Gerald sat facing Murdet in his campaign tent surrounded by other general officers. Daniel was missing from the gathering, as he was still recovering from his ordeal. "How the hell did this happen Gerald?" Murdet wondered aloud as he gulped ale from a mug. Gerald was currently the subject of several hostile gazes from Lord Kayer's group. They still did not understand the gravity of finding and eradicating a goblin warren hole. They probably mistook the question and assumed Murdet was stringing Gerald out to dry. The army had suffered much higher losses than they would have against simple tribal forces - close to a 10% casualty rate, decimating Murdet's forces long before they had even arrived at the capitol.
Gerald contemplated this in silence for a few moments and replied, "There was no way we could have known that an actual warren was here Count. We were lucky beyond belief to have stumbled upon it..."
"Lucky?" Kayer scoffed, "We were most unfortunate indeed that you chose this route. Nearly 2,700 men dead because of this blunder and we haven't even left our own duchy!"
Murdet looked at Gerald, staying silent and waiting to see what the banneret would say in response.
"Kayer, you're almost as stupid as you are ugly. Did no one in that poverty stricken barony of yours ever even mention what a goblin warren is?"
"I don't like your tone or your words. Know your place before I instruct you on it!" Kayer responded hotly and the tent got very quiet.
Gerald considered Kayer for a moment or two. Then he casually reached into his jacket and pulled a pipe from the pocket and stuck it in his mouth. "Interesting," he grunted over the pipe clenched in his teeth. "For a moment there, it seemed like you wanted satisfaction," Gerald spoke casually - too casually Murdet noticed.
"Enough." sighed Count Murdet. "Any other day and I would let you two figure this out properly - hell I'd even make turn it into a festival tournament," Murdet glanced at Kayer who was red hot with rage and gripping the hilt of his sheathed long sword tightly as if he would like to do nothing more than slay Gerald - who was currently fishing around for a light for his pipe without a care in the world. "Kayer sit down," Murder grunted.
"Gerald, explain for the rest of them what this means and why it was ultimately a good thing for the Kingdom that we found the warren when we did. And be nice about it," Murder ordered.
"Very well Count. Gentlemen, this is our Duchy, obviously. We are currently moving 27,000 men away from their homes and weakening its overall defense, in service to the king," Gerald spoke as he coaxed a spark into his pipe and took a deep drag, blowing the smoke from his nose and leaning back into his chair as he got into his lecturing mode.
"That means that we have left... what amounts to roughly 30,000 professional fighting men and 70,000 levies behind - a not insignificant number at all. Any of Hexenguard's neighbors would be hard pressed to defeat an army of 100,000 men lead by the Duke himself before reinforcements arrived from the rest of the kingdom. It is a mighty force." Gerald gestured around him with the stem of his pipe.
"All of whom would have been slaughtered in bits and pieces if that Warren had continued to grow," Gerald said casually, and the room grew quite still as they tried to process that information.
"We were fortunate indeed to have caught that Warren as it overflowed and not a day or hour later. Stopping it with so few mages would have been impossible and they would have swept over us like a tide, growing in intelligence and strength as they devoured everything in their path. At a certain size, a goblin warren turns into a goblin hive, unleashing swarm after swarm upon the land. You can slaughter them in their hundreds of thousands every day for a year, and every day more will arrive to replace them."
"Walls become meaningless when the goblin bodies pile so high that their kin can just walk up to the parapets. Men die from exhaustion and are consumed, adding to the strength of the hive. Mages who are in danger of falling into a swarm's path have to be evacuated and preserved, or executed and burnt to ashes before the swarm can take them. A swarm who manages to consume enough potential will evolve again into an extinction event as the goblins will gain a hivemind like intelligence and will begin to produce goblins capable of perverting the Sacred Arts."
"Impossible" barked Kayer, who refused to believe such a thing was possible, "Eventually we would whittle them down, surely such a swarm would break the land, and they would begin to starve!"
"No. A warren is dependent on food to survive, and they reproduce physically. A hive evolves further, and they begin the process of consuming the very magic in the air to satiate their endless hunger, and by doing so they gain the ability to simply spawn more goblins. At the point of a hive, they are born and mature to full size over the course of a week. Ask the scholars if you want to know how that happens." Murdet interjected, beating Gerald to it.
The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.
"If we had missed that hive, then we would arrive at the capital only to be immediately pressed into service against them as bodies to slow down their expansion while the king gathered the grand army of Pervalia to quarantine Hexenguard. From there he would proceed to extract every mage from Hexenguard while summoning the rest from across the kingdom, and then the grand circle of mages would shatter the sacred arts inside the borders of Hexenguard, cutting everyone and everything off from the Sacred Arts and cosmic energy. It is a salt-the-earth total war approach to handling the situation, and it is the only one that works. The kingdoms that border Pervalia would launch devastating strikes into Hexenguard in order to thin the hoard, and all parties would throw army after army at the horde, keeping them contained until they did eventually starve to death from lack of food and lack of magic." Gerald finished grimly.
"The truth of the matter is that we could have lost nearly everyone here, and as long as we destroyed the warren we would be hailed as heroes by the kingdom. Even neighboring kingdoms would hail us as heroes," Murdet said to the assembled nobles.
"But... I've seen goblins before..." One lord spoke up only to stop as Gerald shook his head grimly.
"There is a plethora of goblinoid species that walk under the light of the sun. The Goblin Warrens are a different species entirely, and only resemble other goblins. Where they differ is that regular goblins posses the spark, a soul. Goblin warrens possess no soul, and the Scholar's believe that they were created that way from regular goblin stock as a weapon of war."
"So... what now?" Kayer, whose anger had drained away now that he realized how close they had come to disaster.
"It will take us roughly a week to sweep the mountains and ensure we got all of them. We will burn the corpses - with mage fire to ensure they are totally annihilated. We have already received orders from the capital confirming our actions and instructing us to finish the eradication of the swarm. Then we will resume out march to the royal mustering grounds.." Murdet informed everyone.
The Scriptorium
"Today we will cover a special topic. We have covered much of what you can expect from human adversaries in the realm of war and politics" Roderick addressed the class next to Tika. It was a very rare occurrence to see the Knight Commander in the scriptorium giving lessons, but news from Gerald inspired them to give this lesson today.
"Indeed," Tika continued in his paper dry voice for Roderick, "Today the ducal army lead by Count Murdet and Lord Hart encountered and eradicated a Goblin Warren. Many of you will not understand the gravity of this news. All other nations on the continent will be paying close attention to Pervalia and Hexenguard in specific as this situation develops. Already His Grace Duke Hexenguard has issued a mustering call for a second army to muster. They will march nearly 50,000 men to the mountains and comb the land. The Royal Arch Mage has ordered a force of one hundred mages, including Wardens, to assist in the effort."
"It is so serious" Roderick added, "That it is likely Duke Hexenguard will probably wipe out all the tribes who inhabit that mountain who fail to submit to his rule. It was reported by Count Murdet that the likely reason this Warren was able to grow undetected was due to the capture or murder of Mages by superstitious or violent tribes. To safeguard the kingdom and the duchy, Duke Hexenguard will ensure that his dominion encompasses every inch of that land,"
Roderick and Master Tika began to give a lecture on what exactly a Goblin Warren was and how it operated. Tika even used Magic to show them illusions of what a goblin warren looked like, showing how the goblins looked and sounded. They would spend the next week in the scriptorium covering the goblin species and drilling the vital information into the recruits and scholars.
"Master Scholar Tika, how did they manage to stop the warren if there were so many goblins?" Jordan asked at the end of the class.
Tika considered her for a moment before nodding. It was important information to know, as only with a mage circle could one even be stopped to begin with.
"From what the report says," he began pacing in front of the classroom as he spoke while Roderick strode amongst the desks ensuring maximum attention was being paid, "Lord Daniel Murdek lead a charge to secure the entrance of a warren, known as a warren hole or goblin warren hole. It is a rough gash in the ground that enlarges over time and from the reports this one was roughly fifty feet across. Lord Murdet and his contingent of men were able to escort a circle of mages to the hole itself. All mages are taught how to handle warren holes and the first step is to capture an entrance and seal it off with the Sacred Arts. Then Lord Murdet and his men defended the circle of mages with their lives until reinforcements arrived in the form of Count Murdet and Lord Hart. Count Murdet created an opening, allowing the men being led by Lord Hart to surround the warren hole with many more bodies."
"More importantly however, Lord Hart was also able to create a corridor of safety for the arrival of the rest of the mages accompanying the Hexenguard army. Among them was an Archmage, my daughter Master Scholar Theresa. Together they were able to channel enough potential into Master Scholar Theresa to perform a cleansing ritual that utilizes the warren goblins own unique physiology against them. The actual spell is a state secret, and so sadly I will not be explaining it to you children. It is a fascinating topic and one you scholars have a chance of learning if you focus hard on your studies."