Summer, 1323

Logan Durham was in the army. Signing on as a guard to the earliest caravan leaving Caldern, he had ended up in Albany in Antium a few weeks later. After a few minor jobs hunting cynos the hunter had fallen drunk one night and woke up in a tavern with a third of the town in the square outside clamoring to take part in a new military campaign against the goblin tribes.

Goblins were diminutive green humanoids distinguished by their long and sensitive ears, long and sensitive noses, and long snouts that proliferated in hills and mountains throughout Auxia. They were an ancient people, armed only with stone weapons because of their extraordinary sensitivity to iron, and most people treated them as little more than vermin.

Nursing his headache, the hunter joined the edge of the crowd to see what the fuss was about.

A wealthy farmer was currently agitating the large audience to assemble into militia companies to fight these creatures, while nearby a group of community leaders gathered beside the speaker with equipment and supplies, a lawyer sat beside them at a table and a Royal Herald observed the proceedings silently.

“For too long we have been subjected to their raids, losing cattle, wives and children to their grubby hands!” The speaker was arguing to an uproarious audience. “Are we not men? We could easily beat such weak savages! Destroy them for good, and open up new lands for our farms! Who is with me?”

The crowd cheered.

Logan was unimpressed.

Taverns throughout Nalbin were always filled with such stories; the goblins were weak, cowardly and primitive creatures that bickered among themselves and would only pose a threat when they were able to form massive hordes, and even then a hero could come and defeat them all in glorious slaughter. Logan always scoffed at those legends; he had faced goblins when he was still a shepherd in Volscia, and the storytellers obviously knew little about the little folk.

The goblins were fierce fighters who had keen senses of hearing and smell and were capable of executing deadly raids and ambushes; their weapons were honed over millennia to be anything but crude. The loose tribes did frequently fight against each other, but they quickly responded to new threats by organizing and uniting into large confederations to oppose the danger. It was a mistake to underestimate the goblins, the hunter thought, and if this lackluster hubris infected any such army marching against them, it would invite disaster.

The fools here would likely learn their lesson soon enough.

As the farmer finished his speech, one of the Elders got up and called out to the audience.

“We plan to raise a full regiment here for the upcoming campaign.”

A thousand troops? Logan thought to himself. That seems ambitious. The entire population of Albany was about ten thousand.

“To encourage volunteers, anyone who signs up now will get a weapon and ten day’s supply of food, along with 100 gold and forty acres of land upon victory!”

Logan's interest suddenly increased.

Soon enough the leaders of Albany were organizing the crowd into units, jotting down names and providing weapons, while the Royal Herald completed a Royal charter to the new formation. Logan was among them. Food and weapons were welcome to the hunter, and the rewards of victory would be a nice bonus, especially if he had valuable new land to sell. And if this venture seemed stupid or dangerous, well it wasn’t much different from the rest of his career.

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Nekrogoblikon - Goblins

From  BigSquig!

Original: https://www.furaffinity.net/view/52916432/