Rather than try and track Toad down, Barry recommended that Spine and I go to the Central Command Tent. How that didn’t equate to leadership I don’t know and didn’t care, at least not right this minute.

The command tent was a little different from others. Most of the goblin structures tended toward rectangular quonset huts. This was a circular dome. I ducked and entered.

This was not built for my proportions at all. Strangely making my way through the tent flap was almost no effort. Once inside was another issue. I hadn’t actually measured myself, but from what I could tell most goblins were between 4 and 5 feet tall. Angelica had informed me she was six-five. That put me around nine feet tall, and anywhere from about 5 to 12 times more massive than a goblin.

All that together meant that everything was way too small for me. There is some sort of crash size joke I could make. I am not going to. It just doesn’t quite fit you see.

Luckily no one else was inside to see me trip and smash several of the chairs scattered around the round segmented table. Yeah, Spine saw, but if he wanted he could talk shit. He put in the time.

He didn’t laugh, “This may not work well. You are...too big." He almost sounded like he was trying to spare my feelings.

I had an Idea.

Craft check… Successful

The ground beneath us lowered and compacted. This whole magical AOE Craft skill was a massive game changer. This was way better than digging ditches manually. It was about the time the floor had lowered a foot that I realized my mistake. The tents were more or less large bags. The floor stitched to the walls and the walls to the roof.

The whole thing ripped under the weight of me, Spine, and the furniture. Luckily the floor was not attached as securely to the walls as the walls to the roof. “Shit!” I cursed.

“We need to hide this,” Spine said almost reflexively. He took one of the chairs and placed it by the wall.

“I am with you in spirit on this, but that isn’t going to work,” I said, lowering the floor, other than the spots holding the poles, another two feet. That took things from impossible to manageably low.

I then pulled a set of pelts out of my inventory. Spine and I lined them up, then I Crafted them to merge with the wall and floor. The inside of the tent was a thick canvas material with a dense, gray wool-like fabric hooked to the interior. Our patches were aggressively white. Even in the dim light of the lamps and brazer inside the tent they all but glowed. It was about the same effect as a phone screen in the dark except instead of a few square inches this was yards.

“Think they will buy it?” I asked Spine.

Spine moved a second chair from the table and placed it in front of the almost-fluorescent white color. “Yeah, they are definitely going to know.”

“Then, fuck it,” I said as I pulled a bunch of snow lion bones out of my inventory. Time to make a chair. “Do you know anything about this Toad Badkiss?”

“Yeah, he is a goblin chief. He is one of the main reasons we have any access to The Dark at all. He specializes in large group tactics. He is really smart but has a reputation for being-”

“I will speak to him myself,” A thick, croaking voice boomed outside the tent. “Left Hand, I greet you as an- ooof!” Toad swept into the tent with grandiose swagger. Unfortunately for him, Spine and I had not put in stairs. So he quickly found himself falling face first into the ground. He immediately popped up to his feet and then swept into a bow, “-greet you as an equal.” Toad was short, even for a goblin. That said, he was broad shouldered and had an endomorphic physique. He looked more than a little pudgy in his fatigues and tactical vest, but he looked solid and strong.

Plus, if anything was going to look silly it was his cape and Napoleon hat. That thing was almost as tall as he was.

He gazed up at me with wide, not-quite-bulging eyes. He really did look like a frog. The webbed fingers did nothing to break the illusion.

Oh yeah I should say something back. “Hey man.” Oops.

Toad magnanimously ignored whatever that was. He placed his right hand in a shirt pocket and stood before me regally, “I have come to volunteer my services. Your army will need a general and I can say, with all modesty, that you would be hard pressed to find one better than myself.”

“That seems like a big commitment,” I hedged. I didn’t actually understand what that meant. “Could you be more specific as to what you would do with the role?”

“A shrewd question,” Toad observed. He began to pace as he spoke. “As a master of Tactics, Logistics, Bureaucracy, and Leadership with an emphasis in discipline, I will recruit an officer corps and then structure our forces accordingly. We will march upon the Spire and siege it. If necessary I have several plans to raze it to the ground: it will be bloody, but with your power and my mind, victory is assured.”

It will be bloody.

Angelica wanting to attack alone made way more sense. Nestled here amongst thousands of goblins, hearing them talk, seeing them thrive despite it all, it made me loathe to send them into violence.

What was I doing?

“I need to think before I make a decision,” I said. I had to fight to keep my voice calm.

If Toad noticed my squeamishness he did not address it, “I understand. It would be improper to make such a decision without first building a quorum. The remainder of our alliance should be arriving with the dawn. I have also taken the liberty of sending word of your arrival to the other leaders.”

“...is here to help. You don’t have to like it.” Philip said. He sounded like he said that way too many times.

“People hate her, Spindle-Bite. You can’t expect us to just- ooh fu-!” a female goblin said. She was cut off as she too walked right off the cliff of the tent and belly flopped on the floor. The ground with only a thin layer of fabric over dense packed ice and ground, was not forgiving.

“Hel- ah!” Philip, upon hearing the yelling charged in. He also was not immune to gravity. To his credit he didn’t land on… a goblin named Helen Smith. Goblin names were weird.

“I should put in stairs,” I realized out loud.

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

“I would ask you to wait until after Grimset arrives. Tardiness should not be rewarded.” Toad said. He walked over to Helen and offered her a hand. He did the same for Philip.

“I am already here,” a raspy voice declared dramatically.

We all turned to the source, a chair in a shadowed portion of the tent. It faced away from us.

A skinny goblin in a black cloak hopped out of the chair and -with a grunt of effort- spun it around. He then sat back in the chair and eyed us all archly.

“Why did you do that?” Toad asked, completely baffled.

“I wanted to spin dramatically, but this chair did not swivel,” Marvin Grimset explained.

Brunhilda peaked through the tent flap, ”Hey buddy.” She hopped down, “you building a war council in here?”

“Yep,” I sighed and finished crafting my lion bone chair. I sat down. “Let’s get this figured out.”

As the others took chairs, Grimset spoke up, “I would like to raise my objections to the Titan Spawn being warlord.”

I mean I respected the chutzpah. A lot of folks tend to mind my feelings, be indirect, or challenge me to a duel to the death. Or, in Adora’s case, roofie me. She really was the absolute worst. My point is most folks didn’t simply voice their concerns like an adult. Then again the system and Narrators seemed to actively push for dramatic violent conflict.

Both Philip and Toad glared at Marvin. Helen looked to sympathize with him. Brunhilda hung back and stayed out of it. Spine made it a point to drag his chair to my side. “Okay, just to move this along. Why?” He was more than a bit sarcastic.

Grimset was unphased at Spine’s disrespect as he kept watching me. “I would rather our people be free. We all know to never deal with living gods, but now some want us leashed to the Left Hand of the Titan. It's madness.”

“Think of our people at the Spire,” Philip almost growled.

“I am sympathetic to their condition, but you would send tens of thousands to save whoever still lives.” Grimset softened his tone and continued, “I know why you are so invested. I understand. The demons took my father.”

Spine glared at Grimset. Before he could speak, though, Philip spoke up again, “The demons killed your father. They took my wife.”

“That’s kind of the point, though,” Helen said, trying to make peace. “You are not impartial. What would you give to get her back?”

“...anything,” Philip admitted.

Grimset took no joy in seeming to win the point, “I can’t allow my people to be chained under the yoke of a Titan Spawn for the chance to free others. Even from demons.”

“I disagree,” Toad declared, “The demons torture. To be in their power is to suffer. Nothing I can imagine is worse.”He lean forward and gazed flatly at Grimset. “We as goblins have a moral imperative to help our own. Also even if this Titan Spawn were a madman, it is impossible for him to be worse than literal Hell. Now is the time to act. Otherwise we will be driven to The Dark, never to rise again.”

“Is the Dark so bad?” Grimset began.

“Yes,” Toad interjected bluntly.

Grimset continued like nothing was said, “We could be free there. It won’t be like what the poor souls near the coast suffer. Distance from people is our only reliable defense.”

“He has a point,” Helen said. “I know you have seen the numbers. Living in the cold is killing us.”

“Mobs are killing us. They live in the Dark as well,” Toad argued.

“We could build a fortress down there, limit access. Like Grimset said, we wouldn’t have to deal with gnomes and…” Helen paused and eyed Brunhilda, “Dwarves.”

Brunhilda took no offense to being singled out. “True, My folk dig deep, not wide.”

Everyone turned to me. I hate when they do that.

I felt constantly behind. I needed more time. I needed to better understand what was actually happening. Well, that is not entirely true: one thing needed to be made clear. “If I am going to be your Warlord, I am going to lead willing followers. I am not going to force anyone to fight demons.”

Helen looked relieved. Toad nodded, his flat face neutral. Philip didn’t seem to appreciate me giving the others an out. Grimset studied me more closely.

I decided to give him something to think about. I turned to Spine, “Are these four able to speak for the others who are not here?”

“Nope,” Spine answered instantly. “Normally for big decisions like war, we build a council of five. We have a leader of the warriors, the scouts, the assassins, the engineers, and a representative of everyone else.”

“Who represents everyone else?” I asked curious.

Spine shrugged, “Any civilian works, but normally it’s the angriest old lady we can find.”

“Why an old lady?” That seemed incredibly specific.

“Nanny Shiv said, ‘they tend to be harder to convince to send a bunch of dumb kids to war.” Spine said, mimicking her raspy voice.

Honestly that made a lot of sense. Having an odd man out involved in the decisions forced people to put forward better arguments. It probably had the intended consequence of forcing people to say the quiet part out loud a lot also.

I sighed, “Then, there is very little point debating without them.”

“You are not going to press us?” Grimset technically asked. Yeah it was a question, but he clearly already doubted my answer.

“It is not my style. I prefer to have a voluntary fighting force. It is too much trouble trying to make people who do not want to be in the battle do what you want.” I meant that. I may not know… well, jack shit about running an army, but that bit felt true.

Toad nodded along with my reasoning.

Philip seemed less convinced, “An assault on the Spire will take everything we have. If they have a gate, our only hope is to drown them in numbers.”

“It’s talk like that that makes me think this is a suicide charge,” Helen replied exasperated. “I’ll fight if I have to… but if we are just throwing bodies at the Spire with no real plan… Just no.”

“I have a plan,” Toad assured her.

‘What is it? Surround the Spire and then get them?” Grimset scoffed.

Toad eyed him, “That is the broad strokes, but would you describe your style of combat as simply slitting throats?”

Grimset opened his mouth but closed it when he realized I was watching him.

“It will take everything we have,” Philip said again. “My son and the human, Nameth Brand, were able to translate English to Goblin. While doing that he saw several pieces of information. The Spire is surrounded by miles of open field. Then the immediate area is some vast pit leading into the Deep. They have no less than ten thousand imps there.”

I looked to Spine out of the corner of my eye. He shrugged. I probably should have paid more attention to that.

“Philip, with that many demons and a gate we couldn’t take that place with two hundred thousand goblins.” Helen said gently. “They are Rare Scale, minimum. Even if we had a good way to kill them, they would respawn instantly.”

Philip tried to speak, to gainsay that, but no words came.

Toad stepped in for him, “Any Demon killed by Doug, a Titan Spawn, would not respawn for days. Those killed by Philip would take roughly half a day. Any we dispatched would, admittedly, be back within the hour.”

“So your Plan is that the Titan Spawn leads the warband, kills the demons, closes the Gate, and… what, is he supposed to take out The Demon of Frost too?” Grimset clearly didn’t have faith I could do all that.

I mean… same.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Toad shook his head, “The Champion of the Fantasy Coast will kill the Demon of Frost. I would also have the Champion of the Shattered Mountain assist us.”

“You are quick to lick Dwaren boots, Toad,” Grimset mocked.

Toad’s eyes bulged with fury, but he spoke like Grimset's words meant nothing, “You confuse pragmatism with cowardice. A common failing of the simple-minded. If allowing the dwarf among our ranks saves a single life, I will do it. She is a healer, before this is done she will save many goblin lives.”

Hurray for progress?

“My lord!” someone outside the tent yelled. “We need your- oh shit!” Barry Backstab ran into the tent. He got more distance than I would have guessed but he hit the ground hard. Stairs were needed. Barry climbed to his feet, “Warlord, We need you back at the Mandir of the War Goddess. There has been a murder.”