NationStates Jolt Archive


The Great Goblin War (MT thing thread)

Enraged Goblins
18-08-2007, 01:25
The Great Goblin War was not, perse, a single war. Actually, it was a whole bunch of wars which had, as various Goblin tribes and clans came into contact with one another, sort of melded into a huge brawl in which alliances often shifted sides, traded land, backstabbed, frontstabbed, sidestabbed and performed various other types of political trickery combined with the rather vicious battles which went on both above in below ground.
Goblins are GREAT at digging, its their third favorite activity, right after sex, which comes as a close second to fighting. They say drinking isnt on the list because you can drink while doing any of those activities, if youve got a good sense of multitasking and your partners dont mind getting splashed occasionally. Its said that REALLY talented Goblins fight and have sex at the same time while drunk in holes they dig for that purpose. This should not come as a terrible suprise to anybody who knows much about Goblin psychiology, because they would know that almost all Goblins will try pretty much anything once. Usually thats the last time they try ANYTHING.
This is the reason that the first meaningful actions in this particular chronical of Goblin fighting take place in a handy clearing roughly fifty miles from the Brightshield Clans border with the Twostars Clan. In this clearing, there is a scaffolding.
In this scaffolding, which is crawling with Goblins, there are a number of tubes centered around what appears to be the scavenged and mutilated body of some sort of heavy bomber, stripped of a number of essential items. Its wings appear to have been modified to fold against the body. Presumably this device is designed to fly. How exactly is anybodys guess, but there do seem to be a lot of barrels marked with one of the Goblins favorite runes scattered around. It looks something like a Goblin being horribly blown apart by an explosion, but more stylized so as not to offend human audiences.
There is also some screaming going on. It seems that the stripped-down rocket-bombers pilot is somewhat reticent to embark upon his mission. Indeed, he is quite vocal in his oppositions and has gone so far as to sink his claws into the sides of the door while a team of Goblins attempts to shove him inside the cockpit of the heavily modified aircraft.
With a final effort, the last-minute panic has been overcome, the door sealed (and padlocked) and, in between pleaing to be let out, the Goblin in the rocket seems to have more or less finished his pre-launch checklist under threat of launching the thing anyway if he didnt.
The few Goblins remaining clear out rather quickly, staying only to pay respects as a priest of the God of Things that Explode performs the Ritual of Not Exploding and Horribly Killing and/or Maiming the Occupant, which consists of a long drink of some very fine Goblin ale.
Once the unconcious priest was removed, there was some scrambling underneath the platform as a cocktail of chemicals which even Goblins were generally a little careful with was pumped into the central fuel tanks of the rocket. Occasionally a drop would fizz out of the connecting sockets, where it would fizz loudly on the floor and evaporate rather quickly after eating a hole a few inches deep in the concrete.
A few minutes later, pretty much all the Goblins within a few miles of the launch site were holding their breath. A slip-up now would almost certainly generate an intense, albiet brief, feeling of pain for anybody in the blast radius.
A loudspeaker buzzed to life, crackling a bit as the Goblin on the other end spoke.
"Everyfin's ready fer da launchin' so now we'z startin' dis countdown fingy. If ye'r still in th' launch fing, get cher stupid butt outta there a'fore it 'splodes or somefin'." A pause for breath, followed by, "Now da countdown is startin. T-Minus one million!"
CRACK
It is difficult to render in text the precise sound made by a microphone impacting on a Goblin skull, but assume that crack covers it.
"-kin' idiot...ahem, dis's Aux-il-ary lunch-tek-ni-shun Kerf. I'll be doin' th' countdown." There was a sound as of paper rustling, like somebody sorting through notes.
"Err...five! Lets see...uh...four!" A longer pause, acompanied by whispering, "Three! Two! An' dis's...uh...One!"
For a moment, nothing happened.
A moment later, nothing was still happening.
Six minutes, fourty two seconds later, nothing was happening EXCEPT that a Goblin in what looked like plate armor was waddling across the field around the rocket, looking nervous. He approached the rocket.
And kicked it.
Then the world exploded.
A constant stream of swearing over the rockets radio indicated that its pilot was alive and well, and a brief pause in the swearing conveyed the discharge of the solid fuel boosters, reported at this point because, although they were still on the launch pad, the Goblin in the rocket had been too distracted to report their successful detachment.
The next stage was pretty simple, the fuel ran out. The Goblin pilot was then supposed to extend the wings and glide to safety, thereby proving that strapping a few tons of high explosive to a highly modified airplane was a perfectly safe way to travel.
This was where the flaw was revealed.
The wings were attached to the solid fuel boosters.
So while the Goblin in the unfourtunate not-glider frantically searched for a parachute (handily located in the main fuel tanks), a number of highly acredited Goblin scientists got together and began working on plans to construct a set of wings which could survive the high speeds attained by the rocket plane, while being constructed of nothing except navigational charts, control sticks and duct tape.
They got as far as designing the feathers before the rocket crashed.
Fourtunatly for the pilot, he managed to survive to test another rocket plane through an accident of fate which left his vehicle handily located in the Mount Cizkt cesspit. Many thousands of years of organic waste safely cushioned his fall so well that a number of Goblin scientists considered packing it into parachute backpacks. However, Goblin pilots refused to fly into combat wearing 'shit sacks' on their backs, so the plan was scrapped.
However, the goblin rocket plane was successfully redesigned to not only have wings and be able to land with some success, but to carry as many Goblins as could be crammed into the main cabin, wings and cockpit. This could be quite a lot of Goblins.