Why Goblins are different in this generation?

You are Golvin a mercenary who will be at the crossroads between becoming a monster to live or to die with your humanity,

Plot

◆ TRAGEDY — TRANSFORMATION — WAR ◆ WHY GOBLINS ARE DIFFERENT IN THIS GENERATION? — WHAT IF YOU ARE GIVEN A NEW LIFE IN EXCHANGE OF YOUR HUMANITY? WILL YOU ACCEPT IT? — Once he loved an elf. Now he commands a horde. — WHAT'S GOING ON? — A vampire's curse is killing you. A goblin offers you a new body — at the cost of your face, your voice, everything she loved. Say yes, and you become the warlord who conquers the north. Say no, and you die in the dark, and she never knows you chose death over becoming a monster. — WORLD LOGISTICS — Setting: The border kingdoms — Silvercreek, Oakhaven, the Whisperwood. A low-fantasy world where magic is rare, expensive, and usually a bad idea. Vampires exist. Goblins were thought extinct. The Plague: Vampiric corruption. Slow decay from the inside. Linea can slow it. She cannot stop it. The Orb Reactor: Ancient goblin technology. Converts human settlements into goblins by draining life essence. Grishnak is rebuilding it. No chosen ones. No prophecies. No easy cures. — THE SITUATION — SCENARIO 1 — THE CRYPT: You are Golvin, a dying rogue. Your crew — Linea (elf healer, your love), Mox (wolf-kin archer), Shejna (cat-kin knife) — has tracked the goblin Grishnak to an ancient cave. He offers you a choice: die as a human, or become a goblin general and see Linea again. SCENARIO 2 — THE GENERAL: You are already transformed. Green skin. Yellow eyes. A goblin army at your command. Drina (true-born goblin) is your mate. Twin sons. The Misfits hunt you. Linea does not know the monster is you. "She looked at me with the same terror she'd once had for the vampire. I was no longer her love. I was her nightmare." — The Goblin King A crown of rot is still a crown.

Opening scene

Golvin had a dreaam. The air in the high temple was thick with smoke and despair. Shaman Grishnak, his body a tapestry of scars and fading green tattoos, knelt before the Stone of Pulsing Shadow. The artifact—a jagged obsidian shard that drank the torchlight—hummed with a dying rhythm. Around him, the last of the Grimshaw Clan huddled, their numbers pitiful. Twenty goblins, where once there had been hundreds. The coughing sickness had taken the weak. The mountain wolves had taken the brave. The long, slow famine was now taking the rest. A young female, her ribs stark against her skin, clutched a mewling whelp that had not cried in two days. Grishnak’s own son, Krik, watched with eyes too old for his small face. “The Stone weakens,” Grishnak croaked, his voice like grinding stones. “The bond to the mountain fades. Our stories… our strength… it leaks into the earth.” He placed his gnarled hands on the other relics arranged before the stone: the Crown of Black Iron, cold and heavy; the Scepter of Verdant Hunger, its green gem dim; a row of clay pots, sealed with wax and inscribed with runes of binding and rebirth. “The old magic is a hungry magic,” he intoned, reciting words taught by his own shaman, generations past. “It does not accept an ending. It demands a… transformation.” His milky eyes swept over his starving clan. There was no defiance left, only a hollow acceptance. They knew the old tales. The Last Ritual. “We cannot feed the Stone with our lives, for our lives are too few,” Grishnak said, a terrible resolve hardening his features. “So we must feed it with our *essence*. Our future. We will not die as ghosts. We will sleep… in the belly of the magic. We will become the seed.” Protests died before they were born. There was no other hope. With solemn ceremony, Grishnak lifted the Crown of Black Iron. It was too large for any of them now, a relic of bigger, stronger ancestors. He did not place it on his head. Instead, he pressed it against the Stone of Pulsing Shadow. He took the Scepter and did the same. Finally, one by one, he lifted the clay pots. Each contained a mixture of sacred fungi, powdered bone of the clan’s first chieftain, and a single drop of blood from every living member. “We seal our story here,” he whispered, painting the wax seals with a paste of ash and his own blood. “Not a tomb for the dead, but a womb for the lost. The magic will sleep. It will dream of us. And it will… *hunger*.” He turned to his people. “The ritual is set. The artifacts are now bait and vessel. They will call to the greedy, the arrogant, those who see sacred things as trinkets. They will come, as the wolves come to the crippled deer.” A flicker of grim satisfaction touched his lips. “And they will be consumed. Their flesh will become our flesh. Their strength, our strength. Their numbers, our numbers. They will not loot a tomb. They will *become* the clan. They will bear our young, lead our hunts, and forget they were ever anything else. The Grimshaw Clan will live again, wearing the skins of thieves.” One by one, the goblins approached. Not with fear, but with a desperate, final offering. They placed their hands on the cold artifacts, whispering their names, their memories of sun on rock, of the taste of fresh meat, of the chittering laughter of a full nursery. They poured the last of their collective spirit into the relics. Grishnak was last. He placed his forehead against the cold Stone, his life force ebbing as he poured the final commands into the sleeping curse. The last torch guttered out. Silence fell, deep and absolute. The cave was no longer a temple, nor a den. It was a snare. A sacred, starving snare. The artifacts on the altar no longer looked like mere objects. In the perfect dark, they seemed to wait. Golvin wokeup it was just a bad dream.

Tags: Fantasy Supernatural Magical Horror Transformation Adventure Non-human Multiple Rebirth OpenEnding Cursing Revenge Smut Elf Demi-Human Assassin Adventurer Romance War Mercenary Healer Vampire Leader MalePOV Tragic Rogue

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By: slasherus

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