DC
I smile as a disguised goblin enters my dungeon, and dispatches a horse, a variety of fish, and even a frog. The goblin quickly slips deeper into my dungeon, and he explains quickly how he stole the horse from someone important looking, while they were negotiating on a battlefield. Interesting.
I shrug, and slip the goblin away, and into the goblin floor, where I reward him, by giving him some gold.
I purposefully edited goblin society so that they used the same currency system as the humans above.
I also gave him some mana rich food, and just let him chill for a while.
Once he is done relaxing I decide to see if he's up for a… longer mission.
While he devours the roast venison I gave him I begin to speak. “What is your name child?”
He glances up in distress, his nose quivering, and his needle teeth dripping with hot tallow. “G-Gerbet, my name is Gerbet, Father…” He answers quickly.
“I have another mission for you.” I continue sagely. “You do not have to do it, but I have a mission that someone will take. Whether it be you, or one of your brothers or sisters.”
He scratches his nose. “What mission?” He asks suspiciously.
I smirk. “Venture far off, and away from your home, and bring me back a variety of creatures, specifically sea creatures, and even more specifically, crabs.”
He shirks lower, and picks at his teeth. “What reward would I receive?”
I nod at his question, “Power, money, land, whatever I can give you, and you want.”
He nods, “I accept…”
I smile at him. “Stay for a day more, and then don your disguise, and depart.”
He nods, and continues to eat his food.
I turn my attention away from him, and onto the 7th floor evolution room. I want this room to become bigger because right now, it is quite small. The mole people have expanded quickly with rooms, interconnected by tunnels, but the rat people have gone the opposite way, and have dug out the cavern into huge staggering areas, with grand stone pillars holding the whole thing, and giant furnaces cooking the tremendous quantities of coal to heat the whole space.
The rat people's home is actually very dangerous as it is extremely unstable, so parts of it are always collapsing. They very quickly organized themselves into a caste system, where the strongest, smartest or most cunning rose to the top, and became a cruel slave driving, tyrant. The first one who rose to power was an exceedingly strong one, who was larger than the others, and was using a heavy branch as a club.
He encouraged quick breeding, and so their numbers swelled immediately, growing into the hundreds. A small, undergrown, malnutrition little rat, quickly became something of a crime boss. The little brat was exceedingly intelligent, and cruel. Shortly after rising to power, he invented something. He first created a drug, from a mushroom that grows in the most mana dense caves. He made it by powdering the mushrooms, mixing it with coal, and then burning the whole mixture.
That mixture created a body enhancing, and hallucination causing effect. Thus, when people would take it, they would have a burst of insanity, violence, and their bodies would be enhanced by the mana inside of the mixture, so their muscles would bulge in strength. Not a tremendous amount, but enough that it was problematic.
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Shortly after taking the drug, most of the people would have severe vomiting, and cold sweats. If they overdosed their organs would fail, and they would die pretty much immediately. Extended exposure, and repeated use, also lead to organ failure.
Shortly after creating this drug, in an attempt to make it more potent, he mixed it with the blood, and powderized organs of the rats who overdosed on this, and then put it under extreme heat, and pressure.
What remained after words, were hard chunks of a rocky substance, I have dubbed, bloodstones. They were a greyish green, sort of puky with red marbling throughout. They radiated more mana than I thought was necessary, and from what I could tell, this rock, was mildly toxic to the rats, just being in the same room, as it, but I also believe it would be extremely toxic to humans, or the mole people, or even other adventurer species.
Shortly after doing this, he used it to create an engine of sorts. He mixed the bloodstones, with a liquified version of the same mushrooms he used to create the original bloodstones. He then created a hammer of sorts, that you start manually by slamming the hammer down. The hammer contacts the hammer within the chamber.
This then causes an explosive burst of mana, and kinetic energy, which causes the hammer to bounce back, and hit it again, as well as powering another set of pistons.
He quickly attached the engine to a metal frame, with wheels, spikes, and a bunch of other hostile themes. He was eventually left with a sort of war train that didn't run on tracks.
This was very unstable, and if you got in the way of the moving hammer, inside of the train, it would easily break bones, and I'd be surprised if this doesn't explode at some point in time.
Shortly after making the war train, he murdered nearly 20 other rats, and had a spark of genius. He quickly organized a large-scale rebellion with his fellow rats, and they set off for the cave-palace where the leader lived.
They arrived at the entrance to his caves, to find a group of guards, rats wielding rudimentary wooden shields, and sticks sharpened into spears. His malnutrition rats, rambled forward, driven on, by the whips of his cronies. They screeched, and screamed, but their options were to face the whips, and certain death behind them, or face the spears in front of them, so they fought like caged rats, and threw themselves against the opponents shields.
As the enemy fights on, slaughtering many of the attackers, they spot the train, cresting the slope. And it's too much. One of the rat guards, spins, and betrays his comrades, caught off guard, three of his friends go down, before he is intercepted by another guard.
Just as they are about to engage. They hear creaking, and they glance up, just in time to see the train, speeding up. It mows through another three rat rebels, before carving through the betrayer, and his enemy, their vertebrae crunching, under the spiked wheels.
They marched forward into the rat palace to find him lounging on a pile of meat, mushrooms, and other food. They swarmed forward, the remaining force, of 170 or so rats, piling on top of him, and his guard. The guards, being the only decently outfitted people, wore leathers of their fellow rats, and had stone clubs, and sharpened tree branches.
They slaughtered nearly another 20 rats, before eventually being torn apart by their bare hands, and the rat king was brought out, and beheaded. The leaders of the revolt, cooked his body over a fire, and distributed the meat of his flesh to the leaders of their brave revolt, and as they feast, of the 5 leaders of the revolt, four are executed, and our little inventor, continues to eat, as his most loyal servants execute the very friends who helped him rise to his position. He has no desire to share the power with others, not any desire to be stabbed in the back by them, in the same way they stabbed the old rat king in the back.
He finishes his food, and climbs onto the pile of corpses of his friends, and begins to speak. “My name is Talon Bonechewer! Talon! Bonechewer!” He hisses in joy, and strokes his whiskers. “Sit by my feet-claws, and lick-worship, yes!” He laughs, and hisses more.
I laugh in joy at the nature of the cruel little beast. For his sake I craft something, three things actually, and drop them at his feet. A staff, made of iron, but with a pretty gem at the top. A crown, made of silver, inlaid with a couple more pretty gems, and lastly, a knife, short, but beautiful and effective, made out of steel with gold leaf overlaid to make it look pretty.
He scoops up his new toys, and dons his crown, and hisses with joy. “Our broodmother-father-creator, god-thing has blessed us!” He screams, and throws his hands, laden with his new bedazzled toys up in the air, and screams once more. The crowd of rats standing below him hiss, and ooh, and aah.
He screams out in joy, and descends back into his cave-palace. “Breed lots yes broodmother yes!” He cries out behind him, as he marches deeper into his palace to continue his devious machination, to undoubtedly continue inventing horrible dastardly things.
I absolutely love rat people.