only two sides were accessible, and those both under cover with good choke points. The top of the gully was overgrown by some sort of stinking roots, so that the gully was all but enclosed. My Stealth skill allowed me to recognize that sneaking around in those roots was a sure way to
reveal my position. At either entrance of the gully, there were rudely constructed earthen walls. These looked reasonably sturdy for the most part and, of course, they went almost up to the roots. However, they were not well made. After some more searching, I found a point where the wall was thinned out and plastered over, so I smashed a hole through it. While I didn’t have a plan yet, I figured having an easier way in and out wouldn’t hurt. And if the goblins were serious enough to repair the hole, which would have involved using mud I suspected, then that would tell me something as well.
On the other side of the gully, the pathway continued further into the valley. Older tracks covered it liberally; I conjectured that this was where they would be going next. The path went through some marshy ground littered with trees and other obstructions. It was also full of frogs and other reptiles, which were anything but quiet. Thankfully, none of them seemed to care one whit about my sudden appearance among them.
My plan came together quickly enough. I would trap the hell out of this path and sneak in to get the prisoners. Afterwards, I’d escape through my own field of traps and then break out into the forest on a trek south back to the village. I had many hours of darkness to cloak me, but best not to put it off. It was time to Kevin McCallister place up.
It was almost morning before my plan was ready to go. My traps were set. My path was clear. My hidey hole was sized for 4 people. Now all that was left was to sneak in and save the people from the armed camp. Easy peasy. It had taken much longer to get setup than I’d anticipated because I’d had to ensure that the goblin guards hadn’t seen me. Fortunately, they seemed… less than focused in their defensive precautions.
Okay, one of them had fallen asleep. The other was doing something I hoped was dicing, and also, he had a stomach ache. I did not care for goblins.
The most challenging bit was actually screwing up enough courage to actually go through with it. In the abstract, it was stealing from a bunch of goblins. In reality, I was attacking a heavily fortified goblin camp with no backup. They looked like the kind of critters who tortured people who tried to steal from them.
I don’t have to do this, I thought, as the scope of my endeavor hit. I was planning on entering an armed camp of monsters and stealing their prizes. If they caught me, they would kill me.
“Second guessing yourself,” stated Shart.
“Yes,” I whispered slowly. I was a coward and a fool. This was suicide.
“That’s the smart part of your brain talking, and I must say, I am shocked. Up until this point, I was unaware you possessed a brain, let alone a smart part,” Shart smart assed. I growled as he continued. “You can just leave them. The woman will be killed quickly anyway.”
“Yes,” I replied, tasting the word. They didn’t know I was here; I should just go, “What about the kids?”
“Not so good for them,” replied Shart, “Best not think about that.”
I froze for a long moment, sucking in air, feeling the weight of the world on my shoulders. Who was I to even attempt this? I was just a simple guy from Ohio. I’d never signed up for this.
But neither had they. They were just people in a bad spot and they needed a hero to save them. I wasn’t sure what a hero even was anymore, but I decided I knew what I wanted one to be. I’d already died once. I could die again if it saved some kids.
I bravely snuck over towards the goblins.
The gully’s southern wall contained an entrance where I expected them to leave from tomorrow morning. There were two guards again, now that one had woken up from his nap. The hole I had knocked in the side when I went through earlier had not been patched. I snuck over. I could see the small eyeball in the corner of my vision showing if I was hidden or not and it flickered several times as the guards looked this way and that. Ultimately, it was a contest of my Stealth skill vs their Perception skill in the dark night as I crept through anything, I thought might give me a bit more cover.
The eye remained closed; I made it to the wall. Soon I was under the hole I had bashed through the wall, trying to avoid stepping on the crumbling pieces of earth that were scattered about. On this side, it was quite a bit higher up so I hunched down and launched myself towards it. I only made it most of the way and had to scramble up the rocks for the last several inches. Mental note, invest in some jumping skill.
A Note has been added, Invest in some jumping skill
You have discovered Jumping, but are unpracticed at it
Every little thing, I thought.
Looking through the hole into the camp, my less than silent approach hadn’t actually attracted any guards. I then lowered myself down into the camp. It was dark, with a single large fire in the middle of the camp, casting poor illumination throughout the gully. The light reflected weakly off the earth and stone walls.
There was a cluster of tents in a rough circle around the large fire. The tents were assembled poorly, either due to the goblin’s laziness or because the cover provided by the gully made a more serious effort unnecessary. Additionally, there were several outlying tents that were also dimly visible outside the ring of light. The remainder of the gully was dark despite the fire; there was simply too much volume for one poorly tended fire to cover. There were no clear paths to any of the tents and the goblins that were still visible were either watching the main entrances or wandering about aimlessly.
That left me stalking through the darkness and trying to avoid the random goblins. I leapt down from my perch at the hole and began to do just that. After a minute, I ran into my first goblin, but luckily, he did not notice me. He moved further into the darkness, and finally stopped 3 paces from me and sighed audibly. He then flipped open his loincloth. As he began to relieve himself, I slit his throat from behind and pushed his body further down into the shadows. I waited a minute and another goblin came out. He looked around for a moment, sniffing loudly. He also stopped to relieve himself. I killed him and hid his body as well.
I ended up doing that 4 more times before the supply ran out. I’m not going to kid, I wasn’t exactly thrilled with the situation, but a kill is a kill I supposed. Each goblin reeked of beer. My heroic self had been killing drunk creatures that were the size of 10 year olds. I was going to keep that part of the story to myself.
With no more easy victims, I began creeping through the darkness in search of the human prisoners. With my heightened senses, it wasn’t hard to find them; the smell of human was different enough that, when I got within 10 yards of them, I knew right where they were in a camp full of goblins.
The hostages were in a large tent that had been thrown together to the side of the main camp. Their tent was being guarded, at its entrance, by a single goblin that had become visible as I moved further into their camp. He was glumly standing at what passed for attention for his people. I looked at my interface and checked the stealth icon - eye closed - and noticed that somehow, I still hadn’t been observed.
Sneaking closer towards him, I saw the icon start to open, so I backed away. Twice more, I tried to sneak right past the bored guard until I realized that there was no way to sneak right past a guard if they were conscious. As I reflected on that, I thought I saw the icon flick open for a moment, but it was just my imagination.
As I moved behind the tent to ruminate, I discovered the crude dwelling was made of fabric. I had all these knives. Groaning inwardly, I cut a slit into the tent, being mindful to keep any light from splashing out of it. Fortunately, the tent was dark inside; the only light coming from the fire through the open tent flap.
Inside the tent, I saw a woman and two smaller figures. I assumed that they were a mother and her children. They looked haggard. The woman had multiple bruises. None of the three looked like they’d had a good meal in some time, but they were not so malnourished that they couldn’t move. So, the goblins didn’t have to carry them to wherever they were going, I suspected. Further examination and the awkward way they were all laying told me they were all tied up.
The light on the
woman’s face showed that she would have been pretty in better times. A beauty that had been faded by years or terrible circumstances. I suspected the goblins qualified as worse circumstances than most.
Crawling through the slit, I snuck behind the goblin guard and quietly knifed him in the back. He made a slight exhaling noise before collapsing and I sat him down just inside the door to the tent. He almost looked like he was sleeping and I hoped that no one would pay attention to him for at least a few minutes but sneaking out that many people from the tent would have been tricky with him alive.
Moving quietly, I knelt next to the woman, put my hand over her mouth and shook her arm. That didn’t feel quite right but there weren’t any better options. Her eyes shot open immediately. Her eyes filled with terror, but she did not scream or try to bite me. I took my free hand up to my lips and made what I hoped was the universal “be quiet” gesture. She didn’t seem to understand for a moment, but from her angle she could see the slit in the back of the tent. Then, comprehension filled her eyes.
“I’m going to get you out of here,” I whispered.
“Who are you?” she asked. Given that we were in the middle of a goblin camp, that seemed reasonable.
“I’m Jim.”
She waited a moment, “Just Jim? Did your parents forget to finish naming you?”
“No, it’s just Jim,” I stated, “Do you want out or not?”
“Yes,” she stated, “I’m AvaSophia. These are my children.”
“Good to know,” I responded, looking back through the tent flap as I thought my stealth icon opened again.
“I won’t leave my children,” she said with a savagery that I wouldn’t have expected, forcing me to turn to face her again.
“I wasn’t planning on leaving them, either,” I replied and she relaxed slightly. I began cutting her ropes. The knots were well tied and the rope itself was tough. It took me several moments before I managed to get the bonds severed; she pulled her hands to her chest rubbing her wrists.