An immense wasp's nest crashes into the ground beside Doza. Angry insects burst forward in a swarm.
Fortunately, only a few actually manage to get Glug Glug, causing no real harm. The dog barking intensifies as the wasps gradually disperse into the swamp.
Listing to Doza's great wisdom Shortork nods and says.
"Yes, and dis is da Choppa."
Snapping at the buzzing wasps (much like a dog after a fly) He says.
"Spicy. Now THAT sound is DOG."
In an uncharacteristically "smart" move he waits a moment for the insects to leave before heading for the ladder.
As the wasps swarmed around Bull and herself, Doza raised her hands and readied to release an amazing, ocean-sized wave of fire to awash them into oblivion.
The wasps must have sensed this as they immediately dispersed amid the threatening and incredibly powerful Doza.
Doza was very proud of Shortork. Apparently her teaching was working. It was good that the young goblin could learn. Goblins were always good students but sometimes the warriors were less concerned with learning.
"Yes, yes. That is dog. Very good. Come, come. We go kill dog...and not dog, cuz where there is dog, there is not dog."
The main deck of the shipwreck is cluttered with objects both natural and artificial. Thick swaths of leafy vines grow over the deck, and shiny green patches of algae and moss grow where the vines do not. The central cabin's roof has a wide edge, creating a canopied walkway along the ship's sides. A flight of steps up to the roof of the ship's main cabin, the entrance to which is blocked by a door decorated by a large number of rodent and bird skulls. A smoking stovepipe chimney extends up from the ship's highest point above.
Two hulking beasts bark from the ends of chains tied to the masts of the grounded ship. If Vorka or anyone else is guarding Scribbleface's fireworks, these dogs have alerted them to the goblin's presence.
Upon seeing the K9's Shortork's eyes go wide and he shouts.
"Waagh!...DOG!!!...Waagh!
And moves to attack the nearest animal with the Choppa.
Bull climbed up the ramp ladder with ease as Doza sat atop him. Once on the deck of the ship, Doza squeezed her knees together and Bull stopped in place. Doza's left eyebrow arched up and her right eye nearly squinted shut as she stared at the closest dog. She watched as the choppa tore into the shaggy canine as her curse seemed to engulf the mutt.
Shortork hacks the feral, chained beast in half. Lengthwise. The other dog has no change in reaction, it is pulling at the ends of the chain, struggling to eat some goblins.
It meets Doza's gaze for a moment and stops fighting so hard. A tiny whimper comes out in place of a bark.
Glug glug stop running, finally realizing that the wasps have not followed him. Hearing the ruckus going on top of the boat, Glug Glug moves to get better position.
Bigbadaboom reloads his weapon and hastily moves to catch up to the others.
The door to the foreward cabin bursts open. A particularly ugly goblin dog rushes around the corner and lunges at Shortork's throat.
Meanwhile, an extremely old goblin woman wearing a pointy hat cackles and rushes to the aft mast with a key in her hand. "Feeding time my pretty, pretty pets!"
Just barely avoiding the beast's fangs, Shortork decides to return the favor. He bites back at the Goblin Dog. then steps back and slashes with the Choppa.
With a click of her heels, Doza spurs Bull onward. Luckily Bull is an excellent climber and descends the ladder with ease. Doza's shifts her voodoo eye from the dog to the newly emerged goblin with the nice hat.
"Nice hat. Gimme, or feel the waagh, and the choppa, mostly the choppa, but a little waagh too."
Shortork snaps out of his daydream of victory over the Dog and looks up at the creature from flat on his back.
He does however attempts to bite the creature from the prone position.
Vorka's dog, Cuddles, yelps in pain and surprise as Shortork sinks his teeth into a very delicate area.
"Oh, look, you've brought me a new pet!" she exclaims as she meets Doza's steely gaze with her crazy eyes. Vorka glances to the goat. "You will be so happy here! I feed my pets the best goblins!" She cackles again.
Glug Glug begins to attach an alchemist fire to his crossbow bolt,
while giggling at the thought what it could do to the old goblin lady in the pointed hat. Using his patented "peak a boo" attack he step out from behind Doza and Bull and fires the loaded crossbow at the witch.
Huffing his way up the ladder one-handed, Bigbadaboom comes around the fore cabin wondering what all the hubbub is about. He hiccups suddenly as the dog on the chain lunges his way and fires in a panic and sending pellets and debris everywhere but at the dog.
Glug Glug's bolt goes wide, exploding behind the witch and backlighting her as she cackles and unlocks the chain holding one of the dogs back. She then looks at Bull and chants in a strange language. Her crazy eyes seem to swirl as she casts a spell.
The hungry mongrel lunges at Bigbadaboom. It's chain rattles across the rotten deck of the shipwreck, but luckily for BBB, it fails to sink it's teeth into him.
Cuddles likewise snaps at the goblin gunslinger.
Unlike the other dog, the goblin dog tears a chunk out of BBB.
Getting quickly to his feet Shortork swings the Choppa at the now hated Goblin Dog.
"Waagh!"
Bull continued onward at Doza's urging. Unaccustomed to the terrain, he moved slowly, picking his steps carefully. None of this really registered to Doza, who sat happily on his back and continued to glare at this goblin with the nice hat.
Glug Glug walk his way closer to the witch, angry that he didn't get to see a boom boom last round, he begins to mix his chemcials until they begin churn and boil. He rears back and hurls the bomb to the witch and watches as it explodes, making Glug Glug smile from ear to ear.
Bigbadaboom pulls his dogslicer free. "Time to um...do...um...something to these dogs with dis dogslicer!"
Sadly he wastes too much time trying to come up with something witty about dogs and dog slicers and misses a good chance to strike one of the two animals.
"I really don't like playing with my food! It makes it all gamey and tough!" Vorka quips moments before Shortork delivers a devastating wound to Cuddles and Glug Glug's bomb hits her in the face. She screams in pain and scurries up the mast somehow without any effort. Twenty feet from the ship's deck she chants a spell and a bright fire springs up in her palm. She throws the flame at Glug Glug in retaliation.
The dog in front of Bigbadaboom tears into the goblin gunslinger with it's teeth and Cuddles lunges at Shortork's face, spilling blood all over the deck.
Ignoring the puncture wounds to his head, (non-vital organ and all) Shortork returns the favor by biting at Cuddles then stepping back and swinging the Choppa.
Shortork tears out Cuddles' throat, blood flows down to the slick deck and Vorka looks...proud. She cackles as her favorite pet bleeds to death.
Doza grabbed one of Bull's horns and spun him around, sending him back up the ladder and over towards the dogs. As much as she wanted the goblin's hat, she wanted the blasted dogs dead more. As soon as Bull crested the front deck, Doza unleashed a blast of fire that engulfed both of the evil canines.
The remaining dog, wary of the death of the pack alpha, leaps over Doza's fan of flames, singing the fur on it's belly.
Glug Glug starts to taunt the witch as he stares at the fire fly harmlessly over his head. He then grabs one of his extracts and chugs it down, burping loudly. He begins to take cover behind one of the masts hoping not get hit by any other fire she might throw his way.
Not to be out done by the dog's amazing feat of athleticism, Bigbadaboom shouts, "I better jumper than you is!"
He soars five feet high in the sky and swings down on the dog with the all his effort.
The last dog falls and Vorka cackles again. She takes a potion bottle from her robe and pops it open when the her balck, rotten teeth.
"You have been blessed by Momma! Such wonderful teeth! We should not fight, be friends! Think of the wonderful people we could eat. Imagine how good Chief Gutwad must taste! We can go home together and cook them all!"
"Give hat, got deal" Doza said, barely able to stifle a giggle.
Still confused by the Rage and just in general Shortork only hears and retains a few of the words spoken by others. So as usual he just acts.
"Teeth eat, Choppa chop, Get Gutwad worky fire things. Hat for Doza. Waagh!"
Then charges Vorka
He charges the mast and begins chopping. (I did say he was confused)
"My hat? MY HAT?! NO!" She screams down to Doza then shudders as Shortork hacks a large chunk out of the mast.
"Hold Hold Hold," Glug Glug says to Shortork. "Me have idea." Glug Glug pulls out the container of tar he has been anxious to use and smothers it all over the mast and then gets his tingertwig out and strikes it before he places it into the tar in an attempt to set it on fire. "Now she witch burn or she give Doza hat!" Glug Glug stares at the miraculous fire he has just created.
Bigbadaboom reloads his weapon and aims to shoot Vorka off the mast.
He overshoots, sending splinters everywhere.
A fire quickly spreads up the mast from Glug Glug's ingenious plan. It also spreads down the mast, though not as quickly or as noticably just yet. Vorka finally appears worried and screams out, "Okay hat! Thick black smoke begins to billow from the tar and Vorka is obscured from view entirely.
Snapping out of his fury as Glug Glug sets the mast alight, Shortork sinks to deck to rest. He watches the flames and thinks of how good the soon to be smoked meat will be. His mouth hangs open and he begins to drool. You be surprised just how much drool is produced by a mouth as large as Shortorks. As he leans closer to get a whiff of the impending meal the prodigious quantity of saliva begins to sputter and hiss in fire.
"I'm waiting...Gimme hat" Doza said calmly as she nudged Bull closer to Shortork. Reaching down, she squeezed Shortork's shoulder, coming away with her hand covered in blood.
"And you, you stop bleeding on me."
Glug Glug stares gleefully at the fire he has created, the grandest smile on his face. He quickly starts to day dream of fire twirling around, little fire sprites doing a coordinated dance spawning many little fire sprites along the way. The little sprites then begin congeal and to take the form of the great Chief turn a spigot with a Gobo roasting on it, all the while shooting it with various fireworks. His grand smile quickly fades as he realizes it is him on the spigot.
Glug Glug snaps out of his day dream, remembering why he was here, he remembered the fire works. Now the ship ablaze, he knows he must find the fireworks or it is his ass. In a panic he quickly runs around the ship looking for a way to get to the lower levels and save the pretty boom booms from exploding.
Glug Glug scurries about and finally jumps through the door Vorka emerged from. The room is covered in feces from the goblin dog as well as bones and rotten meat. Some of the meat is goblin. A set of rotted stairs leads below decks.
Meanwhile, the goblin shotgunner realoads his weapon and recovers his gear, totally oblivious to the flames raging just a few feet away.
From the smoke above comes Vorka's singed, pointy black hat.
The flames spread quickly, threatening to give everyone a vicious hot-foot.
The lethargic Shortork watches the hat drift down and hears the commotion on the other side of the ship. Looking at the Choppa he says.
"Choppa we go get hat for Doza. Besides butt getting hot."
He calls out. "Hey Glug Glug you only supposed to roast hat lady not whole water house."
Then he slowly rises and heads in the direction of the noise.
With a kick of her heels, Doza was directing Bull over to where the witch's hat was floating down through the air. She paid no attention to the deathtrap that was tightening all around them. She was transfixed on the hat. It was such a nice hat, it had to be some powerful artifact. She just knew it.
Shortork can see rustling leaves and a quick flash of green as Vorka, still smoking from where her cloak got burned, disappears into the woods.
Glug Glug frantically hurries down the stairs in hopes of finding the fireworks.
Bigbadaboom stares at the fire and immediately puts two and two together. "Fire!" He points and tugs on Shortork's arm before feeling the heat beneath his feet. He turns and flees back to the front of the ship.
Glug Glug picks through fur, gore, and more in pursuit of the fireworks. A burning timber nearly crushes him as it falls from the ceiling, but it also knocks some of Vorka's junk aside revealing a pile of colorfully decorated fireworks amid a bunch of other old longshanks things. Glug Glug just manages to grab a huge armful of fireworks along with heart-shaped crystal vial filled with a pink liquid that caught his attention before one particularly large and dangerous looking pyrotechnic device's fuse is caught by the flames and sparks up. The flames flare up between Glug Glug and any other fireworks, fed by a stack of loose rice paper sheets that float about in the air currents created by the intense fire.
Looking about at the burning boat and still a little slow from the fatigue, Shortork says.
"Glug Glug you over-cooked water house. Doza Hat-woman go that way." Pointing wobbly off the side of the boat."Choppa and me will get her."
He moves to the railing and prepares to climb down when he steps on a particularly hot section of the deck. Hopping from foot to foot he suddenly finds he has jumped over the rail and is falling.
Shortork lands softly in the mud, correctly choosing to land on a part of his body he doesn't use often. After extracting his head from the mud he sees the ship behind him turning into the biggest goblin bonfire of all time, but Vorka is nowhere to be found.
Stuffing all he got into his sack, Glug Glug takes one more quick look to see if there is anything else he can get before he gets out of there. If nothing, then he recreates the generic action scene, the one with the people running from the burning building right before it explodes.
Doza was barely listening as the others talked of fire and the witch. She was too focused on the hat. Luckily for her, Bull had his own survival instincts that took over. As as soon as the hat was secured, Bull turned and ran back to the front of the boat and back down the ramp not really caring if Doza managed to hold on.
Fortunately Doza was a very accomplished rider...and the caked on hardened blood and mud helped too.