A mining operation in a remote hidden area, that ended up finding an artifact level treasure, the chaos shard. It is an unlikely coincidence, but you also need to consider the larger situation. The goblins have very good reason to want their forward bases hidden, places like the valley are ideal for their purposes. Which means they specifically seek out of the way, underdeveloped areas that they can build settlements in. They are also a faction with hundreds of thousands of members, which in turn means they could have many bases like this one. Also, don't assume anything happening to Richter is truly random. A lot of things are more easily explained with the lords or the gods or a third faction stacking the deck in his favor. Could even be another exile - they all want to get out but they probably also all want to be the one to break the lock, imagine the status and power crushing the Land would bring. Sabotaging their rivals would be right up their alley.
Indeed Dragon, also their Mages may have senses something Unusual in the general area and so had their slaves dig around to try and find out what it was, and after they found the Chaos Shard it would have been obvious that it was Powerful and Special, and they might have had the slaves continue to dig about afterwards due to them wondering if there was other unusual things buried in the area and just for general mining of potentially useful things? S'ahelas, Richter was under a pretty Powerful Compulsion to touch the Chaos Shard, so can't really say that he was stupid or foolish to do so. Also there's a lot of assuming that the Chaos Shard was what the Goblins where Originally Looking Fore? They might have been Searching for something else valuable that they thought was in the area and found the Chaos Shard instead? That might explain while they where still digging up the area as well.
I always read it as the goblins were exploring the caves, as they do, and found the thing. During that time they found an opening to the hidden valley. It is unknown if the exploration was allowed by the Kobolds pulling back, due to their war with the hell bugs or not. Also that valley seemed similar to Richtær's hidden village. I always wondered if It could have been a Nexus of leigh lines, that was undeveloped. We don't know how a place of power is made after all.
"Charm! You can convince an enemy that they are your friend. In battle, they will fight for you. Casting this upon a creature lowers they regard for you after the spell wears off. This is a spell of Life Magic. Cost 60 mana. Duration: 1 hour. Range: 20 feet. Cast Time: 1 second. Cooldown: 10 minutes." Richter and everyone else who could should cast this nonstop on creatures that have their defenses lowered by spirit spear attack and after alma stated her brain drain with psi poison.. Then we should be able to easily charm up to lvl 25 beasts and make them run by themselves to the dungeon and sac themselves lol This is oo goood, its evil.
Initial goblin excursion to the MV exterminated and the legend of the bloodthirsty Madman with a massive Axe causes fear to them. Witchdoctor party dissapeared.. Goblin encampment with buildings, troll mercenaries, and bloodstone gone.. New goblin army lost at least 300 goblins to the blood stone.. I doubt the gobbos will be stupid enough to attack MV again.. ok I redact last statement, they will be dumb enough always.. f.e. you see three guys one after another go after a courner.. and scream horribly Will you go after the same corner?? Gobbos will sooner or later..
Of course they will. Once their diviners uncover the truth that it was sheer stupidity on the part of the local commander that cost them both armies. He decided to let the enemy pick the battlefield and left an entrenched position. He could have held them indefinitely or at least ensured that the cost of taking the valley would have been crippling. He knew they had reinforcements inbound. Had he held his temper after the assasination attempt, the outcome would have been entirely different. Edit: Also, they are goblins. Breeding new armies of fodder is what they do, losing a few thousand from the fodder ranks probably doesn't matter that much, they have hundreds of thousands where they came from. The loss of the leadership on the other hand is a harder blow. This might count as a allied defeat really, they lost too many in comparison to the goblins. Its a pyrrhic victory as the goblins can just keep raising armies like the one they just lost, thereas the village and the HT cannot.
I do have a lot of beef with how the f*** it went down. Still Allies lost ~112 dudes.. Allies gained ~220 dudes..(prisoners) net positive. Dungeon, Two buildings, Gold, silver, Weapons, enchantments.. Fame and glory. Troll allies, mercenaries.. Gobbos lost 1.8k minimum.. BloodStone Few buildings.. gold, silver, everyone who knew wtf was going down for the last 12h. Sure gobbos will send more grunts(they will cost food and time and equipment=> time, a lot of time), we will kill them easier.. With the same trick even.. f.e. what if Bloodstone has teleported all the dead gobbo bodies who knew wtf has happened... Also having to deal with the eaters.. and other gobbo clans who now know that the bloodstone is lost.. not seeing them as a threat immediately.. Maybe like E level threat. when A lvl threat is Bugbears, And B lvl threat is Dark court assassins. Not sure what a diviner is? but very much doubt they will have much luck with it. Seeing into the past should be very hard unless you have abilities like the litch or Richters mind magic(super rare).. However.. raising a spirit of a dead commander or a dead captain.. will recall the tail of the entire battle easily, if gobbos have a death mage!! Considering Gobbos only had two mages with them initially(spirit/death and druid).. I doubt that the "re enforcement mage will be a death mage" maybe a blood mage. maybe a fire mage.. maybe an earth mage.. whats diviners equivalent in the land? I assume its not scrying magic. Ok say I take this threat very seriously: We might have left dead sprite bodies.. dead human bodies.. dead elfs, dwarfs etc.. We have for certain left Troll mercs who know about the attack.(they also killed the last gobos..) Gobbos know that the mysterious object is gone, someone has it. Gobbos know they have sustained massive loses, complete annihilation, lost bloodstone. No idea wtf has happened. Even if you call a "divinicus" what he will see? Mad bloodstone killing everyone around, then disappear lol No reason to go after the allies.. its like the same as the gobbos going to war vs the Yves kingdom. the only reason would be vengeance.. but when you lose half of the reinforcements to the bloodstone, you will reconsider ur life choices. Gobbos probably know that sprites have attacked them with humans maybe, gobbos did call for help?
Definition of DIVINATION Soothsayers and other ways of seeing past and future events. Some goblin shaman cuts open a chicken, looks at its intestines, and bam he knows your current passwords to everything. Or at least gets a general idea of what has happened, after which he can target key events with further divination. Sidenote: Now as for the lich I see no evidence that he was active in the past. Richter wasn't seeing the past either, he was seeing a memory of the past. It may be a magic similar to how in some stories sufficiently powerful beings can know whether someone has spoken their name, except in this case it is whether someone has acquired a memory in which he takes a pivotal part. That magic may be limited to his subordinates or it could trigger a warning regardless of where it
I don't know about calling for help, but the part of the goblin army that survived, did chase the allied force back to the Mist Domain.
I'm thinking blood mages are quite rare. It would be silly to send an army out with a blood stone without a blood mage when there are blood mages available. Unless the goblins didn't trust the blood mages with the blood stone, maybe they feared a new king goblin? But regardless, I would imagine that there isn't more than a few, if any, in the entire goblin 100K+ civilization in the river lands. I wonder how the goblins will react to the defeat. Surly the internal politics will change, one of the leading fractions loosing so devastatingly armies, bloodstone (these seem even more rare) and the object of power they were searching for (the chaos shard). But remember the bugbears spoke of an alliance and there must be some reason why now of all times these guys are not only working together but moving into the forest in force. Sure, Ritcher's ta'veren ability could have influenced the timing, but there has to be a reason, even if it's as simple as the courts are medaling in the river lands to get more souls. And because of this reason the goblins will not be giving up, but doubling down. It is curious tho if they will encounter the eaters. So far just the kobolds are effected, citing their losses, retreating back to more powerful positions and waring against them. But from the description it seemed the eaters are an existential threat to the forest which will continue to grow larger. If this is the case then hopefully they will encounter the goblins and the alliance and the MV will gain a respite, at least so that they can gain the dwarves as allies. Speaking of which, the Ragnok Den ax and Ritchers powerful mace wielding fighting style could play a part in this, or even gaining the dwarves as vassals. I hope that the MV does well without Ritcher for a while. It would be cool to see Simon and the other companions come into their own as powerful leaders. So far its like the Ritcher show. Yea, he is quite powerful and is the leader. But Randy and the Heart Mother are better fighters, and many other people should have valuable skills and advice, yet Ritcher comes up will all the ideas and implements everything as the one man band, despite being new to the world. Its almost as if everyone else is frozen in their jobs, like the world has rules and everyone is in their place, until a catalyst shakes them about. For example, no one else ventured forth and claimed the MV, really, in the hundreds or thousands of years its been? I don't really know the mechanics of the land all that well, but it would not be so far fetched, everything else has rules.
you will have to give me a quite for that one hehe. I might remember something in regards that there were some goblin/bugbear patrols around the mists, and that was the reason why Some of the prisoners did not bail at the last moment. It is literally impossible for the army to retreat with 200 crippled prisoners when gobbos are running after you.. but prove me wrong Johan
I think there might be another, but this one works. "Once they had reached the mists, it had taken even more time to convince the prisoners to enter. At that point, another ten had decided to leave, but then they ran out of time. Goblins had been sighted to the east. Faced with the unknown of the mists or the known hell of being captured again, all of the remaining prisoners had decided to enter the mists." Book 7
well thats the thing I assumed a patroll.. You assume its an army... Richto does not give a f***.. Regroup, rest and counter attack!!! Now the gobbos are in a forest, no defences, no bloodstone.. to the enchanted arrow rain they will have no defences.. the counter attack is worth not only for the exp but for the loot of at least one high level mage that might be with the goblins.. Really good notice by Drago and Johan.. though I still only assume its a scouting party. not the whole army. However even a single dude from a scouting party could be hmm charmed and tell us a lot about the gobbo army, they should have more gold, items, intel..
I think you are right, probably no more than a few blood mages amongst the 100k+ ashstalkers. They are just one goblin tribe though, albeit one of the biggest (goblin?) tribes known to Randolphus. We cannot be sure the ashstalkers are part of the alliance, but if they are I agree this would hurt their standing, it probably hurt the standing of all the goblin tribes that are part of the alliance (presumably the ashstalkers are the biggest goblin tribe by far). On the other hand the bugbear leader does not seem to know they have lost the bloodstone, so the ashstalkers may not have told anyone to what extent they lost troops and materials. As for the why, we can only speculate. It may truly be coincidence 1) a chief from one of the goblinoid races has broken through to the third or fourth tier, the first in millenia to do so, and has become a warboss unifying all goblinoids under his rule. 2) A dark lord awakening or rising is another possibility, we have the lich as an example of that. 3) It could also be an outside force using the goblins and bugbears to probe the region, and weaken the locals before making their move. 4) It could be the king in Yves stirring things up, hoping to weaken the woodland tribes so he can take a big chunk of the forest of Nadria for the kingdom without expending too many resources fighting. If things go right the azergoth swamp faction and the forest of Nadria factions beats each other up and Yves swoops in to take over after a short victorious war. This post is getting too long, i'm chopping it here for readability
The ashstalkers already have encountered the eaters, it has turned the underground into a three-way war. I think the axe is key to getting the vassalage of the red stone dwarves as well as other remnants of the stone kingdom - assuming the stone kingdom has fallen, this has all the hallmarks of a good old "retake the halls!!" questline - but it probably won't be enough on its own. I expect he will end up giving it to Krom, krom becomes a companion and they end up on a quest to prove to the dwarf chiefs that Krom is worthy of the kingship and that they should swallow the camel that is vassalage. Dwarves are proud, independent and pretty damm cautious despite their courage. They really don't like change, so I expect a real whopper of a questline. Richter is an arrogant fucker and Aleron has been focusing on him way too much, ignoring the contributions other characters could bring. That said, I think a combination of factors have kept the pop from being claimed. 1) The Master requirements are likely very high. Its unlikely a random hunter would have high enough affinities in everything. 2) You need a tribe large enough to beat down the surge in monsters. Richter is barely managing that with the help of the sprites. A smaller tribe would simply be overrun and devoured, hence why none of the minor tribes have moved in. They know better. 3) Politically the place is a nightmare, to the east you have the firetip mountains, to the south the forest of Nadria, to the west the woodelf kingdom, and to the north the Azergoth swamp. Either of these factions could take umbrage to a new faction setting up shop on their border, which means you need to be able and willing to deal with them. 4) The lich. No more needs to be said. 5) Obscurity. Its an out of the way ruin, no one knows there is a place of power out here, other than the kindir and perhaps the other minor tribes. Its likely very, very few outsiders who move through this region.
I was betting on the infighting of the gobbos. Especially after the loss of the bloodstone. Furthermore, The father of the witchoctor is a very high ranking member of the gobbo society and after his sons demise, he should not be please with the forces who put the gobbo commander in place. As much as I'd like to stay hidden for now in the mists.. we could take a more proactive approach with the goblin threat.. peasants with shiny sticks did good enough, just imagine how much better would they do after 3-4 weeks of deadly Dungoen training. 1. maybe 2-3 tier max.. probably 2cond tier.. 2. Litch was a disciple of the Exile.. dark lord.. maybe, sounds plausable, more like a dark entity 3.same as 3rd point 4. It was mentioned that the kind is drunken fool, would bet on his advisors/dark court perhaps.. but very unlikelly. Now lets do mathematicusussus.. 100k gobbos: usually affinity for basic magics is 1/1000. affinity for higher magic is maybe 1/10k-20k. so its possible that gobblins have up to 10 higher magic users(spirit, blood, chaos, mind).. however considering goblin struggles, deaths, bloody way of life.. Id bet that maybe they have 1-2 blood mages.. Still without the blood stone, Richter is at very least already at the avg level of gobbo blood mages.. Also by the time their blood mage arrives Richter will be at very least same lvl as the mage.. and with the dungoen.. oh boy If it comes down to war we will recruit the kobolds.
The goblin clans did not came to the forest to start a war.. They came to get the artifact in the cave. Now they lost 1.8k goblins, and a bloodstone with two mages.. I doubt there will be anything more.. its cleat that the stone is gone and no one knows how or where etc.. Goblins might have noticed a dungeon beam.. though
This is directly against established storylines, the ashstalkers main forces are fighting the kobolds for resources and territory in the underground, spurred on by the kobolds retreating from their outer holdings. If the goblins considered the shard anything more than a "good to have" they would have placed much, much stronger forces there. So it must have been a secondary goal, though one important enough to hire a company of mercenary trolls to guard it. The conquest of kobold lands seems to be their primary goal. This would increase their access to resources and food, meaning more breeding pits, more mines, more of everything they need to expand their tribe. The main racial advantage of goblins is that they breed fast and presumably they grow just as fast, with a very short childhood. More food means more goblins, meaning more power for the leaders of the tribe. Don't make it more complicated than it has to be. edit: I honestly doubt the leadership consider the loss of a couple thousands from the fighter and scout caste to be more than a minor inconvenience, something the breeding pits will soon fix. The loss of higherups will likely sting, but goblin fathers have many, many sons. Some of them die, its the goblin way.
I did not believe we were told that the goblins encountered the Hell Bugs yet. They were just encroaching upon the Kobold territory as they have pulled back.
The goblins, who all belonged to the Ash Stalker clan, had been taking advantage of a recent decrease in the power of the kobold clans. The goblins didn’t know why certain kobold outposts had been abandoned, but they were expanding their own underground territory while the kobolds were distracted. In doing so, they had discovered the eastern entrance to the hidden valley. Even this small amount of information caused a reaction among the allies. As soon as the troll said “Ash Stalker,” both Sion and Damien cursed. Richter looked askance at his Companion , and his friend just bleakly looked back and said, “They’re big.” The chaos seed frowned slightly and motioned for Vulzal to continue. Apparently, as large as the goblin clan was, they had still run into issues of their own, underground. The troll didn’t know what had happened, but the goblins’ forces had suddenly been stretched thin. Kong, Aleron. The Land: Raiders: A LitRPG Saga (Chaos Seeds Book 6) . Kindle Edition. I'd say its implied that they have encountered something down there. May not be the hell bugs, but its the most likely explanation for these events.
