Croaker's blast sets the rageshanks' hair on fire but she remains upright by sheer force of will. The fury of an angry rageshanks is terrifying to behold, and you can see the promise of an extremely unpleasant and very painful death in her eyes.
...
...
...
Then Chompy comes leaping through the air and rips her throat out.
Loot the Bodies!
Barbarian's Kit
Druid's Kit
Monk's Kit
Ranger's Kit
L Bastard Sword
M Heavy Crossbow
S Sickle
Crossbow Bolt x9
Shurikan x10
M Hide Armor
M Studded Leather
S Leather
Tea Set
goodberry x4
Bundle of Sticks from various trees
Wooden Holy Symbol (irori)
Map
Fancy Scroll
EDIT
Creature Harvesting (all require Know(local) 1 rank + Heal DC 15)
Dwarven Beard
Gnomish Nose
Human Heart x2
With the last of the stupid longshanks dead, Croaker heads to the Greenshanks and cuts off a little of what is left of its hair as a trophy for his glorious fighting.
"These longshanks be stupid coming here. Why they so far from Longhsank Tribes?"
Trinn unfolds the fancy scroll, stopping when she sees longshank writing. "Gaah! Words! Nearly ate my brain...eew." She chucks the scroll at Chompy. "Dragon, get rid of rolly paper thing."
She also snags the sickle, clipping it on the opposite side of her knife.
Scrabble rushed out of the brush looking a little dizzy, his nasty looking sword held backwards in his hand. He stopped when he saw all the longshanks unmoving on the ground. "Aww," he sighed, disappointed that the fight was over.
He picked over all the bodies, looking at stuff and making judgmental faces and throwing pretty much everything over his shoulder. Somehow everything he threw managed to end up in roughly the same pile rather than scattered everywhere.
His face lit up when he found the pouch of little metal throwy spike things. "Mine!" he barked, squirreling them away before going back to his search of the bodies.
Dys scoops up one of the berries and pops it in, making a face. "Blech! Not spicy." Then Dys starts digging around punchyshank's head with the tip of the dogslicer, trying to recover the boomstick metal bit. The metal bits were very special and very, very, very hard to find, so Dys won't let this one go to waste in punchyshank brain.
Noticing the tea set, Dys sniffs at it hopefully, but it does not seem to contain any spices, so Dys throws it back on the pile.
Chompy continued to chew on the Rageshanks neck for a small bit till he looked up in confusion and surprise in time to be hit in the face with a scroll.
He snorts and looks mildly irritated before he opens it out of curiosity. He scrunches his nose and squints his eyes as he slowly makes out the words.
He shakes his head and starts over, saying the words out loud in Goblin his "native tongue" "Be it so known that the bearer of this charter has been charged by the Swordlords of Restov, acting upon the greater good and authority vested within them by the office of the Regent of the Dragonscale Throne, has granted the right of exploration and travel within the wilderness region known as the Greenbelt. Exploration should be limited to an area no further than thirty-six miles east and west and sixty miles south of Oleg’s Trading Post. The carrier of this charter should also strive against banditry and other unlawful behavior to be encountered. The punishment for unrepentant banditry remains, as always, execution by sword or rope. So witnessed on this 24th day of Calistril, under watchful eye of the Lordship of Restov and authority granted by Lord Noleski Surtova, current Regent of the Dragonscale Throne." he says, slowly and every now and then having to go back and sound out a hard word.
He looks at the others and shrugs "Strange longshanks words, does this mean if we have scroll we don't have to worry about Longshanks?" he asked the others confused.
Trinn shakes her head in amazement as Chompy reads, marvelling at the dragon's ability to look at longshank words without having his own words sucked out of his head. She pauses to ponder the scroll. "Maybe...but it says stuff about bandits? And uhh..."she kicks one of the corpses absently. think we might fall into that category. Guess we pretend the scroll be ours?
Don't wanna get excuted."
Dys snorts. "Like longshanks care 'bout piece ah dead skin. An' we're not bandits, we're awesome. Wut do we care 'bout longshanks laws? We be goblins. We live 'ere now. If'n dey don't like it, we kill dem."
Dys then turns to Chompy. "Dragonscale Throne? Family o' yers?"
Chompy shakes head "Chompy assume not, Longshanks like loud words like Dragon and Mountain." he said looking at the others. "Chompy can burn, but tribe might keep?" he said lightly clicking his teeth together to produce mild sparks.
Scrabble narrowed his eyes at the idea of keeping the wordpaper, but decided it would be alright if Chompy kept it.
"You keep, Chompy. Longshank writings can't steal dragon thoughts. Everyone know that."
"So, Swordswords be sending pinkskins to the Oleg House to make new big longshank tribe. That mean no big longshank tribes there yet. Me think we go take it, make it our new big tribe place!"
"New big tribe place for us, eh? Sounds not too bad," Mogawg replies to Scrabble. "Okay. Let's go!"
He leans a little closer to Scrabble and says privately, "You're a little slower than the rest of us, I noticed. You can ride on Zomkittie." Mogawg doesn't care or doesn't remember to warn Scrabble that the zombie will collapse after 1 hour.
To everyone, Mogawg calls out, "Come closer if you were hurt in the battle. I will make nice magic now, not hurty magic."
And then Mogawg channels positive energy to heal.
And a 2nd time:
Croaker held his head at all the big words thrown at him. Those words did not make nice goblin words at all.
"Stupid longshank words make no sense. Me not know what it means, but it be bad if longshanks come here. But if there be longshanks, there be many easy-burn huts, and maybe a few not-burn huts. Croaker says we go and set more longshanks on fire. Teach longshanks to stay away before they bring stinky dogsies with them. Use not-burn huts for goblins instead. Then we set as many fire-bangs as we want and hut still stand."
"It's 'cause I'm climby." Scrabble said proudly. He jumped up on the undead cat and rode it around the group to get used to it, and to show off.
"New big tribe place fer us? Dys likes it."
Dys watches Scrabble ride on Zomkittie with envy while thinking. "Big tribe place bigger dan old tribe place, yes? Den old tribe chief have soooo much envy, hahahaha." Rolling the bloody musket ball between the fingers, Dys grins. "Let's go an' burn dem longshanks an' der stupid dogshanks an' horseshanks!"
Dys sets out in the direction the longshanks had been traveling from, striding purposefully.
With his trophies secure, Croaker heads off with Days, striking up a rude, common goblin song on the way, his tone somehow matching the frog in hand.
Trinn grabs the remaining berries and the map and runs after the rest of the goblins.
She shrugs. Dys probably has the right idea of where he's going.
The journey is relatively uneventful - at least for the first hour. Then zombkittie abruptly disintegrates, dumping Scrabble onto the ground. Things promptly proceed to get worse for him, as the freshly-crushed anthill beneath him is filled with angry red ants who proceed to take out their ire on the closest bits of flesh.
In all honesty, though, this is probably for the best. Over the next rise, you see a familiar sight: a grove of trees laden with wild apples. You've been here before.
Trinn leans over to Chompy. "Those trees look familiar. Think we're getting closer to old home...think chief still mad?"
"You took us the wrong way!" Mogawg wails at Dys.
"Wahgabah!" Scrabble yelled as he was dumped right into an anthill by his vanishing steed. His reflexes were quick enough that he lived up to his name while scrabbling free of the angry insects and frantically brushing them off.
He glared at Mogawg.
Chompy stared at the at the trees. They had food...but they were also so very flammable.
He stopped and touched one of the trees and sniffed around at the air for a bit.
He looks at the document again and the turned it a few times as if it helped him figure something out before pointing in another direction. Hopefully the right one. "Longshank tribe is that way. Chompy can smell them more than he can smell Mogawg." he said nodding.
He turned back to the tree and hissed at it angrily before he moved back towards the others and took up his spot once again beside Trinn.
Without zombkitty, getting back to your cave takes longer, as Scrabble's a bit slower than the rest of you. The extra travel time is good, though, as it gives Chompy time to figure out the map. Before long, he has an epiphany: if you follow the road, you'll find the longshanks building!
As you travel, you're interrupted by a herd of deer that lope across your path. Later on, a black squirrel follows you for a time, occasionally hurling nutshells when you get too close. It's about an hour before nightfall before you start to hear the unmistakable sound of longshanks. Based on the voices you hear, there's a lot of them. You hear laughter, shouting, and crying.
As soon as he heard longshanks, Scrabble ducked out of sight in the underbrush off the road. He opened his bear trap and slunk forward.
Mogawg follows suit after Scrabble, and does his best to get a view of what's happening while remaining unseen and unheard.
Chompy nods at the others and follows suit. He was sleepy, stupid Longshanks and kitty woke him up too early. At least the light was not blinding him anymore.
Croaker's throat was almost getting sore from his constant croaking as they back and forth. He quickly fell silent as they finally began to reach the longshank tribe. Digging down into a bush for cover, Croaker did his best to look through the bush leaves...unknowingly looking back the way they came.
Dys claims another bush, the end of the boomstick peeking through the leaves as Dys examines the situation, still a bit miffed that the others were blaming Dys for the detour.
Trinn nearly smacks into Chompy as he stops, but catches herself in time. She tries to hide in some bushes.
Most of you are quickly able to locate the source of the commotion - although Dys and Croaker aren't looking in the right direction. Down the road a little ways is a big longshanks building make from tree trunks. It's like a fort or something. Outside you see an old manshanks and a skinny ladyshanks. The ladyshanks is crying, and the oldshanks looks mad and scared. There's also four other manshanks who are laughing at them and taking bags of stuff from inside the building. They're loading the bags onto LOTS OF HORSES!!! Also the boss takestuffshanks is wearing a necklace of goblin ears.
Chompy stares for a bit and then looks at the other goblins. He pokes Dys with his tail and uses a clawed hand to point him in the right direction.
"They is stealing from us, but earlier than it's ours!" he said a bit angry.
"Ohhhhh," Mogawg shudders, clearly scared. "Dats a LOT of horses... Maybe they leave soon, then we kill the old ones and take what's left."
Trinn nods in agreement with Mogawg. The sight of so many horses has scared her speechless.
Dys hisses in irritation, both at Chompy's poking and the others' cowardice. "No. We kill dem horses and dem longshanks dead, den we takes alla da stuff. Alla'f it! Is dis not our spot now? Dey be takin' from us, an' livin' here wifout propah oforization. Dey needs punishin'!"
Dys creeps forward to another bush, taking a boomstick metal stone out and putting it into the boomstick, then performing the proper ritual of the black powder and the stuffing stick.
Croaker stared in confusion at the empty pathway trying to figure out what his fellow goblins were saying. After a few moments, though, he turned and almost croaked as he saw all the horseshanks so close. How did all we goblins pass them without seeing? And why there be so many horseshanks in world? That be very unfair for goblins.
Croaker was quite unconvinced that they could take down so many despite what Dys was saying, but Croaker also did want to set at least one horseshank on fire. Moving a bit away from the others, Croaker prepared his frog and got ready to fight, a quick beat goblin song already broiling in mind.
Mogawg is hesitant, but grabs the dead dwarfshanks's crossbow and loads it with a bolt.
Chompy crawls slowly closer to make sure that he is as sneaky as he can be.
Mogawg speaks quietly to the others as they are ready to start closing the distance. "Longshanks Chief there has killed lots of gobs," Mogawg says, pointing at the necklace of goblin ears. "Methinks we should spook horses with big BOOGA BOOGA first to confuse the longshanks."
"You want big noise? Dys can make big noise with big boomstick."
Dys points the boomstick at the group, eyes gleaming at the prospect of a little... a lot of mayhem.
Seeing the others ready, Croaker launches into a song to turn his companions into fire goblins once more.
"Strike at longshanks, cut them down,
Slash the horseshanks, make big sound.
Take the treasure, kill them all.
Make sure all the horseshanks fall."
As Croaker begins his song, Mogawg takes aim at the nearest bandit and fires the very big crossbow.
The flaming crossbow bolt flies very far wide of the target, however.
Chompy charges with gusto and slams into the nearest bandit!
The boomstick discharges with a loud noise as a crack appears along the barrel. Dys stares in panic as the vaunted boomstick is threatening to come apart.
"Oh no, no no no!"
Dys stashes the boomstick away to try and fix later, momentarily forgetting about the impending battle as concern about the awesome weapons overwhelms all other thought.
Scrabble had more courage than sense. When his brethren charged, so did he.
He didn't notice until it was too late that his slower speed made him vulnerable.
(avg 12)
(avg 18.5)
(avg 14ish)
(avg 15ish)
The oldshanks and ladyshanks shriek in terror as goblin songs erupt from the bushes and terrifying monsters with flaming weapons charge forth. They turn and flee into the building. The horses rear and let out loud *neighs*. The takestuffshanks are completely occupied by putting stuff on the horses and laughing at the sad longshanks, so they don't even realize they're in trouble until Chompy buries his teeth in someone's upper thigh - just missing the femoral artery. Surprise is completely on your side.
Surprise Round done. Round One begins.
Chompy attempts to gnash down on his target's leg, alas the evil longshanks pulls free when he opens his mouth causing him to tumble forwards and slam his thick tail right in the poor bandit's twig and berries.
Chompy kicks off the man's shoulders and right's himself looking around confused.
Seeing that they have the drop on the longshanks and watching Chompy snapping and snarling at one of the bandits gives Mogawg a thrill. He drops the crossbow and moves as fast as his legs can carry him with an extended cackle pouring from his throat.
"Hahahaha!! You will all die!" he screams in Goblin.