Goblin plague

Lorraine walks over to the quest board, a lot of members already signed up for different types of guests. She sees a quest where Periwinkle the satyr has signed for. 

She remembers him as a nice guy from the battle royale, he helped her while the fake Arthur tried to kill her because he thought that she was an ingredient for some kind of stew. 

I hope that the Arthur guy knows now that I’m not a hot meal, I can burn his tongue, but I’d rather make some friends in the guild, not an enemy. 

So I signed up to help Periwinkle with getting some goblin ears and to help Lord and Lady Birchwind with removing this plague they have in the prison. 

While I had a lot of time to overthink what I was going to do, and what I needed to prepare for the battle that is coming, I ended up talking with Tamir. He’s a nice lad, shiny, and has not tasted a lot of things in this world. But his heart is in the right place. 

The brilliant idea that Tamir gave me was to go to the library to find some information about those goblin critters. Hohla the librarian is a nice lady who I already know. She and Tamir helped me with finding the books about the goblins. 

I discovered the following information.

Goblins are small critters, their hearts are dark and black. They live in despoiled dungeons and other dismal settings.
When they are alone they are weak, when they are with a group they can outnumber you and will torment you and every creature they will find.
The goblins are greedy and live to malice when they have the upper hand the love to celebrate their victory. These creatures are wicked and don't have a glimpse of humanity in them.
Goblins festoon their lairs with alarms designed to signal the arrival of intruders.

Hohla is one hell of a librarian, this information can help the quest a lot. I can’t wait to burn these little f*ckers down… After I collect their ears of course, otherwise we don’t get paid for our job… 

Tamir and I thanked Hohla and returned to the bar, we drank some hot cinnamon shots, and damn: the taste of this is like fire. I love it, and I can’t wait to meet the other members who will fight by my side. I do know their names already, Bluebell and Poppy. And with Periwinkle and me we will get far…

When the time arrives to go on this quest Desmund the receptionist gives us the paper from lady Birchwind so we can pass the guards in the Goldcloud-district. While Poppy is checking her outfit, I take the papers, and Bluebell and Periwinkle are happily chatting about the adventure that is starting now. Bluebell is this bubbly person that lightens up the room and Poppy is a bit quiet but she has this aura that is calm and trustworthy. 

When we arrive at the gate two guards are guarding. One of them asked us what we were doing here. So when we showed the letter he opened the gates and pointed us the way to the castle of Birchwind. At the Castle were also two guards who asked the same question. Damn, all those guards make me a bit impatient. Luckily for me Bluebell has a way to talk to people and they let us in. One of the guards showed us the way and introduced us to the lord and the lady. 

When Bluebell told them why we were here the lord seemed surprised, but his wife agreed that she had sent this letter to the Guild because there were many goblins in their dungeon.

The throne room is large and on both sides, there are 3 watchmen with bows and arrows who are watching every step we make. 

The guard from outside is called back and is ordered to walk with us to the dungeon. Bluebell is introducing herself and us to the guard and the guard tells her his name is Johnny and that there are no prisoners in the dungeon, so we only have to watch out for the goblins.  

She also asks him if he wanted to fight the goblins with us but he cowers back and leaves us in the dark room that leads us downstairs. Many, many steps later we are finally downstairs…. 

But now the problem is that I can’t see anything so I make some fire, the beautiful fire seems to shine so brightly… was it always this bright? The warmth from the fire fills my body and then everything goes black. I feel my body fighting I try to go back, back to my new friends they need help. But I feel so tired and I want to sleep so bad. I even see a bright shining light. 

Is this the eternal flame of heaven? But something is pulling me back and I open my eyes. Periwinkle is leaning over me and bandaging my wounds. Then I slip into sleep. 

When I wake up I feel a bit better. ‘’What the hell happened there. It must be those stupid critters.’’ When I look around I see Periwinkle at the end of the hallway. Around me I see Bluebell and Poppy awaken and together we walk to Periwinkle. Periwinkle and I check the big doors for traps. We find nothing but Periwinkle does seem to hear whispers behind the door. 

‘’How do we get to the other side guys?’’ asks Periwinkle. 

Poppy has an idea for that but we need to make room because she doesn’t want to hurt us. At first, I think she is joking but then she transforms into a big dragon! After that, she burns down the door with some acid-like breath weapon and Bluebell is casting a spell on the ground behind the door. 3 goblins behind the door have seen us but the spell from Bluebell seems to fill the air with flowers who are squirting water into the eyes of 2 goblins. They don’t see a thing anymore! 

I cast a ball of fire on one of the goblins. ‘That’s for burning us down critter!’’ Then Poppy runs forward and bites the other goblin who immediately falls dead. Then her tail hits the 3rd goblin and this goblin is heavenly wounded. Bluebell yells:’’ The atmosphere in the room really doesn’t get better with your presence!’’ to the goblin I burned and damn she burned him good because he drops dead. Then Periwinkle takes his sword and stabs the last goblin to death. 

We killed them so I rush forward to harvest some ears for our reward. But when I’m harvesting everybody is on edge. There are more goblins on their way! Quickly I put away the ears and I look around. Poppy shoots forwards and it seems she is fighting with at least 2 goblins. A lot of noise is coming from that corner. Bluebell casts a spell on the arrows of Periwinkle and it’s kinda strange but I somehow feel more rested. I think that Bluebell gave me some more energy. Periwinkle shoots the luminous arrow at a goblin in the doorway on the left and reveals that there are a lot more goblins on their way to us. 

I call for Mees and he spawns by the goblins in the doorway some of them scream from the burning flames in which he came. Mees teleports to a safer place and tries to burn some goblins on his way but they are prepared and seem to avoid the damage. More and more goblins enter the doorway. Bluebell casts again the spell with the water spitting flowers and again some goblins seem blinded. I cast an entangle so the goblins cant run. Mees spits some fire seeds but he misses terribly. 

Poppy Jumps through the space and is standing in front of the goblins witch she attacks one tries to escape in laughter. Now the goblin is standing in between Periwinkle and Mees. Mees teleports me further to the goblins and does some mean damage on the laughing goblin. I try to hit a goblin with a ball of fire but I miss also. Bluebell’s roast is on fire because the laughing goblin isn’t laughing anymore. She shouts: ‘’ Your mother is so clean she sweats SOAP!’’ She killed him with a nice burn. Poppy gives one of the goblins a taste of her tail, and Periwinkle throws his sword and kills the last goblin.

‘’You can just ask me to see Periwinkle I won’t mind, I just wanted to wait till later when we are sure we’re safe.’’ But Periwinkles arm is disappearing into the bag. The inside of the bag is way bigger than the outside! We’ve got a bag of holding! 

The cells on the left side seem empty, and sometimes they say curiosity killed the cat. This time things were different because there still is the closed door on the right. They did say nothing was there and we shouldn’t open it. But we could investigate there how the goblins came in. They definitely didn’t come from the left way. So they must have gotten here through the right door. We listen and listen to the door but to be honest I only could hear the loud breathing from Poppy in my neck. Periwinkle did seem to hear something. A male voice was shouting for help. 

There shouldn’t be any prisoners here and if there were, they weren’t fed in several days. We had to help them. If not for letting them out at least stop the suffering… While we were doing (again) things they told us not to, Poppy smashed in the door while Bluebell, Periwinkle, and I were crafting a battering ram so the lord and lady would give the blame to the goblins. The battering ram is very well crafted, a bit too well… So we had to dirt it up a bit. Periwinkle smears it with the feces of the goblins found in the cellars. And I can’t lie: we did a great job of covering up our curiosity.  

Behind the door, Bluebell hurries over to the man and comforts him. She calms him down and tells him about who she is. Also, does she tell him that he has to take a few steps back and that we will open the door for him. The man tells her that he is lord Birchwind and that there is an imposter upstairs. I still don’t trust this guy 100% because who tells us that he isn’t the imposter? So Mees is standing by so he can teleport away and I have a ball of fire ready to throw if needed. But when Poppy slams the door and Bluebell gives it the last nudge with her horns the man on the other side seems scared, hungry but most of all he seems sincere. I give the man some food and water, he is starved, so starved I have to slow him down so he won’t drink himself to death. He is a bit scared of our looks he isn’t accustomed to fey wild creatures and a dragon… But he is grateful for helping him. 

Periwinkle and Bluebell come up with a great idea to get the truth to the surface. We will make a parade with Bluebell and Periwinkle in front making beautiful music and announcing that the real lord is returned, while the real lord is riding the back from Poppy and Mees and I make an amazing fire show in the back. This plan cannot go wrong: it is amazing!

When we get to the door The guard Jhonny opens after 3 times of knocking, and before he even can talk Periwinkle charms him so he will help us open the doors for our parade. When we entered the throne room everything went quiet, except for us of course. We made the best parade ever. The guards on the balcony went sharp. Fake lord Birchwind transforms in his realm shape, he is some kind of shapeshifter. He runs to lady Birchwind and is using her as a meatshield. When we’re looking closely there is this time also a child on the throne, a little boy. Mees flys forward he is faster than ever. This time the shapeshifter also grabs the boy so the watchman can’t shoot him. But Bluebell scares the shapeshifter and he runs away from the lady and the child. At this moment different arrows hit the shapeshifter he is heavily wounded. I see my chance and I shoot my precious fire towards him, 3 rays of fire, fly towards the shapeshifter, the first ray shoots him in the head, the second ray hits him in the stomach and the last ray shoots his feet from the ground. With a muffled thud his body hits the ground. 

The real lord is running toward his wife and son and the family reunion is very sweet. While Bluebell is climbing into an arch I muffle the body of the shapeshifter and his shield into my bag. 

I reunite with the group and I let Periwinkle hug me so the little boy is not so scared when Periwinkle wants to join the family group hug. Poppy in the meanwhile transforms back to herself. The lord and Lady are very happy with us and they thank us with 500 gold pieces. Johnny the guard promises us that he will soon come to the guild to drink something with us and at this moment we leave the family so they can have some alone time. 

Poppy is starting to make some music and Bluebell and Periwinkle are joining her. I enjoy the music and I think about what happened today. Poppy was a bit sad that her dress ripped so Periwinkle gave her some nice flowers. I saw that she prestidigitate them she seems to hate everything that has something to do with getting dirty. But she kept the flowers and I think that is nice of her. In the guild, I gave 24 goblin ears to Violet and she paid us 120 gold. 

I evenly divided the money between the 4 of us after is searched the body I put into the bag of holding. Periwinkle kept the shield and they let me keep the bag. That is really nice of them. 

I gave my new friends some hot cinnamon shots and Bluebell serenaded the amazing Poppy. 

I’m glad I can tell this human en these satyrs are my new friends.