I write this at the behest of the Bloody Steward we found in a locked chamber underneath the House of Rituals, some ancient ghost or magical construct - its true nature I cannot discern, only that it is hungry for knowledge, and is willing to part with much in return. Knowledge that will reveal to me the path to great power.
We awoke to darkness, crushing pressure, and a miasmatic stink that filled our senses. All we could do was writhe, like worms in the filth, struggling for breath, until finally we found the surface - a charnel pit of corpses much like ourselves. We were as children born anew, but born not in soft innocence but in bodies that were healthy, strong, and sharp as knives. We were instantly curious and emerged blinking into a world new and filled with dangers we were yet ignorant of.
At first, we were drunk with the thrill of discovery, forging ahead in every direction, finding islands that floated in the air like clouds and a tree tall enough to touch them, and ants the size of mastiffs. Industrious, as if by instinct, we clothed ourselves in armour of treebark and armed ourselves with cudgels of stone and branch. Content, we slept in the branches of a tall tree. And then we awoke again in darkness.
Every day that passed, we died and were reborn again. It seemed we were crudely immortal, at least until the pit ran dry - what would happen then, we could not say and still cannot, so vast is the pile of corpses.
The next day, we followed faerie lights into the swamp, where colossal stag beetles clashed in some instinctual rite. Pensively, we left them engaged in their battle and crept past. The lights led us to a marvellous pool that shimmered with rainbow light. Two of our number decided to bathe in it, and while the experience was wonderful, both found themselves unwilling to leave and peacefully died. One of us, who named himself Krudge, awoke changed in some subtle way. His eyes glittered with some strange inner light, and his hearing was sharper than ever, though his ears were outwardly unchanged.
This change, whatever it was, did not help him, however, when we found a strange dedicatory pillar with an offering bowl at its base. Krudge, his greed consuming him, took the offering bowl for the small pile of gold it contained and was immediately struck dead. For the next whole day, he felt a sense of doom, but nothing further transpired. Meanwhile, another of our number, Blurk, found a phial of purple goo while exploring and as is the custom when encountering strange fluids in the wilderness, immediately drank it down. He has suffered persistent headaches ever since.
The next day, the sky rained hot ashes. Taking this as a portent of doom, we were filled with urgency and decided to split up into two groups to explore the forest faster. Krudge's group encountered a tree that grew black fruit. Upon eating but a single bite of it, his feelings of impending doom were justified as his body instantly collapsed into fine ash. We had discovered another danger, and a potential weapon, and were glad for it. The mountains beyond the grove of black fruit were described by those who saw it as "sick" in some fundamental way. Everything was diseased, leprous, and drained in some way, even the very stone itself. But there we met the first friendly face we had ever seen, another goblin, and a female to boot! Though, admittedly, one of the most slovenly and failsome mien.
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| Rinny, Priestess of the Great Lady |
She dwelled in a shrine of some god unknown to us. One of our number, Grick, had taken it upon himself to tend to the shrine, for it was overgrown with mildew. This amused the gobliness, Rinny, who renamed him Brick, deciding it sounded better. Brick conceded it did, and in return for obsequiously permitting a female he had known for less than ten minutes to change the very lynchpin of his being, he was bestowed with her pet rat, which granted him the repulsive and verminous powers of her goddess, the "Great Lady". Rinny also told us of an acquaintance of hers, a witch, who lived to the east, and recommended we see her.
To the north, we found a road, and were immediately cut down by the swift blades of red-skinned soldiers. On our next, more furtive, return, we found an overturned cart by the side of the road, beneath which we found an excellent boon - a pair of bangles in the form of simian paws that granted the wearer superior deftness of hand and foot in climbing. Emboldened by the discovery of this treasure, we followed the road to, we hoped, further riches. What we found was far stranger, yet had as great an impact - the beheaded statue of some ancient monarch, grand and distinguished in raiment, and despite the defacement still unmistakably goblin. We were a rootless people then, wandering among the ashes of a greater history, but for the first time, we understood the magnitude of what was lost. The bile rose in our gullets to know what has been taken from us.
The next few days were a riot of activity. We made weapons and armour - crude things of stick and stone, but at least we would be able to put up a fight - and set off in different directions, our knowledge of the surrounding world spreading like fungal cilia probing their environment. A multitude of deadly wonders surrounded us; flies the size of melons that moved so swiftly the eye could not follow, beetles as tall as trees, creatures that merged the features of beast and bird, or like cats that flowed like liquid, we found a dead red warrior like those who cut us down on the road and held steel for the first time. We tossed his corpse into the charnel pit, to add his strength to our own. One of our number found a shirt of iron links, rusted but still usable, and holding it miraculously survived a strike of lightning! We took this as a good omen and hurried back to the house of rituals to stash the shirt before we expired, but by morning, it seemed to have no further miraculous properties.
On the fourteenth day, we found one of the most disturbing discoveries, a village, near intact, habitable even, but devoid of any signs of life. Its only residents, we thought, were bones. Bones of children, exclusively. The village was filled with useful things, though, so we could not ignore it. When we were attacked by a pack of child ghouls, it almost came as a relief to have an answer as to the fate of this place. It was around this time that we made contact with the first full goblin tribe, unfortunately for us, it was the Skumbloods. Blurk was taken captive and beaten bloody without cause by their leader, Raz, who was ignorant of our strange condition and so escaped through transmigration.
Powerful magics fell into our lap. Another group discovered a strange idol in the form of a colossal ruby skull, hundreds of thousands of carats of cut gemstone, that screamed in a voice dripping with fury for us to destroy the shrines of the other gods in return for its power. Not wanting to offend Rinny, we refused. This skull god relented with surprising ease and bestowed its powers on our member Noten with only a vague promise to inflict general destruction. Meanwhile, another of our scouting groups found the home of Rinny's witch acquaintance, who brusquely beckoned one of our kind into her hut, bound him to an imp and bestowed the powers of a magician upon him, claiming to have been paid in advance by an unknown benefactor to do this. Afterwards, we were kicked out of her home and told that we would never find her again. We considered this a great win on all accounts.
The next day, amongst dense mist, we set out for the ghoul village to retrieve our lost treasures, but encountered a travelling coffle of goblin slaves being led by two immense ogres. Not foolish enough to challenge them, and knowing we could not be kept long in bondage anyhow, we submitted to join the coffle, which took us north. Oddly, the goblin slaves seemed to be even more feral than normal, capable only of short, clipped sentences. At some point, the ogres mysteriously decide to cut us free. We were suspicious but fled anyway, only to run into the territory of a black dragon. Only Kludge survived by hiding in the mud. Had the ogres delivered us up to the dragon, perhaps?
In the confusion, though, Kludge stumbled across a treasure - a helmet of make so strange it had to be magical. He hid it before his death, and the next day we returned to recover it and his last body. On our way back, we spied some giant mantises engaged in battle with something we never saw to the west - fortunate, it seems, for one of the mantises was turned to stone by the sight and fell out of the sky.
It was some time after this we found a village of goblins. Civilised and law-abiding, to an unusual degree. Here, Blurk encountered a goblin artificer who offered to teach him the art, requiring only a suitable gemstone and a piece of bark from the top of the tallest tree in the jungle to craft a training tool. What followed as a time of much misadventure, with no less than four rafts being destroyed by crocolisks in our attempts to navigate the river between our home and the village. But, with the aid of the climbing bracelets we were able to accomplish the artificer Garbett's requirements, and with the powers of an artificer Blurk immediately created a talisman to ensorcel his former teacher to his service for one simple reason - he had in his possession a set of irreplaceable thieves tools, which we used to bypass the lock separating us from you, oh Steward.
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| THE BILE RISES |
