Hey once again!
I know, I know!
I keep saying "This is the last thing I may post for the rest of the year" or something along those lines lol I just COULDN'T leave you all without knowing that you have more than enough to get you through the rest of this year.
I hope as always, that this finds you well.
And if not? I hope it makes things just a little better!
What kind of Reader doesn't like more chapters to dive into and enjoy!?!?!
This may very well be the last post that I get out before the year is out, but I am sure I will end up dropping a Character Dive as well so maybe be on the lookout for that!
I love you all. I say it because I mean it.
I know what you came for, and I will keep you no longer lol
See you all back here at the Gates in a bit.
I present to you: Hopeless wonder. Part 1.
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Goblins.
The scum of the world.
The lowest of the intellectual species.
The butt of all jokes.
The target of every ones hatred.
Their place was at the bottom of most societal latter's, their fate was to live a low and inconsequential life, never to be given the benefit of the doubt.
Often forced to be nothing more than slaves under some rulers banner.
Fighters.
Scavengers.
Laborers.
More often than not, they were just battle fodder.
First to charge, first to die.
This story though, is not about one of those sort of goblins.
Nope.
This is about one very different kind of goblin.
A cowardly, skittish, wary, shorter-than-the-average, scrawny, and overly cautious goblin.
One who, with time, would shout: "Enough is enough!"
In his head that is... He would never dare speak such insubordinate words aloud.
Nonetheless, his actions on that particularly fateful day would -unbeknownst to him- change the very course of history itself.
This, my friends, is the story of a hapless Goblinoid by the name of Gob-lob.
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The chamber was massive.
Cathedral-like.
Awe-inspiring.
Especially when compared to the cave-like hovel that Gob-lob called his home.
He had to tilt his bulbus head in order to see the ceiling high above his head, whereas his own place left him little room to walk upright properly.
It was deathly silent.
But silence was the last thing this Goblinoid feared this night.
Gob-lob was a Deeplurk.
He was well accustomed to the silence. It -along with near-perpetual darkness- had been an intricate part of his life here so far below the surface world, in what his people called "The Deep."
Gob-lob's tiny ear holes were hooded by large, protective membranes that he could use to either shield his sensitive ear canals from unwanted noise, or flair up in order to catch the faintest of echoes. Deeplurks have the most superior hearing among the goblin species known across Enverdolmal.
His nose was a long and thin thing designed by nature to both deflect and filter mineral particles.
His eyes were perfectly round and able to adjust to lit and dark corridors and rooms with relative ease.
His skin was a pale green hue, so pale was it that he, as all Deeplurks, was very nearly bioluminescent.
While most Goblinoids were stupid, cruel, tinkering types, the Deeplurk were a very secluded, reclusive and ever passive folk. Being so far below the ground, in the deepest of the deep caves, they had never developed that "crude edge" that their surface kin had. An edge that was often required of them in order to survive among and at times coexist with the many and varied surface species who both feared and hated them.
Deeplurks were one of the creatures who's image was -for many generations- used in late night scary tales by parents who wanted to deter their wondering children from the local mines.
But in all actuality, they wanted nothing more then to be left to their own devices, They were typically Tinkerers and Miners. Beyond that, they found interest or joy in very little else.
Preciouses stones, mining tools, and personally crafted babbles were all they needed.
One could even venture to say that they were very much like Mountain Dwarfs.
But one would not be wise to make such a comparison within the ear-shot of any LIVING Dwarf.
Speaking of personally crafted babbles, this brings us back to out little friend and his rather peculiar predicament.
Gob-lob was utterly miserable.
He was always hot. Always hungry. Always tired.
His job down in the Mound, here among his kin, was to scoop and lob their "waist" over a ledge and into a perpetually burning pit.
Deeplurk skat was known simply as Gob.
And to toss something with little regard, was to lob it.
Thus this poor creature had been called "Gob-lobber" for as long as he could recall. He had had this and only this job for as long as he could recall.
While it was true that every Deeplurk has a set job within the Mound (the Mounds being what their hive-like home was called.) To be the Gob-lobber was the worst job possible that one could be assigned. The lowest of the low
And some other poor sap had to lick clean the Queens backside after she...
Gob-lob figured at that thought that there was maybe ONE job worse than his.
He had no idea why he had been given the job, but he hated every second of it.
He hated his name.
He hated this Mound.
He hated most of the other Deeplurks.
None of them seemed to be capable of thinking beyond 'Hunger. Rest. Work.'
A fact that drove him crazy! Slowly but surly.
He knew that this place was not for him. He could take the day-to-day autonomy no longer.
Gob-lob wasn't the smartest Deeplurk in the Mound.
Not at all.
In fact, our story began with him sneaking into the private chambers of a pair of Goblinoids who were easily ten times as smart as he would ever be.
But were they ten times as desperate?
Not at all.
Gob-lob was "insubordinate" by Deeplurk standards. While he did do everything that he was told, he had a very bad habit of questioning nearly everything. This was not out of some delusion of bravery or even the rebelliousness that the other Deeplurks took it as, he was above all else, just ignorantly curious.
This was a quality that had earned him not only the attention, but the anger of the current standing Queen: Lady Slycenbite.
Lady Slycenbite was many things: Perpetually bitter, always armed to the teeth -literally- and famously short tempered. the one thing she was not, was forgiving. After Gob-lobs many, many lashings due to his constant questioning of her and many other Deeplurk ways, she had had enough. She had decided that his questions were no longer entertaining.
They were becoming dangerous.
She decided to have him die as he lived. A mouth full.
She had sentenced him to death.
Death by 1000 chews.
Luckily for him their food stores were still yet in good standings, so he would have at least a weeks time to live before he was charred to near-death and them served to the Queen.
Gob-lob hadn't intended on staying around long enough to see that fate come about.
Thus here we find him. Alone, Terrified, and desperate as all hellz and hoping against all odds that the Deeplurks from whom he was attempting to steal, would be as busy and as absent as he had been told that they would be.
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Deeplurks were not very... cultured by any means.
They had very little need for it. They simply never went to the surface.
Well... not all of them.
On some special and rare occasions, a handful of Deeplurks had been allowed to go to the "Big Bright" as their kind called it. Many of which have never been seen again. The trip was long and dangerous. The Deep was no place for the untrained and unfamiliar. It was so dangerous in fact, that the majority of Deeplurk goblins had never and would never venture out beyond the walls of their massive Mounds.
The long, spiraling tunnels and vantablack, bottomless caverns were not the only problems one would face should they venture out. The Deep was host and home to many a form of flora and fauna. Anything that chose to live in The Deep most likely belonged in The deep.
The very environment would constantly and eternally see to that.
Among the minor Deep creatures were things like foot-long Deep Ants, Blind Lurkins (Deeplurks who have been exiled from their Mound for one reason or another.) and all other manners of things that were adapted in one way or another to the dark and hostile underside of the world.
More major threats included but were not limited to:
Undead Explores and "Heroes" from the Big Bright who never made it out, or maybe just not far enough in.
Rock Gnomes, a diminutive and militant folk who prefer to be left alone.
Dark Dwarfs, a cousin to the surface Mountain Dwarf species who chose to cast aside their surface ways in full in lieu of greater riches to be found in the deepest of caves and caverns.
And many, many more things that cared little for any other living thing...
If one wished to get to the Big Bright, they would either need to be extremally well prepared, be very well trained, and/or have some magical way to bypass of deal with all of the potential threats. Pair that with at least a tenday of travel in darkness so dark that one could nearly feel it swim around them.
Those magical means were few and far between down in The Deep.
But alas, our little friend knew of one such means. Would it be worth the risk to retrieve it?
well, it was that or death at this point.
So yes.
It was very much so worth it.
And the Goblinoids with which he would find that means with, would just happen to be a couple of Lady Slycenbite's best and brightest...
To be caught by them would most likely be far worse than being part
Gob-lob would have to pull off one hell of a theft.
His very and only life depended on it.
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Ahgo and Ahmay knelt meekly before Lady Slycenbite.
Their eyes to the floor, a show of respect.
To either side, their palms where tuned upwards at the ends of outstretched arms, a show of devotion.
Beneath them, their legs crossed at the ankle. This was done to keep one from rising to their feet with ease or any sort of haste, a sign of submission.
Slycenbite was amused. Even if it was just in the slightest bit. The two satchels worth of fine jewelry, shinning coins, and sparkling, preciouses stones that lay sprawled across the chamber floor before her seemed...a bit light.
She was ignorant of many things. Her people had lived and thrived in The Deep for as long as any of them could remember. Her mother -Slyceneat- had been the Queen of this Mound before her and her mothers mother -Slycenchew- had been the Queen before her.
If Slycenbite lived long enough, and bore a daughter, that daughter would be made the next Queen. It was a role that was unchanging, inflexible, and unable to be rejected by the next in line. Like it or not. This last part had made it so that Slycenbite was all but perpetually irritable.
She never wanted to be in charge. Not when her mother was alive, and even less now that she was dead.
Nonetheless, tradition was tradition.
It wasn't that she COULDN'T turn down the role. It was more so that to do so meant a slow, agonizingly painful death by 1000 chews.
A common and favorite form of punishment dished out by the strict and often hungry Deeplurks.
A punishment that she had issued to one of her lesser Goblinoids just as day or so ago...
The thought brought her back to reality and her current situation.
The two Deeplurks that presented themselves before her were two of the smartest and most savvy of the thousands that she had at her disposal.
A simple glance at the scattered loot had told her that the pair had either come up short on their latest excursion to the Big Bright, or someone between the two of them had sticky fingers...
Slycenbite hated sticky fingers.
She hated sweet things.
She hated fingers that were not her own.
She had a lot of hatred within her, a trait that had served her well many times in her storied past.
This day, she would surprise the two Deeplurks by simply not mentioning the obvious discrepancy.
She would allow them to continue their scheming.
She would watch them closely.
She would act when the time was right.
She needed them still.
These two had brought her many an amazing and magical trinket. And besides that, they were two of very few if any who had a means of getting to the surface.
That vast and distant Big Bright.
THAT was her ultimate goal.
Her first?
To gather enough riches to essentially buy herself passage to somewhere that she could live out the rest of her days in peace...
These two fools were nothing more than a means to an end.
She would see them eaten alive before she made her way out of here...
But she would use them wisely until then.
They had brought her and her Mound more wealth than she could ever imagine, and for this she was far from ungrateful.
But before she could began to truly show some of that hard-earned gratitude, she had noticed a sudden shift in the amount of goods that the pair was bringing to her monthly.
This act of theft was unacceptable.
She would have to keep them in their place.
Send a nasty message.
For now though, she was just sort of over it all.
She no longer wanted, nor had she ever wanted to be the Queen of this dusty, old Mound.
She didn't want to play politics with the other Queens and their equally dusty Mounds.
She wanted a simple life. And before her were the two Deeplurks who would help her achieve this life.
Yawning dramatically and crossing her arms over her chest as she leaned back, she bade the two to their feet with a series of short, guttural Goblinoid barks.
"Our Lady!"
The twins exclaimed in perfect unison before bowing deeply once more then proceeding to kiss the floor before their Queen three times.
One for each Queen before her and a third for Lady Slycenbite herself.
Slycenbite's voice echoed through the royal chamber as it boomed forth from her snarling lips and drooling mouth.
"Enough! UP!"
Ahgo and Ahmay shot to their feet with as much speed as they could muster.
Their silver and gold chains, sparkling multi-colored jewels, and platitude of trinkets clacked and clanked softly as they quickly adjusted their rumpled and oversized, Human-made robes.
The pair were the closest thing that one could get to "Scholars" in The Deep and among the Deeplurks in particular.
Higher education was not very prevalent nor necessary within the Deeplurk society.
It was not something that was key to their day to day survival.
As long as one could do their job -without question that is- their lives were relatively easy.
Unless your job just happened to me one of the many and varied "less pleasant" ones.
Gob-Lobbing for example.
The Goblinoids that stood before Lady Slycenbite were quit literally the smartest of all of the thousands that walked her mound.
This made them both detrimentally invaluable, and stanchly dangerous to her future plans.
But today was still today.
And tomorrow didn't exist.
Even Goblins knew that.
Today she would hear them out.
The next day would bring, what the next day would bring.
Her deep, yet smooth and strangely alluring voice rumbled throughout the room once again.
"What new toys do you bring me?"
The words dripped from the tips of her long, chiseled, steel-capped fangs like blood from the edge of a knife.
Her smile was full of anticipation even as her mind grew ever impatient.
Whatever they had brought had better be good.
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Hey!
Welcome back!
I hope that his newest chapter and our new characters are to your liking!
I happen to love Goblins for some reason lol so I really wanted to come up with a newish concept for a species of my own for the world of Enverdolmal. I think its going well so far lol.
I hope your holiday season had been amazing and full of family, friends, or whatever it is that makes you happy.
I will see you all back here at the gates for the last Character Dive of the year soon enough!
Till then!
Stay safe.
Stay healthy.
Stay vigilant.
-Redd.