Seeing the woman wield a rock as a weapon, Doza looked at her favored weapon, rock smacker. She looked back at the woman and snarled. This was her nemesis. An ancient foe summoned from the depths of the heavens to stand between her and what's hers. She wielded rocks, she used painted words, and she talked to some kind of horse-like beast. This woman had to die.
Doze stepped close to Shortork and yelled at the Choppa "Sick'em" as she briefly touched Shortork, gifting him with immeasurable power and luck!
"Waaga!"
Shortork bellows with rage and more than a little stupidity, as he leaps forward with the intent to bring the mighty Choppa down upon the the horse-thing (not that he has ever actually seen a horse) but the choppa will know.
Seeing the most drink Glug Glug has ever seen, he is overwhelmed by all the potions and such on the wagon. Wide eyed and completely ignoring . . well everything, Glug Glug attempts to climb inside the wagon. Virtually a kid in a candy store, he will try to grab anything and everything he can reach and drink it.
The mule bucks and brays in pain and fear as Shortork opens a massive gash in it's flank. The wagon rocks slightly out of the mud as the mule struggles.
Maggie's eyes go wide with fear and she drops the rocks in her hands to grab a small vial from the pouch at her waist. She throws the vial hard at Shortork. "Get away from Braya you freak!"
Maggie throws a little too close, causing her bomb to singe her and Braya, but also splashing Shortork.
Surprised by the stinging flames Shortork shouts.
"Waagh! Look the Mighty Choppa make fire. Kill and cook at once!"
He steps forward and swings at Maggie
"Come rock smacker. We will crush skulls" Doza whispered to her club as she crept forward. She swung the club at the woman, but realized her folly too late. This woman was not a rock, and so rock smacker would not touch her. Looking up at the woman, Doza gulped nervously, shrugged her shoulders, and laughed meekly.
Giggling and Giddy, Glug Glug begins grab the closest potion and drinks it. Then grabs another and another, loading up his kettle with all the potions and vials it can hold, even stuffing them down his pants.
Bigbadaboom is fascinated by the explosion but frightened of the massive quadruped near him. He stabs with his dogslicer at the mule's throat, puncturing it and spraying hot blood everywhere. The beast chokes and collapses in the mud as Bigbadaboom licks his blade.
Glug Glug swallows a whole bottle of Magical Maggie's Miracle Medicine, which tastes like peppermint, seawater, and licorice. He belches, feeling a warm fire in his belly.
Maggie carefully dodges Doza and Shortork's attacks, backing up and withdrawing a vial from her belt pouch. She shakes it and pops a wax cap off the top before quaffing the contents. A shimmering field of energy briefly surrounds her body. "I will get to my friend's wedding, and after the reception, they and their Sczarni friends are going to come and exterminate your tribe!" she screams as Braya begins bleeding to death.
Stepping back, Doza yelled at Shortork. "Not the goat! Kill the human!"
Using the traditional goblin blessing, she smacked him across the back of the head, her glowing hand imparting more wisdom than Shortork was accustomed to.
The goblin blessing snaps Shortork out of his contemplation of the Choppa. Shaking his head and blinking he sets his sights on the Magik Woman, advances and says.
"Choppa Kil...Where goat? no see goat. Now me hungry...Oh yeah, Waagh!"
Glug Glug, unable to control himself starts giggling with joy. He looks for the most biggest, most beauitful and colorful potions he can find. As well as many kits he can get his hands on, more items and easier to carry.
Bigbadaboom giggles and zips past the woman, doing unnecessary tumbling and cartwheeling to get behind her.
Once he gets behind the woman, he begins to sing his song and slashes at her tendons with the dogslicer.
Her magical defenses are not enough to fully protect her from being surrounded, and he opens up a nasty gash on her calf.
Glug Glug finds the five easily reached potion bottles to be interesting, but when he sees a big round-bottomed Erlenmeyer flask, he digs deeper in the wagon. A rough case holding glassware and ceramics, tiny burner devices, and wooden racks sits on top of a loose board on the wagon's bottom. Beneath it is a bright white branch with a snake skin wrapped around one end and two potion bottles. One is a green the color of the frogs the Toadlick tribe favors, the other is a bright orange with red and black streaks. It almost looks like it is burning in the bottle.
Maggie steps back and pulls something from behind her back. It looks like a plank of wood with a metal pipe attached. The end of the pipe has a bell-like flange. She points the device at Shortork and Doza. "Say goodnight, you bastards!" A loud crack and massive puff of smoke fills the swamp, along with dozens of tiny shards of lead and rock.
With a shrug Doza said "goodnight you bastards!" She was starting to get confused as to why almost everyone that they were fighting thought a sound battle strategy would be to issue orders to the enemy. It just didn't seem to make sense to Doza. It confused her. Just thinking about it made her head hurt. So she screamed as loud as she could "I MAKE YOUR HEAD HURT FOR MAKING MY HEAD HURT!"
Between her attack missing both targets at close range, Bigbadaboom's singing, and Doza's outburst, the half-elf woman pales and shakes.
"No get smoke on Choppa! Waagh!"
Screams Shortork as he leaps forward intending to sink his teeth into Maggie
Despite the fact that Maggie has no hand-to-hand weapons to take advantage of Bigbadaboom's movements to cut her off from backing away easily and keep her surrounded, he dodges and weaves and ducks around randomly.
Instead of attacking Maggie, however, Bigbadaboom is interested in the various explosives the woman appears to be carrying and tries to swipe a bottle from her bag.
"Ugh! Keep your grubby little snot-covered hands off me!" Maggie screams in a shrill voice as she snatches her satchel away from Bigbadaboom. The goblins can smell her fear and her eyes dart around, seeking an escape route.
Glug Glug, unable to make a choose from all theses gifts puts the stick the only place he can thing of, between his teeth. Grabs the case as it looks way too interesting not to get and needed the new drink he found, he sticks the green and orange potion the only place he can think of, down his pants. He then starts to make his way back out to show off his new drink, completely forgetting that there was a fight going on outside.
Maggie's hands and legs shake as she backs up and pulls a stick-like object from her satchel. She grabs one end by a small tag and yanks it before dropping it on the ground. A cloud of bright purple smoke begins to fill the swamp. "Don't like smoke, huh, you little vomit stains?"
Steppings back from the smoke to stand beside Doza. Shortork is not sure why but recently being near Doza makes him feel empowered. He is sure the Choppa likes her. A whiff of smoke brings him back to the task at hand. Narrowing his eyes he swings at the smoke obscured woman with a shout.
"Stop tricks and die!"
Seeing an opportunity to flee for her life, Doza quietly moves away, taking full advantage of the fog. Unfortunately her sense of direction leads her in a circle and she ends up on the other side of Maggie.
Shortork's blade cuts deep into Magical Maggie's midsection. The woman drops to the ground, bleeding profusely. With her last breath she chokes out a single word: "Louisa..."
A piece of shiny paper in her belt immediately draws the goblin's attention once the smoke clears. It looks to be covered with gold, however, upon closer inspection, the gold forms into words!
Clearly this...thing...must be studied by the real power houses in the tribe.
Bigbadaboom snatches up the blunderbuss, feeling an instant bond with the device. He then grabs the jester's cap and stares with awe at Shortork. He steps forward and presents the cap to him as though it were a crown. "You kill gud," he says, as a means of explanation.
Ignoring the looting of the others Shortork first moves to look at the deceased mule. He stands for a moment and looks at the Choppa then back to the mule and says to the weapon.
"You and me make much eats for tribe."
He makes his way over to woman's corpse, pausing only to prod at the bag of confetti with the choppa. Tilting his head to the side he shrugs and moves to Maggie's body. He pokes it several times with the Choppa nods approvingly and again speaks to the Choppa.
"We kill Humie's it is good. We can eat this too."
Bigbadaboom's words draw his attention from the conversation with the Choppa. He accepts the hat smiles and and rubs it on the Choppa's blade, soaking up some remaining blood. Putting the bloody but otherwise festive hat upon his head he says.
"Bring the foods Choppa and me must show Tribe. Oh! and my hat is better than Kettlehead's"
Shoving her nose right into the middle of everything, Doza begins sniffing around, not really sure what she was looking for or what she was doing. She gathered all of the sticks and shoved them into her quiver-turned-golfbag followed by the hollowed out stick . Next she found the colored drawing and was mesmerized by it. She found that she could relate to the expression of love on a deeper level. Doza loved to eat human children too, or so she thought. They certainly looked delicious.
She rolled the paper up and shoved it too into the quiver. Then she began picking up all of the stones the woman had thrown at them. Silly human didn't know that all goblins were stone-talkers. It just so happened that in Doza's case, the stones talked back.
The whelps, excuse me, noble goblins of the Licktoad Tribe arrive back at the Licktoad's village to cheers from the other goblins, who are eager to try the tasty food brought back, and instantly begin to attempt to look at, touch, taste, and trade all the various interesting trinkets they returned with.
Laptop the Whelp Wrangler eventually pushes his way through the crowd. "Pssht! You?! Didn’t think you would be first back from the bog. Didn’t think you’d be back at all! Brinestump be dangerous today! Slorb saw a stranger on the road this morning, a pointy elfy one with a sparkly hat and a bright wagon and a funny horse. Get you stabby stuff—we’re off to find her and give her a good Licktoad welcome!”
Shortork steps forward raises the choppa above his head and loudly says.
"No need. Skinny woman and horse-thing been welcomed. By Sortork and the Mighty Choppa Bunch. Much eats, much shiny things we gots. We Licktoads now!...Waagh!"
Laptop is stunned by Shortork's words, but looks at the body and calls to the tribe ranger to verify. "You do good...very good," the whelp wrangler says with total honesty as Slorb nods in confirmation. "Where weedy elf wagon? Did she tell yous anything good?"
Surrounded by other goblins, Doza stood silently behind Shortork. She watched and listened at the exchange with Loptop and was glad that Shortork was not smart enough to be intimidated by him. She was emboldened a little at Shortork's proclamation that they were now Licktoads. She hadn't really thought about it, but he was right. They had passed every trial set in front of them and they had done it together. Well, in the same vicinity of each other at least.
Doza pulled out the paper with the accursed golden words and held it up. "Silly dead woman carried this! Words drew the fury of the Choppa! It cut her and her ugly horse to pieces. They were delicious. She say many things. She say ahhhhhhhhh, and argghghghghghg, and even gurglglee and youses is bestest goblins ever, me soo scarred." Well, maybe not that last bit, but Doza was on a roll...or so she thought.
Glug Glug steps to the front and begins to speak. "Elfy lady no match for us and the Mighty Choppa! She give us much shineies, lota eats and this!" He pulls out the green flask that resembles the toad they covet. "We celebrate her def and our victory!"
The tribe can tell that Doza is embellishing some, but they accept her account knowing it is mostly true.
The tribe clamors for Glug Glug's attention when the bottle is produced, with everyone offering their favorite trinkets and doodads.
Loptop takes the paper with the writing in two fingers, as though it were a dripping sack of something unpleasant. He takes it back to the elders to confer and tells the tribe to be ready just in case the words must be dealt with.
After what seems like an eternity the tribe is summoned to the moot house so that His Mighty Girthiness Chief Redwall Gutwad can address everyone. The moot house is stacked high with jars of strange, fuzzy
creatures preserved in pickle brine, and the skinned hides of anything else too large for even the mightiest jar. The chief holds up a single mummified human hand, silencing the goblin horde.
Chief Gutwad leans over and whispers to Slorb, since no mortal goblin can hear the sound of the chief's voice and live. Everyone goes silent as Slorb speaks, "“Our new goblin heroes have returned with horrible, horrible news: A stranger has brought horrible, horrible words into our swamp. Extra-horrible words! Because these words sparkle. Maybe they be magic words. Maybe even worse magic than regular words. The stranger also had a map, and Chief Gutwad knows from looking at the map that this is clearly where the longshanks MAKE their terrible sparkly words! They be planning something bad. But we be goblins! We be the baddest thing! Licktoads will march on longshanks word-makers and smash everything!
“Light the fire! Sharpen blade!
“We be goblins! We make raid!”
The tribe explodes in cheers and song, marching after Slorb and the chief's palanquin.
Caught up in the fervor of the raid talk, Shortork holding the Choppa above his head begins to jump up and down.
"Waagh! Waa..."
His celebration comes to an abrupt end when he notices his feet are off the floor ()
"Look the Choppa make me fly"
Worried Shortork might fly away, Bigbadaboom grabs his feet, causing them both to crash to the ground. Worried, now, that Shortork might be upset he broke his spell, Bigbadaboom rushes off and dodges into the mix of bodies in the marching horde.
As soon as he feels safe, Bigbadaboom fiddles with Magical Maggie's blunderbuss.
The light forest and overgrown field give way to a rundown little farm bustling with activity. Colorful paper and cloth hang from the barn and house, and tables loaded with food and drink are scattered around the yard.
In the center of it all stands a cake that rises nearly two goblins tall and drips with icing and custard. A few slices have already been removed, revealing an interior that looks moist and delicious.
Standing at the edge of the farm with the rest of her kin, Doza stared intently at the various obstacles spread out. She couldn't decide if the big cake thing looked delicious or disgusting, not that she understood what either of those words meant. Her eyes darted back and forth looking for the people. It wasn't often that they just abandoned their gathering before the goblins arrived. Sometimes is happened, but not often. They must have some how known they were coming. She swallowed hard as she heard a "brayyyyy" come from some where outside of her view.
She wasn't sure what it was, but somehow she knew that she wanted one of whatever it was. She darted out into the opening oblivious of the others. They would just have to find their own entertainment. Doza was done beating herself up to entertain them. It was about time to find someone else, or something, to beat up to entertain the tribe. She pulled her orange cloak of non-invisibility tight around her as she moved, taking comfort in the knowledge that only those that could see orange would detect her.
As the tribe gathers in the woods around the farm, a bell rings and a group of people come flooding out of the large house clapping and shouting with joy and throwing rice at two halflings wearing formal clothes.
The celebratory noise turns to screams as the Licktoads crash the party. Goblins run everywhere, chasing guests and animals alike.
Eyes filled with Zeal at the prospect of chopping and biting Shortork is unsure which way to run and scream first. He notices Doza moving toward one of the buildings and decides the Choppa wants him to follow.
Running past Doza, having forgotten he was following her. Shortork sees an oddly shaped structure, He immediately knows the Choppa wants him to capture it.
"Waagh!
Seeing all the drink, Glug Glug goes for the tables, trying to get as much drink possible. In utter heaven Glug Glug lets out the biggest smile. Remembering what they are there for, Glug Glug grabs his last drink and attempts to do what he saw that elfin lady do. (He prepares a bomb)
Bigbadaboom moves to keep his champion covered as he draws his new weapon and grins.
Shortork and BBB find no one and nothing of interest in the gazebo. However, they can both see a pair of halflings wearing really fancy clothing standing back to back in front of the table with the cake and other refreshments.
The female halfling tears the hem of her dress up to her groin while the male loosens his bow tie. Both then assume a fighting stance, despite being unarmed.
Jumping up and down in celebration of capturing the undefended and empty gazebo Shortork notices the haflings near the cake. Knowing that the choppa wants to taste their blood as well as some cake he charges.
Waagh!
It would be very embarrassing for almost anyone else to be slightly too far away from your target after such a display. Shortork however takes in in stride or more likely simply does not notice. He does stab at the halflings menacingly, from well more than the weapons reach.
Continuing her search for source of the braying, Doza stalked around the corner. She reached up to grab the sill beneath the window and pulled herself up to hazard a glance inside.
Doza peeks in the window to see a simple bedroom. Dozens of coats are stacked on the bed and a shape paces in the darkness. When she finally catches sight of the creature, she sees a horrible white-furred beast on four legs! It is making a fierce war-cry that makes Doza's ear twitch. Could it be?
A dog!
Bigbadaboom hurries to keep up with Shortork, knowing he will find the best people to kill.
Glug Glug makes a double move trying to get closer as he knows he can't quite reach yet. Shaking with giddiness he can't help but to let out a small chuckle as to what he hope happens next.