Everyone nodded and moved into position. I was part of Malthiel’s team leading the way to the stairs leading up so that I could make sure to keep everyone from accidentally hitting the trap. Maximilian’s team walked down the hall to our left to where the stairs to the basement were and led his team down. As soon as everyone was over the tripwire I quickly followed, not wanting to miss out on what they found when they got to the top. As it was I didn’t have to worry too much as at the top of the stairs was a landing about 3 feet wide and a large heavy wooden door at the other end. As he had learned his lesson the first time Malthiel tried the door handle, but this time it was locked.
“Either the goblins got smarter, or we’re going the wrong way.” He said “Hey Styx, do you happen to have lock picks in your rogish kit?”
I checked my pockets and found that I did indeed have a set of lock picks. That or they appeared as I needed them, I wasn’t too sure how this game worked yet.
“I do indeed would you like me to give it a try?” I asked
“It’s that or let Roy here burn it down, and I think we decided that’s already out.” Malthiel said, which got a chuckle from several members. “Everyone move to the sides of the stairs so if he has to go get the others he has a clear path down them.”
As everyone moved off to the side I came up the stairs to the door kneeling in front of it and slid the tools in the key hole. I had picked up the basics of lock picking from other games and was hoping that everything worked the same, or at least similarly.
#######################
Gained Skill: Pick Locks lv 0
Who needs a key?
+05% Chance to open a locked door.
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"We're in." I say over my shoulder.
"What are you a hacker? Open the door already" Malthiel says.
I turn the door handle and push the door. It moves about a quarter of an inch and stops.
"Hey Malthiel? Have you ever heard of a goblin barricading themselves in a house?" I ask
"No why? What's wrong now?" He said.
"The door is stuck, it's like there's something on the other side holding it closed. I'm sure we could force it but something is strange about this whole set up." I say.
"What do you want with us?" Suddenly, a high haughty voice came from the other side of the door. "Go away and leave us in peace!”
"Who's there?" Calls out Malthiel. "We were told to clear out this town but we weren't told there was anyone else here."
"Well then get on with saving it" came the voice again. "I'm the acting mayor of this town but goblins certainly wasn't in the job description and I'm certainly not equipped to deal with that rabble."
"But if they're not up here then where…" Malthiel starts to say before being cut off by a scream from below us. "The basement!" He exclaims.
As we race down the stairs I make sure to jump over the bottom step and the trip wire placed just above it. Thankfully everyone notices me doing it and follows suit. As we round the corner and head towards the basement stairs we start to hear the sound of combat coming from below. Shouts and screams accompany the sound of clashing weapons. I slow down and allow Malthiel to pass me, if we’re going to run headfirst into battle I’d rather a tank be between me and the enemy.
As we get to the top of the stairs Malthiel shouts “What’s going on down there?” A few seconds later Kira appears though a bit more blood splattered than when we left her. “We were ambushed. We have taken minimal damage but they scared the crap out of one of our healers. They seem to have tunneled in from under the city somewhere.”
“Okay, let's get down there and clear them out.” Malthiel said sliding in front of Kira and heading down the stairs. I followed towards the rear knowing that I would be able to slip around if a battle broke out. However, we made it to the bottom of the stairs without incident. The basement was mostly empty, lanterns hung from pegs at even intervals on the wall, a few boxes against the wall, their tops lying on the ground and some goblin corpses in the corner. I assumed that their blood is what Kira was splattered with when she came up to see us. At the far end of the basement the other group was in a half circle around a break in the wall.
“Yo!” Malthiel greeted the group as we made it to them.
“Hey” said Maxmillion “thought you’d never get here we were getting antsy to go. What happened upstairs?”
“The NPC’s of this building and presumably the rest of the town are holed up behind a locked and barricaded door. I hear you had some fun down here.” replied Malthiel
“Yeah, the goblins hid in those crates over there as we were passing by the popped out and scared the crap out of poor kim” Maxmillion said pointing to one of the younger girls near him.
“I was just surprised ok? I don’t do well with horror games.” Said a young girl, presumably Kim.
“Ah I see” Malthiel laughed, turning back to Maxmillion “Any idea what we’re dealing with down there?”
“From what we can see the path goes about 30 feet and then stops, I assume it turns and just can't see the path from here. Noones gone down there yet.” Maxmillion said.
“Scouting mission time?” I asked hopefully.
“I don’t really see the point…” Malthiel said “we are all together and there’s only one path, besides we heard the scream all the way up stairs, between that and fact that their look outs that were in the boxes never came back, there’s no way they dont know we’re here.”
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Kim blushed off to the side but said nothing.
“Sorry man I never caught your name” Malthiel said looking at a guy holding a one handed axe and had a shield strapped to his other side.
“Name’s Drak” he replied.
“Maxmillion and Drak will be in front, followed by melee troops then mages. Ranged characters will follow them and I will bring up the rear. The shields will provide better defense and my axe will only be a hindrance until we get through these tunnels.” Malthiel said.
“It’s odd that you don’t want to be up front, as the leader.” someone said from the group.
“I want to be practical, with the way we need to move to fight I’d rather keep people safe than bolster my pride. I’ve played enough games that I don’t need to be the center of attention.” Malthiel said. “Now if we have no more comments let's get to work.”
As the group got into position in a rough line trying to follow Malthiel’s instruction I readied my weapons. The tunnel was only big enough for a single person to walk at a time as it was carved out by the goblins tunneling up from below. Someone grabbed the lanterns off the wall and we passed them out at regular intervals keeping the group relatively lit so we wouldn’t trip on the way down. And then we started our march down the tunnel. I kept my weapons sheathed and held a lantern. Since I was just using simple daggers they would be easy enough to unsheath when we ran into trouble, and it left others hands free to carry their weapons as we made our decent.
When we reached the end of the tunnel we did notice it turned sharply and continued down further. We followed the path for another maybe 20 yards before it opened out into a large cavern. The path led to a ridge that circled a large pit and on the other side, maybe 200 yards away we could see campfires with the outlines of creatures, presumably goblins, moving about the camp.
“Douse the lanterns quick! Move back to the entrance of the tunnel.” said Malthiel
Lanterns were quickly snuffed out. And we moved back where we came from. “Hopefully they didn’t see us and we can sneak up on their camp.” Malthiel whispered “If we can get into their camp and cause damage before they rally we might be able to make this quick.”
Just then we heard the sound of screeches in the tunnel behind us. Looking back up the way we came we could just make out a line of goblins scrambling down the path at us. “I need a shield over here quick!” shouted Malthiel and Drak rushed back towards the entrance and Maxmillion started to follow. “Max, you and I are going to take most of the rest and follow the ridge towards the camp if they didn’t see the camp the probably definitely heard the screeching. Agatha and Kim stay with Drak, the tunnel makes a good natural choke point, shoot over the shield and keep them from flanking us. Shout if you get overrun. The rest follow me.” Malthiel said, unsheathing his axe.
As we moved forward I could hear the bowstring twang behind me as our rear guard engaged the enemies in the tunnel, the screeches of pain echoed around the chamber leaving no doubt as to if the camp knew of our presence and shortly afterwards war cries from the camp echoed in response. I drew my daggers and followed the group. A horde of goblins started towards us from the camp, carrying torches and rough swords. As they drew closer our mages and ranged support started launching attacks. Fireballs and lightning strikes impacted the group creating flashes of light and crossbow bolts took enemies down as they were running. But the enemies didn’t care, they trampled their dead and dying as they rushed at us. As they reached melee range Malthiel took a giant baseball swing with his axe cutting through several enemies and pushing even more off the ledge into the pit below. I took this opportunity to join the fray, drawing my daggers and leaping in.
Closing the distance I started slashing at any goblin I could reach. Like the ones outside they weren’t very tough, anything but the most superficial cut would take them out and soon I had a mounting body count but the reinforcements were endless. While the enemies were weak they weren’t just sitting around waiting to be attacked. Their hits didn’t hurt much but the amount of them started piling up over time, if we didn’t have healers the attacks definitely would have eventually killed us.
“Oh no!” Roy said in raid chat. I took a moment to look at him and he pointed back towards the goblin camp. Taking a look over the heads of the goblins rushing us we could see them moving large barrels up towards our position. “If that’s what I think it is” Malthiel commented “we could be in big trouble. Ranged take out those barrel carriers!”
“No wait” said Roy “If they’re explosive this might work out well for us, if we can wait for them to get on to the ridge and I can hit one with a fireball we can destroy the ridge and cut them off from the town!”
“Sounds good to me!” said Maxmillion
“OK everyone, regroup. We’re going to get in a reverse V formation to funnel the enemy into us. Once those barrels blow we’re gonna kill off any stragglers on this side of the pit and work our way back up stairs.” Malthiel commanded.
The group pulled back in with the two tanks taking the end of the formation closest to the goblin horde, we slowly started backing up while slaughtering goblins that came in range. As the barrels reached about the middle of the ridge Roy fired off a fireball above the heads of the goblins striking the barrel dead on. At first it seemed that nothing happened. The barrel caught fire and started slowly burning. “Well that's disappointing” Roy said. I turned to say something about how it couldn’t be that easy when the first barrel exploded. It caused everyone to stumble as the explosion tore through the goblins. Two more followed closely, sending burning debris and bodies high into the air, as well as separating the ridge from the wall and sending it sliding into the depths below. As I got back to my feet I could see a section about 40 yards long was missing from the ridge, effectively cutting off the goblin camp from our side and hopefully the town above.
It only took another few minutes to clear out the remaining goblins on our side as most were killed in the blast. I attempted to loot a few bodies but since they were wearing only a loincloth and had only crude weapons there wasn't much point. We dumped the remaining bodies over the edge of the ridge and turned to make our way back to the town. “REEEEEEEEEE” a screech sounded behind us. Turning I saw a large goblin perhaps twice the height of a normal one with feathers braided in his hair standing at the edge of the newly formed hole in the cliff face. He pointed at our group and made an ominous throat slitting gesture never breaking his stare. After he finished he turned and slowly walked back towards the camp.
“OK” Rhyus said “that was kind of creepy.”
“Yeah they really went all out on this intro event huh” Kira replied.
“I agree” I said “though did anyone else notice how easy the goblins were? I know there were a lot but either our healers were super on top of it or I didn’t take nearly as much damage as I probably should have.”
“While I appreciate your vote of confidence, I’m starting to think the devs made them weaker for this event so that we wouldn’t fail. Our lack of HUD makes things tough enough without the need to toss us into an event this large with enemies that are on our level.” Francis replied.
“Yeah, that makes sense. We wouldn’t get much promotional footage for them if we died to a bunch of goblins!” said a man dressed in a kimono with a long katana on his side.
Arriving back at the tunnel we found our rear guard resting against the wall. A pile of goblin corpses sat off to one side. As we approached they got up to greet us.
“Heck of a light show” Kim said.
“It should stem the flow of goblins into the town, at least for now.” Malthiel replied “How did you fare over here?”
“We finished our slaughter shortly before the explosion. Is it me or do they seem really weak?” Kim said.
“We think the devs made them weaker for this event, or made us stronger.” I replied
“How did they get behind us?” Malthiel asked
“Shallow holes in the wall.” Drak replied.
“It seems they were able to dig themselves into the wall and barricade it while waiting for us to pass” Kim explained. “We should keep our eyes peeled on the way back up to ensure we don't get ambushed.”
“Alright everyone let’s get out of the dark! Same order as before, keep an eye on the walls for possible ambushes.” Malthiel said. Various nods came from throughout the group and we formed up to head back up to the surface.
The trip to the surface was uneventful and thankfully a short while later we were all back in the basement. On the way up we saw shallow divots in the wall about three feet high and two feet deep where the goblins were buried in the dirt to hide. Once we passed they had apparently pushed their way out and followed us back down the trail to ambush us and catch us between their two forces.
“The town leaders will be happy to know that we successfully defended the town, though we need to either get someone to guard this entrance or find a way to close it up.” Malthiel said. “But we can discuss that upstairs, lets go meet the townsfolk!”