Home Beneath #1

Author's Note: Meet Varveha. Level 1 and just beginning what will, some day, become her adventures in the world beyond. YouTube link above provided for culturally-appropriate mood music.

Character sheet, circa level 3
- Varveha 

[story]

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They’re coming. You can feel it in the air -- the tension across every goblin’s shoulders, the slight widening of their eyes. The eagerness with each breath they take, to see what’s come from beyond the Ghostbite Warrens.

The Road-Raiders are returning from an expedition to the outside. The most fierce, the most savage, the most deadly warriors goblinkind has to offer. Hyena riders. Since you were young, you’ve never wanted to be anything worse -- while others of your kind devoted their lives to the Great Bright Thing under the warrens, fled to the cities to become burglars or brigands, or were content to remain as laborers, you want more. You want to be one of the Road-Raiders, the lifeblood of the warrens; stealthy, beast-riding warriors with strange powers. The closest thing your kind has to knights. Your heart beats in your chest, bright golden eyes flickering off into the torchlit caverns beyond your own room.

“Room,” of course, is a relative term -- like all whelps, you share a den with six others, a cramped section of cave no more than ten feet in diameter. Two small, stone tables for games and meals dominate the room’s center, while hollowed slots in the glistening clay walls house the clumps of sod, straw, soft clay, and scavenged cloth that make up your beds. You roll over onto your side, tucked neatly into your own nook as you watch the other young goblins start to grow more anxious, a few even making their way out of their den and to the front of the warren, joining the growing swarm of curious men and women.

“What you think they brought, sleepy?” comes a voice from beneath you, but one familiar to you. Blinking, you hook your long fingers over the edge of your sleeping-hole and peek out over it, looking down to see Maskki, one of your den-mates, her mild green face now sporting a wide, hopeful grin, her bottom fangs barely visible. Maskki’s a priestess -- or she wants to be, at least, having not yet taken the tests and trials necessary to serve the White Beneath. Pretty for one of your kind, and slender, her jet-black hair dangling around her in a mess of loose, straight tails.

You blink, chewing your lip briefly and thinking. Food? Supplies? Whatever the Road-Raiders bring will have to be what sustains the warren for the moon to come. “New blankets maybe?” you grunt, scampering down out of your literal hole in the wall, dressed in only the loose hide rags that most peasantry wore, yours being dipped in a crude, pale purple dye that leaves blotches of tan and starchy white visible beneath. “Oh, oh, no! Beer!”

“Ohhhh! Ah-ah! Yes!” Maskki squawks excitedly, taking your hand to help you down. “Hope they get here soon. Could run out, but...” her vivid orange eyes shift over towards the horde of goblins funneling like rats through the cavern paths to the moonlit world beyond. Too dense to get through, unless you really tried. “Oh-oh! Got food from troughs. Nobody around, everyone going outside. Easy to snatch a lot. You want?”

With the excitement of the raiding party’s return, you hadn’t thought about food. Your stomach immediately begins to burble like a hissing cave-swamp, and the answer comes easily to your lips. “Yes! What you got?”

“All the crunchies and goods,” Maskki grins widely, this time showing off all of her cutely crooked teeth and prominent upper and lower canines. Tucking her black-dyed tunic up beneath her, she knees down at one of the tables -- drawing a distinction between which was for dining and which was for gaming was a task nobody seemed to be up for -- and withdrawing a roll of burlap from her belt pouch.

Unrolling it revealed what, to you, may as well be a feast. Bog-crickets from the fetid pools deep beneath the warrens, roasted and spiced. Long strips of dried lizard meat taken from drow riding-beasts, the only good thing to come from a dark elf skirmish on the warren half a moon ago. Hard black nuts from last moon’s road-raid. And most specially, a clump of stirge eggs -- deep red, jelly-like orbs packed in spicy oat-moss, a very rare delicacy. “How you get these?” you gasp softly, quickly snatching up one of the eggs and popping it into your mouth, piercing its gooey outer coating with one pointed fang and filling your mouth with the spicy, salty ooze within.

“Like I said, everyone off to see raiders,” Maskki explains, grinning widely as she withdraws a second item from her pouch -- this one a small, clay flask of sporebrew, a simple beverage made from cave fungus that, while it may not taste spectacular, will get a goblin drunk as good as anything else. Popping the lid off, she takes a deep swig of it before handing it to you. “Nobody watching the troughs. Nobody watching if Maskki grabs from the prince-plates.”

You stifle a small gasp. The prince-plates hold special food, only for chieftains, advisers, priestesses. Hobgoblin war-thinkers. Visiting bugbears. It’s a miracle that Maskki didn’t get caught. “You lucky,” you smirk, grabbing one of the roasted crickets and crunching it between your teeth, washing it down with a swig of the yeasty, sour sporebrew. “Maybe less goblins all the time... not so bad. Better food.” Your grin widens, quickly returned by the budding priestess.

The sound of cheering from outside the warrens catches your ear, and you turn your head to glance toward the network of stone and clay tunnels that lead to the exit. Not shouts of war, but joy. The Road-Raiders are finally back -- though, for the moment, you’re comfortable in your den, and in pleasant company as well.

What do you do?