Goblins Hate Fire

I was walking in the woods one morning collecting mushrooms.  I hadn't eaten breakfast yet.  I had already collected eggs and milked the cow but I decided that I wanted to fry my eggs with mushrooms.  I didn't have any mushrooms so I figured I would take a quick, pre-breakfast mushroom picking walk.  My basket was almost full of mushrooms and I was thinking about heading home to cook a mushroom and egg omelette.

Just as I was about to turn around and head back home I came upon a goblin stuck in a trap.  Not my trap, I didn't set it but if it caught a goblin, great.  The thing had already given up struggling and was just laying there staying quiet so I wouldn't hear it.  I guess he knew if I noticed him it wouldn't go well for him (goblin logic).  He was right,  I totally was going to kill him.  One less goblin in the world is a good thing.  I pulled out my side-sword and skewered that dirty monster right through the heart.  I thought to myself, "Such a waste, you can't even eat them.  They eat my chickens but I can't eat them."  For anyone who has ever tried to cook a goblin, the meat tastes rancid no matter how fresh it is.  They just aren't good for eating.  Either way, that was one problem solved, I figured that this goblin must be what has been killing my chickens every night.  Funny thing though, you would think if it were at the point where it had given up, it would have tried chewing its leg off, like a coyote does.  I guess goblins don't do that.  You learn something every day.

Time to head back home and make my omelette.  I got back to the farm and immediately noticed that something wasn't right.  All my chickens were gone.  The fence was torn up.  There was blood and feathers everywhere.  The side of the chicken coop was torn off and chicken feed was scattered all over.  Less than an hour ago I had been collecting eggs here and everything was fine.  I could see foot prints and a clear path where my chickens were drug off, probably in some kind of big sack.  It looked like the work of goblins and it looked like there had been a whole lot of them.  That one I killed back in the forest wasn't alone.  This was a problem.  Not just that they took my chickens but that I know they would inevitably return for my cows, my sheep, and everything else.

I absolutely had to do something now.  My omelette would have to wait.  I needed to go into town to get a party together and go after these monsters.  You could always find mercenaries and knights for hire at the tavern.  When they aren't busy fighting and doing tough, manly warrior things, they liked to hang out at the tavern and drink.  I was actually lucky that it wasn't too late in the day. If you want to hire some paid fighters on short notice to work that same day it is a good idea to hire them before they started drinking.

I stopped in the tavern and immediately saw a group of four guys already drinking.  I ask if they want to join in and help me hunt down a band of goblins in exchange for some gold.  It is an easy task and warriors always love to make some quick, easy money.

I asked, "You guys are already drinking at 10 AM?  You look like fighters for hire, do you want to help me hunt down some goblins that have been killing my chickens?  I pay in gold."

Greg, "I'm Greg, this is Taff, Bobby, and Sir Acot.  We would love to help but we are going to need armor and weapons.  We left all their supplies back in the last town.  Don't ask."

I replied, "OK, fair enough but we're just going after goblins, we don't need anything too heavy.  Leather lamellar armor should be fine."  They all agreed that it sounded reasonable.  I wasn't going to buy scale mail because it just isn't my thing.  It feels too elaborate.  Lamellar is nice and simple.

We stopped by the armor shop and picked up five sets of leather lamellar armor and five small shields. We next made a quick stop off at the weapon shop adjacent to the smith.  I bought each of us a knightly sword.  The swords were expensive.  I made it clear that I was going to need the swords back after this hunt unless they just want to keep them instead of getting paid.  They all preferred to just get paid in gold since they already had swords waiting for them back home.

We headed back to my farm for some quick food and to grab some torches.  I had enough eggs and mushrooms for all of us.  We also packed a bag of basic supplies like food and water.  We were about to set out when my old farm hand Kenny decided that he wanted to come along too.  I didn't expect this but apparently he has a thing about hating goblins.  He basically said, "I'm no good with a sword or anything.  I don't have real weapons training.  I'm just going to stick them with my pitchfork.  I know I can kill a goblin pretty quick with a pitchfork.  Gimme one of those torches too.  Goblins hate fire".  I tried to dissuade him from coming along but he insisted and in the end I figured: why not?  We did have four trained fighters with us.  What could go wrong?

We set out following the trail.  The foot steps were pretty obvious as the goblins left a mess.  It was already late in the afternoon by the time we set out and they had a pretty big head start.  We walked for a few hours before it started to get dark and we needed to light up a torch.  Fighting goblins in the dark would probably be kind of sub-optimal because those things are pretty creepy even in the daylight.  We kept on going.  After a few hours we came upon a cave.  "I knew it!" said Greg, "Goblins always hide out in caves.  This is pretty much how we should have expected it to play out."

We had to go in.  We passed through the mouth of the cave and followed along a long passageway with smaller tunnels branching off to the side here and there.  We had been walking for a ways, maybe 20 minutes.  We were continuously going down along a slight incline.  The stench of goblins was getting stronger.  They basically smell like a homeless person who hasn't bathed in a few years, except like 100 times stronger.  That is how just one goblin smells.  Imagine lots of goblins all gathered together in a confined space in a cave.  We didn't have to guess if we were on the right track.
Kenny said in a rough voice, "That smell, we're getting close."

Coming around the corner the smell was unbearable as we came upon a big pile of bones and goblin droppings right in the middle of the tunnel.

Taff, "Wow, they really had to do that right in the middle of the tunnel?  Right where you have to walk past it to get in or out?  Disgusting!"

Sir Acot, "Well, don't step in it.  You will never get that smell off of your boots."

We kept going another five minutes or so before we came upon a big encampment of goblins in a large open room of the cave.  Goblins hate fire and don't have too much trouble seeing in the dark.  They don't necessarily prefer full darkness either though and in this case they did have a light source.  There were green, glowing mushrooms growing on the cave walls and there was a huge cluster of them growing down from the ceiling.

As soon as we came around the corner and entered the room they know we were there.  We were quiet enough but our torches pretty much gave us away.  That wasn't really much of a problem because we were about to slay all of them anyways.  They didn't stand a chance.  The are super creepy though.  Goblins tend to give all but the most hardened human warriors the heebie-jeebies.  An inexperienced person could easily be psyched out by this and make a mistake.  That is what can make them dangerous.  They aren't strong but they are dirty and scary looking.  If you get freaked out and make a wrong move they can end up scratching and cutting you up pretty bad.  It isn't just their dirty claws you have to worry about either.  They usually carry daggers.  Sometimes the bigger ones carry short swords, morning stars, or spiked bats.  We all knew what we were doing and wouldn't loose our focus.

We killed them all just like that.  We had 47 dead goblins all strewn about by the time we were done.  We counted 47 of them.  Just three more and we would have had a solid 50.

It went down like this.  Greg got the first hit in.  When three of them first rushed us he whipped out his sword and slashed all three of them in half with one blow.  Stupid goblins, running to their deaths.  After that Kenny just went nuts.  I don't know what happened to him to make him hate goblins that much.  Everyone hates goblins but he had some serious bottled up rage.  He ran right in to the mob of 44 remaining goblins and started spearing them with his pitch fork.  We all ran in after him and started hacking away at them with our swords.  Kenny had the most kills by far though.  He didn't even take the time to pull the dead goblins off of his pitch for before he started skewering more of them.  That took some super human strength or a huge adrenaline rush.  He would stack up like four or five of them on his fork before sliding them off with his boot.

So that was that.  We had taken care of the problem and could call it a night, or so we thought.  We could hear a noise and see some light from further down another tunnel on the other side of the room.  The noise was like a deep groaning sound but it was rhythmic, kind of like something breathing.  We figured we should check it out while we were there just to make sure there weren't any remaining goblins left.  It is always better to be thorough rather than have to come back later.

We proceeded down the next tunnel towards the light and the noise.  We couldn't smell the goblins anymore but only because the smell was drowned out by something stronger, something that smelled strongly of sulfur.  We knew what that meant and that we were not equip for something like this.  This was more than any of us had signed up but we decided that we may as well keep going to at least check it out.  If there is a small dragon, it is probably guarding a treasure.  We can asses the situation and come back with reinforcements and better armor.  You don't slay a dragon with leather armor.  Not even a small dragon.

We came into a huge section of cave with a really big pit in the floor.  We couldn't even see the bottom of the pit but there was a gigantic dragon sitting right inside the pit.  We could only see the top half of the dragon as the lower half of its body seemed to just disappear into the depths of the pit.  This thing was huge.  This was the biggest dragon any of us had even heard of let alone seen.  As it breathed tiny spurts of flame would escape from its nostrils with its breath, lighting up the cavern.  We could see goblins passing food from one to the other and throwing it to the dragon.  They were feeding the dragon.  They had a huge pile of chickens, pigs, deer, and anything else they could get.  They were just shoveling it into the dragons waiting mouth.

Taff, "Its the biggest thing I've ever seen!  How does that thing even get in here?"

Sir Acot, "Probably entered the cave when he was smaller and grew too large to get out.  They must have been feeding him for hundreds of years."

Bobby, "Why would the goblins feed it?  They hate fire.  They shouldn't want to get anywhere near a fire breathing dragon.  They aren't that stupid."

Sir Acot, "The dragon probably lets them take care of his pile of gold for them.  That is what I would do if I were a giant dragon.  Give them an incentive."

Bobby, "OK, makes sense. Goblins are really greedy.  They probably do love gold more than they hate fire."

Greg, "It would be interesting to test that.  What if someone were to put a pile of gold in a fire to see if a goblin would attempt to grab the hot coins?"

Taff, "They would go for it but they are smart enough not to just grab it without thinking.  They are great with tools you know."

Greg, "Yeah, you're right."

It was right about that moment when the tunnel behind us filled with an enormous swarm of goblins.  There were hundreds of them, way too many for just the five of us to fight.  We had all seen goblins before but never that many in one place.  We didn't even think it was possible.  We had to think quick and run into an alternate tunnel leading away from the dragon's chamber.  Neither the dragon nor the new horde of goblins had noticed us yet.  After about 10 minutes of running for our lives we hit a dead end.  That was it.  If they came down this way we were probably going to die.  We sat there and waited for what seemed like forever.  While we were waiting we examined the walls of the tunnel.  This one looked like it had been carved out of rock.  There were also a lot of support beams and mining tools.  It looked like they were trying to widen the tunnel as much as they could.

Eventually we decided to head back and see if we could find another way out.  Hopefully the goblins would be gone.  When we got back to the main room we were relieved to find that they were gone.  The dragon was still there but it was sleeping and there were not goblins in sight.  From here we could tell that the goblins were really trying to widen the tunnel a lot.  At the mouth of this new tunnel they were starting to cut away in such a huge radius that the dragon could probably fit through it at this width.

Sir Acot, "If they ever finished that tunnel, even the dragon would be able to fit through it.  They're trying to free the dragon!"

Taff, "Yeah, its going to take them years though, even with thousands of goblins digging."

Bobby, "We're kind of in trouble when they eventually do get that thing out though.  Do you know what would happen? A dragon that size would almost certainly burn down every village within a hundred miles of here."

Taff, "If we make it out of here, where going to have to warn the king."

We made our way out through the same tunnel we used to enter the chamber.  Fortunately for us, it was mostly clear.  There was a few straggling goblins here and there.  We slew them as we went along with minimal effort.  We found ourselves back at the entrance to the cave and made our escape.
I said with a sigh, "We have bigger problems than the farm now."

We started on our way back with the news.........