Chapter 9: Chapter 9: The Goblin Swarm

Jace woke up as if from a dream, standing outside a farmhouse surrounded by trees.  It was a wooden structure with a large main floor and a small upstairs with one or two bedrooms.  A white picket fence enclosed the front yard, and he could see a large back area with a barn, several pens, and vast farmland filled with corn, wheat, and beans.  It could have been an 1800s homestead from the Midwest United States, and Jace still had difficulty believing he was in a computer game.

“I’m so glad you could make it.”

Jace turned to his left and saw a middle-aged farmer walk up to him.  Jace looked down from his incredible height and was ready for the man to react to his orcish features, but true to Gandhi’s word, his size and appearance did not affect the man.

“The other two are already upstairs.  I’m so glad you agreed to help.  My wife is going into shock.  Caitlin is our only child, and we can’t accept that she’s just gone.”

Jace had obviously not agreed to anything and, having played a lot of RPG games in his life, this was a pretty strong-armed tactic to get a player into a quest, but since he was here by choice, subjecting himself to trials so a god could be assigned to him, he would be foolish to reject this mission, no matter how heavy-handed it was.

Jace said nothing and followed the man through the fence gate and up to the house entrance.  He tried the Follow action on the man and was happy to see it worked so he could take a peek into his inventory.  True to Gandhi’s promise that he would be without his equipment.  His loot was gone.  He had a Level 0 suit of chainmail and a Level 2 two-handed sword.  Jace thought it odd that the game would give a shaman a bladed weapon on his divine quest, but it just showed that the AI knew what it was doing.  Knew what SHE was doing, Jace corrected.  He wondered how much the two designers still got involved with Gandhi running things.

He also worried that the level 50 crystal was gone, but he was sure the game wouldn’t steal that permanently.  He hoped all his equipment would be returned to him once he finished this module.

Jace exited the inventory screen and heard the father recount the setup for this mission.  “We heard noises last night.  She often stays up late, and we don’t want to invade her privacy, but if we had known . . .” his voice trailed off.  “Well, I’ll let you see.”

They were now at the top of the stairs, and Jace followed the man into his daughter’s room.  Three other people stood inside investigating the crime scene.  A priest knelt, looking at a symbol scorched onto the wooden floor.  Jace had never seen the icon before and wished he had access to Gracie’s knowledge right now.

Another individual, a half-elf by the look of him, was by the window, inspecting scrapes and cuts in the wood.  Sections of the curtains were torn, and dirty prints covered the sill and floor around the opening.  Another man, a city guard, stood at attention in the room, observing the proceedings.

“She didn’t come down for breakfast,” the father said, “and we found this when we finally opened her door.  Some unholy symbol seared into her floor and obvious signs of a break-in.  What could this mean?”

“It is a silence symbol,” the priest said, rising from the floor and eyeing Jace suspiciously while talking to the father.  “Probably to keep you from hearing the screaming.”

Excellent bedside manner, Jace thought.  Unsurprisingly, the father put his hand to his mouth in shock at the idea of his daughter screaming in distress and the parents not being able to hear it.  The priest ignored the frightening response to his careless words and instead turned his attention to Jace.  “Are you the adventurer?”

“My name is Jace.  I thought I might be able to help,” he replied cautiously.  “You believe she was kidnapped?”

“You see something else?”

“This is Father Xavier,” the guard announced, seeing that the surly priest failed to return the introductory greeting.  Jace turned to look at the guard, ignoring Xavier’s question.  “We called him and Faylon in to help in this matter.”  The guard nodded toward the window, where the half-elf was still inspecting the supposed entry point for the kidnappers.  “Any input you can provide would be welcome.”

Jace looked back at the priest and disagreed with the guard’s assessment.  From the look on the holy man’s face, he guessed any input he might give would be considered an intrusion.  Either way, Jace examined the scene as best he could.  There didn’t appear to have been much of a struggle.  No blood was visible anywhere, and despite this young woman keeping several porcelain trinkets on her shelves, nothing in the room was broken.  Her bed was made, implying she never slept in it, or her abductors made it after taking her.

Looking at the black symbol burned on the floor, Jace had several other observations.  It was three feet in diameter, made with care and precision.  Assuming it was created manually and not the result of a spell, it would have taken some time.  Jace noticed specs of black powder scattered in one corner of the room and guessed that it had been used to create the symbol.  Pouring the flammable powder on the floor in the appropriate pattern and lighting it with a magical fire seemed the best explanation.

Jace moved over to the window, where the half-elf was scraping mud off the edge of the windowsill.  He looked up as Jace approached and was more hospitable than the priest.  “My name’s Faylon,” he said, extending his slender hand.  Jace took it gingerly, careful not to squeeze too hard with his orc-sized fingers.  He was willing to bet this man was a ranger or tracker.

“What have you found?” Jace asked.

“No forced entry that I can see.  The window isn’t broken, and it can’t be unlocked except on the inside.”

Jace wished he didn’t have his Elements sensitivity turned down as he couldn’t adequately gauge the temperature outside, but given the state of the crops he could see, he guessed it was the middle of summer.  “Does she sleep with her window open?”

Faylon blushed at the question and withdrew harsher than Jace would have expected from such an innocent query.  “How should I know?”  He must have recognized his reaction was out of place and quickly added, “She must.  It is the only valid explanation.”

“Do you recognize that symbol on the floor?” Jace asked, filing his reaction away for further reflection later.

The two turned to see the priest ignoring them as he knelt beside the burn mark and appeared to cast some divination spell.  “No,” the ranger said.  “But I trust Father Xavier’s assessment.”

“So you think a group of kidnappers snuck into this room last night, managed to subdue Caitlin without disturbing any of the furniture, kept her from screaming as one of them carefully prepared that symbol, and then carried her out of this window?  Why bother with the symbol if they could gag her or knock her unconscious?”

“They were goblins,” Faylon said, pointing at the muddy prints on the floor.  “Maybe they crept in here while she was sleeping and made the symbol without waking her.  Then they jumped her.”

“Did they make the bed afterward?”

Faylon looked at the undisturbed sheets and cocked his head.  He didn’t have an answer.

“This is a crude symbol,” Xavier announced to the room as he stood.  “The creatures that did it don’t have much training in the sacred arts and will likely be easy to track and catch.”

Jace once again walked over to the burn mark and looked at the smooth lines and perfectly symmetrical design.  It didn’t look like the work of goblins.  Was the priest just trying to lend weight to the half-elf’s assessment of the kidnappers?

“Then you shall go after them at once,” the guard announced.  “The hills to the west are only a few hour’s travel from here.  Certainly, Faylon will be able to track them to their den, and you can rescue the girl.”

[Xavier has joined your party.]

[Faylon has joined your party.]

Jace saw the prompts in his mind but focused on the discussion around him.

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The ranger nodded eagerly, but the priest maintained a sour disposition.  “I would not get your hopes too high.  Abductions like this are usually only for one reason.  Goblins do not hold prisoners for long.”

“All the more reason to leave now,” the guard insisted, seeing the troubled look Xavier’s words brought to the father.

Faylon nodded and walked past Jace to the room’s door.  “We will find her and bring her back,” he said to the grieving man.  Jace followed, with the priest bringing up the rear.

 

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True to the guard’s guess, the trail was not hard to follow.  Many footprints could be seen outside the home beneath the rainspout the goblins must have used to climb to the second-story window.  The tracks to the house and away from it passed through a wet patch near a watering trough, which would account for the muddy footprints.  Then the trail moved between the fields and off the property toward the distant hills.

Jace took a moment to look into the watering trough and saw his reflection.  He looked like Jason Hawthorne, a middle-aged man with salt and pepper stubble.  His hands reached up to his face and felt something very different from what he saw.  His massive digits still found the sharp teeth and enormous nose of his orc features, but his reflection showed slender fingers searching out a human face.  He pulled away from the trough before the other two men thought him strange and hurried after them.

Jace engaged little with his traveling companions, sensing a rift between them.  Faylon was eager to rescue the girl, while the priest felt there was little hope of recovery but did not argue against going after the kidnappers.  Each seemed to have ulterior motives driving them, and Jace couldn’t help but think of this as a riddle he needed to solve.  The situation was designed to challenge his alignment and assign him a god based on his reactions.  With this overt knowledge, it was hard to see this as anything other than a game and that the events he saw around him weren’t real.  This wasn’t actually happening.  Caitlin hadn’t existed fifteen minutes ago.  If she died, no flesh and blood father would grieve her.

He couldn’t think that way.  As fake as this world might seem to him at times, he had a real purpose in it, and treating NPCs as anything other than valuable persons whose lives and feelings were just as meaningful as any actual human would jeopardize his progress in this game and spell doom for Gracie and Conor.

The trip to the foothills took a few hours.  It was morning, the sun a couple of hours from its zenith and still mostly at their backs as they traveled west.  The tracks had been easy to follow, and even Jace could tell the difference between the human and goblin footprints.  He also noticed the human prints were well-spaced with no drag marks evident.  Caitlin seemed to be a very willing prisoner.

To Faylon’s discredit, the first warning they had that they were getting close was an arrow thudding into a tree.  Jace’s new sword was in a sheath, and he didn’t have to go into his inventory to get it.  He had not put his armor on and kept it off for now.  They were about 30 feet elevated into the hills, with several stone piles ahead that looked like the remains of rockslides.  The mounds gave good cover to their attackers, and the invaders had little protection.  It was an excellent ambush spot, but the goblin archers had fired too soon when their Flat-Footed targets were still far away.

There wasn’t much cover, but there were a few trees, and each posse member found one to hide behind.  As Faylon pulled his bow and Xavier began casting a spell, Jace pulled the arrow out of the tree he was hiding behind and popped it into his inventory so he could analyze it.  Level 2 arrow, damage 5.  He remembered that he had Damage Reduction at 12, and even a crit from the arrow wouldn’t hurt him.  He spun back around from the tree and walked into the open.

He looked over at the priest, who had just finished a spell, and Jace felt a tingle go through him.  What had he cast?  Jace went back into his inventory, knowing how Gracie had told him never to do that around enemies, but he had to know.  As he felt a few arrows bounce off him, he saw his AC had a bonus of 10, so he was at 23 right now.  The supplemental was “Protection from ranged attack.”  He should be at 28, but he was Flat-Footed because he was in his inventory.  If he cast his armor totem, he could be at 36 against arrows.

Jace left his inventory and saw half a dozen arrows flying at him.  Some missed completely, some veered away at the last second, and others hit him.  It hurt as much as being hit with a ping-pong ball.  One arrow bounced off his head like a tennis ball, hurting a little more.  Jace guessed that was a lucky critical doing ten damage, but he could absorb the hit.

“What are you?” Faylon asked as he used Jace’s distraction to pepper the goblins with arrows from his own bow.  The goblins had half cover, which offered them extra protection, but some of the half-elf’s shots still hit home and did significantly more damage.

Once the goblins noticed they were also being fired upon, they prioritized cover more, and Jace advanced slowly.  He dipped his eyes down and pulled up his spells.  It was an action that only took his eyes, and he still had full vision of the area around him.  He picked his armor totem and then dismissed the spell screen.  He saw the icon in front of his vision and played with where he could place it.  On the rocky hillside, there were dozens of suitable locations.  He also saw he could project it pretty far forward.  He guessed the limit was 96 feet since that was his current totem range.  He found a valid spot in a slight valley just before the rock piles guarding the archers and let it go.

Instantly a small stone pillar rose from the ground that looked vaguely like an armored chest plate.  A shimmering suit of armor enveloped his torso, and he strode confidently forward.  He was close enough now that the goblins shouldn’t receive any penalties for their attacks. Still, even fewer arrows found their mark, and those that did, rebounded off him violently, indicating they were critical.

This was going to be too easy, he thought.  That’s when the foot soldiers attacked.  The goblin battle cry came at him from several directions as half a dozen creatures popped up behind rocks and out of holes.  Each had a shield on one arm and an axe held in the other.  Their heads were not even waist-high to the orc, but Jace knew their weapons would still hurt.

Jace gripped his sword tightly and waited for the first one to get close.  As he did, the familiar dial popped up before him, and he swung confidently through the 20-slot.  The targeted creature dove out of the way, and the numbers shifted, but Jace had time to adjust back to the 20 and hit his leg solidly, scoring a critical.  He got a prompt asking if he wanted to triple the damage or add a stun to his opponent.  He chose extra damage, and the goblin’s leg came clean off.  He fell back to the stone, unmoving.

Jace was surprised he only did a double-critical.  If he understood the math behind it, getting a 20 in the attack was less than ten above their defense.  The extra critical was from the feat he had just taken at level 8.  He didn’t have time to think about it as he heard more enemies coming up behind him.  He spun and swung at the same time.  He found two attackers now and saw that his attack was coming in on the shield side of the closest goblin.  The 20-slot was on the opposite side of the creature, and he didn’t have time to adjust.  His sword passed through the 15 on the dial, and it looked like it would hit the goblin in the head above the shield, but the creature dodged back to slightly higher ground, and the strike bounced off the guard.

The other attacker swung his axe at Jace and connected solidly with his knee, doing some damage.  Pain shot up his leg, but it wasn’t too bad.  Jace was still dealing with the goblin on his left.  His sword strike had deflected up and over the smaller fighter, allowing him to bring it back from the right side and through the 20-slot.  The goblin dodged again, shifting the numbers at the last second.  The sword still exploded through the fighter’s axe arm, digging hard into his side but not dropping him.  In fact, the pain only seemed to enrage the goblin, and he stuck back, hitting Jace in the hip with an equally hard strike that sent considerable pain up his knee.

Jace had a sinking feeling he was in over his head.  He stayed on his current target, hitting him again through the 20.  This time he got a double crit and chose triple damage.  The creature exploded, and he pulled his sword across his body to hit the other goblin, who was already attacking again.  Jace beat him to the punch but swung too fast, missing the 20-target, which was only a narrow sliver this time.  He hit him on 19, a solid strike but not a critical one.  The goblin staggered and swung back, thankfully missing this time, but a fourth goblin was on him from behind and sent pain shooting up his back.

By now, Xavier and Faylon felt safe entering the fray.  There were two more of the soldiers that hadn’t made it to Jace yet.  Xavier hit one with a hold spell while the archer took his time to do a critical strike to the last one, stunning him in place.

Jace was breathing heavily now and noticed that the arrows hadn’t stopped.  In fact, some were hitting him hard enough to do damage.  The already injured goblin only took one more hit from Jace, and he spun back to the last one behind him.  His sword came down from above, hoping the 20 would be high.  It wasn’t, and Jace only managed an 18.  It was enough to hit but not incapacitate; however, the lone goblin missed his retaliation and didn’t live long enough to attack again.

Jace saw that Faylon was taking care of the one Xavier had stunned, and the priest cast another spell against his target.  The orc ignored them and took a few running steps toward the archers.  Their arrows again bounced off him, and they scattered when he crashed into their perch.  They didn’t have the melee strength of the fighters nor the armor protection, and Jace dealt with them easily.  Each 20 was a triple crit, and even a four on the dial hit them.

He looked up to see his companions had finished off their opponents and were walking toward him.  “What were you thinking?” Faylon asked.  “Is this the first time you’ve ever been in combat?”

Jace didn’t want to admit that it was and kept his mouth shut.

“You are made of tough stuff, to be sure, but even goblins can be deadly if you let them flank you.”

So there was flanking in the game.  That was how the goblins had been getting critical strikes against him so frequently.  At one point, there were three of them around him at once.  That was when the archers had been breaking through his Damage Reduction with what must have been triple damage crits.

“Next time, let me soften them up first,” Faylon advised.  “They can’t dodge arrows.”

Jace remembered he had a Dodge skill, and it was very low.  It was tied to Dexterity, and he guessed these goblins had a considerable bonus to it.  Each one had been jumping or rolling out of the way when he had attacked.  Good to know you can’t dodge arrows.

Jace saw movement out of the corner of his eye, but before he turned his head, he caught a flash of light in his peripheral.  Just like when he rolled his eyes up and down and could find a menu screen, he now discovered that when he moved his eyes left and right, he could pull over his health or mana.  He was distraught to see his health at almost half.

The movement to his left had been the priest approaching.  Xavier looked like he wanted to add his own criticism to Jace’s poor battle tactics, but he just rolled his eyes and cast a healing spell on the shaman.

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