Glaswegian K6BD Devils of the Hot Black Flame sounds about right for nodding to Tolkien's uruks as WW1 Tommies and then also placing different Goblin characters anywhere from fantasy Robin Hood to the fantasy Dickensian poor under the lash of their tyrannical superiors. I cannot wait for a scene where Madam Alessia has to drop her knightly formal register and talk gob to effectively command and get stuck in.
 
Really enjoyed this chapter! Love all the little details of how the goblins are dressed and go about the ambush. Lillywick seems really cool!

I am wondering how a goblin army works now though… do they compensate for a shorter stature by using like, pikes? I imagine that it's harder to rely on agility and slipping through someone's guard to get in close in a line combat sorta situation. Though a guerrilla warfare approach would play to the strengths demonstrated in this chapter. Attacking an enemy army while in camp and all… though it's not like it would be terribly hard for the opponent to dig fortifications. Hmm.
 
Something, something, foreshadowing is a literary device that, something, something. :V
 
Uncritical solidarity with the Goblins in their struggle against incipient industrial capitalism
For some reason I'm reminded of the isekai fic which started with the MC killing Jeff Bezos in a car crash. Makes me wonder if the author had an axe to grind. Actually, it would be super cool to be a prolific writer and just kill off your favourite (?) billionaire at the start of each book you write.
 
Yeah, Chickenthief is either a reincarnator or has heard about industrialization from one. A natural industrial revolution wouldn't happen this fast.
Well, given that Iris is far from the first isekai protagonist to come to this world from ours, Bryn Mawr was either founded by a Welsh adventurer or by a female college student from Pennsylvania. Who can say?
You. :V
 
Ah, yes, modernity is a terrifying monster that ruins and destroys and, worst of all, changes social relationships in the countryside. Truly which of your influences is at play here is a riddle, clear though the theme may be.
Well, I think our ninja friend is taking a more authentically anarchist take on the "big industrializing boss in the countryside is bad for the people" trope than Tolkien did.

It bears remembering that of the four viewpoint hobbits in Lord of the Rings, three were scions of very prominent local landholding families- prominent gentry by Shire standards. And the fourth was the fanatically loyal retainer of one of those three scions. Sam Gamgee wasn't about to criticize or question the social arrangements by which, realistically, the Gamgees had spent centuries paying rent to the Bagginses and getting back a fraction of it in nice gifts and sinecure positions for their elders in their declining years.

Tolkien's Shire idyll was honestly less bad than the "dark Satanic mills" in a lot of respects, but it embraced a lot of class division.

Here, I really do think the goblins' natural social order will turn out to be more egalitarian than that. Lillywick doesn't seem to be cut from the same cloth as, say, Meriadoc Brandybuck, who certainly wouldn't be caught dead agreeing with "fuck bosses" even if he used that kind of language.
 
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Well, I think our ninja friend is taking a more authentically anarchist take on the "big industrializing boss in the countryside is bad for the people" trope than Tolkien did.

It bears remembering that of the four viewpoint hobbits in Lord of the Rings, three were scions of very prominent local landholding families- prominent gentry by Shire standards. And the fourth was the fanatically loyal retainer of one of those three scions. Sam Gamgee wasn't about to criticize or question the social arrangements by which, realistically, the Gamgees had spent centuries paying rent to the Bagginses and getting back a fraction of it in nice gifts and sinecure positions for their elders in their declining years.

Tolkien's Shire idyll was honestly less bad than the "dark Satanic mills" in a lot of respects, but it embraced a lot of class division.

Here, I really do think the goblins' natural social order will turn out to be more egalitarian than that. Lillywick doesn't seem to be cut from the same cloth as, say, Meriadoc Brandybuck, who certainly wouldn't be caught dead agreeing with "fuck bosses" even if he used that kind of language.

It's possible that the only part of the cost of industry that Tolkien really understood was industrialized warfare, from his personal experiences.
 
It's possible that the only part of the cost of industry that Tolkien really understood was industrialized warfare, from his personal experiences.
I wouldn't say that. Tolkien grew up in Victorian/Edwardian England and...


Well, the damage to the countryside from industrialization was pretty visible in places, back then. And Tolkien wasn't so sheltered that he wouldn't have grasped the consequences of Dickensian worker oppression on some level, if only by reading Dickens.
 
tbf to Tolkien he was cognizant that he was writing a deliberate Arcadian idyll in the Shire, one born of fragile and ultimately ephemeral outside and domestic circumstances, the prior social peace of Hobbit-country shattered by the industrial Scouring of the Shire as Saruman deliberately used Hobbit pawns and the legal structures of well capitalism, basically, to overturn long-standing customs and social norms maintaining Hobbit society and with his collaborators and Ruffians going full Captain Planet villain ruining mills simply to chew up the shared village greens of Hobbiton and smog up the sky. It is only later in a newly restructured Shire that a new Hobbit society is created, proclaiming itself the restoration of the old, with Samwise as Mayor and his descendants the new squire-y owners of Bag End.

It's subtle but there's like specifically almost Isekai energy of Merry and Pippin becoming Knights of Rohan and Guards of the Tower and treated as like princely ambassadors and heroic warlords of their people, like some cash-poor merely middle-upper-class young gentlemen of the Victorian British countryside suddenly swept up in some Quixotic properly properly medieval social structures with the Rohirrim rocking the mead-halls of Beowulf and the Captains and Stewards of Gondor as just the Podestas, Gastalds, and Capetans of the cities of Lombardic and Byzantine Italy.

And while yes ultimately Tolkien does have the Shire-hobbits turn to an idealized fundamentally reactionary and feudal solution to the problem of the Scouring, as much as it is the Thain's lot to call the Hobbitry-at-Arms, it was fundamentally the masses of the Hobbits organizing themselves as yeoman militias and choosing to attend to the Thain that made it all work, in the same way that Caesar was Caesar because of the common masses of the legionnaires acclaiming him so, or Germanic chieftains and Jarls and Ealdormen raised as so up on the shields of the moot/thing/etc...

In embodying the idealized British Squirarcy, the old Hobbit-hole dwelling families of Shire good society bend towards notions of private households, not as noble courts that hold public life within themselves, but tied up together in an exterior public life uplifting and affirming the construction of a Hobbit society, and public notions of social prestige and respectibility.

A Took who is not just respectably eccentric and fanciful but is in disrepute as a complete layabout and drunkard is barely a Took at all, manorhouse or no manorhouse.
 
Interestingly, Chickenthief is close to Chickenhound, the slaver fox from Redwall who took on the name Slagar the Cruel. Most likely a coincidence but I like the unintended thematic similarity.
 
tbf to Tolkien he was cognizant that he was writing a deliberate Arcadian idyll in the Shire, one born of fragile and ultimately ephemeral outside and domestic circumstances, the prior social peace of Hobbit-country shattered by the industrial Scouring of the Shire as Saruman deliberately used Hobbit pawns and the legal structures of well capitalism, basically, to overturn long-standing customs and social norms maintaining Hobbit society and with his collaborators and Ruffians going full Captain Planet villain ruining mills simply to chew up the shared village greens of Hobbiton and smog up the sky. It is only later in a newly restructured Shire that a new Hobbit society is created, proclaiming itself the restoration of the old, with Samwise as Mayor and his descendants the new squire-y owners of Bag End.

It's subtle but there's like specifically almost Isekai energy of Merry and Pippin becoming Knights of Rohan and Guards of the Tower and treated as like princely ambassadors and heroic warlords of their people, like some cash-poor merely middle-upper-class young gentlemen of the Victorian British countryside suddenly swept up in some Quixotic properly properly medieval social structures with the Rohirrim rocking the mead-halls of Beowulf and the Captains and Stewards of Gondor as just the Podestas, Gastalds, and Capetans of the cities of Lombardic and Byzantine Italy.
Definitely with you except for the "cash-poor" part. Fairly sure that Merry and Pippin, at least at home, were rich by the standards of any Shire-folk who hadn't had any chance to pocket dragon-loot. The Tooks and Brandybucks were big family names in the Shire. If anything, I think it was the Bagginses who were the poor relations by comparison to those two. Because we hear about the Tooks effectively dominating social relations for an area miles around their home, and the Brandybucks are the big names of Buckland likewise, but the Bagginses don't seem to have quite that same degree of influence around Hobbiton.

And even so, they were no doubt doing pretty well for themselves, even without counting those two chests full of dragon-loot he brought home.

And while yes ultimately Tolkien does have the Shire-hobbits turn to an idealized fundamentally reactionary and feudal solution to the problem of the Scouring, as much as it is the Thain's lot to call the Hobbitry-at-Arms, it was fundamentally the masses of the Hobbits organizing themselves as yeoman militias and choosing to attend to the Thain that made it all work, in the same way that Caesar was Caesar because of the common masses of the legionnaires acclaiming him so, or Germanic chieftains and Jarls and Ealdormen raised as so up on the shields of the moot/thing/etc...

In embodying the idealized British Squirarcy, the old Hobbit-hole dwelling families of Shire good society bend towards notions of private households, not as noble courts that hold public life within themselves, but tied up together in an exterior public life uplifting and affirming the construction of a Hobbit society, and public notions of social prestige and respectibility.

A Took who is not just respectably eccentric and fanciful but is in disrepute as a complete layabout and drunkard is barely a Took at all, manorhouse or no manorhouse.
All quite true.
 
Ah, yes, modernity is a terrifying monster that ruins and destroys and, worst of all, changes social relationships in the countryside. Truly which of your influences is at play here is a riddle, clear though the theme may be.

Uncritical solidarity with the Goblins in their struggle against incipient industrial capitalism

Glaswegian K6BD Devils of the Hot Black Flame sounds about right for nodding to Tolkien's uruks as WW1 Tommies and then also placing different Goblin characters anywhere from fantasy Robin Hood to the fantasy Dickensian poor under the lash of their tyrannical superiors. I cannot wait for a scene where Madam Alessia has to drop her knightly formal register and talk gob to effectively command and get stuck in.

Yeah so, Tolkien conceived of the orcs/goblins as the urban working class, dehumanized by industrialization, slaves to the Dark Lord who hate him only slightly less than they hate the Free Peoples. I wanted to play on that and make the goblins the heroes of their own story, throwing off their own oppression (with a little help from our protagonists course).

Well, I think our ninja friend is taking a more authentically anarchist take on the "big industrializing boss in the countryside is bad for the people" trope than Tolkien did.

It bears remembering that of the four viewpoint hobbits in Lord of the Rings, three were scions of very prominent local landholding families- prominent gentry by Shire standards. And the fourth was the fanatically loyal retainer of one of those three scions. Sam Gamgee wasn't about to criticize or question the social arrangements by which, realistically, the Gamgees had spent centuries paying rent to the Bagginses and getting back a fraction of it in nice gifts and sinecure positions for their elders in their declining years.

Tolkien's Shire idyll was honestly less bad than the "dark Satanic mills" in a lot of respects, but it embraced a lot of class division.

Here, I really do think the goblins' natural social order will turn out to be more egalitarian than that. Lillywick doesn't seem to be cut from the same cloth as, say, Meriadoc Brandybuck, who certainly wouldn't be caught dead agreeing with "fuck bosses" even if he used that kind of language.

Well, that's the interesting thing! The one time in Lord of the Rings where we get two orcs having a conversation with each other alone, what do they talk about?

"What d'you say? - if we get a chance, you and me'll slip off and set up somewhere on our own with a few trusty lads, somewhere where there's good loot nice and handy, and no big bosses."

Emphasis mine.

Really enjoyed this chapter! Love all the little details of how the goblins are dressed and go about the ambush. Lillywick seems really cool!

I am wondering how a goblin army works now though… do they compensate for a shorter stature by using like, pikes? I imagine that it's harder to rely on agility and slipping through someone's guard to get in close in a line combat sorta situation. Though a guerrilla warfare approach would play to the strengths demonstrated in this chapter. Attacking an enemy army while in camp and all… though it's not like it would be terribly hard for the opponent to dig fortifications. Hmm.

Under normal circumstances, goblins don't fight out in the open if they can help it. They stick to skirmishing/hit and run tactics, ambushes and the like. Underground they can be quite disciplined, you pack them into a tunnel shield to shield with lines of spears facing outward and they're incredibly hard to dislodge.

The trick is getting them to bring that disciplined formation out onto the surface and drill them hard enough to overwhelm the instinct to run back underground, to receive a charge instead of breaking.

For some reason I'm reminded of the isekai fic which started with the MC killing Jeff Bezos in a car crash. Makes me wonder if the author had an axe to grind. Actually, it would be super cool to be a prolific writer and just kill off your favourite (?) billionaire at the start of each book you write.

Okay you got me, Iris died taking out Elon Musk.

(This is a joke)

Interestingly, Chickenthief is close to Chickenhound, the slaver fox from Redwall who took on the name Slagar the Cruel. Most likely a coincidence but I like the unintended thematic similarity.

I did always like those books.
 
Okay you got me, Iris died taking out Elon Musk.

(This is a joke)
Nonsense, everyone knows Elon Musk dies when one of his own self-driving robot cars hiccups, mistakes a grocery bag for a road sign, and drives off a cliff at 70 mph with him stuck inside.

The robot car is then isekai-reincarnated as a gender-nonconforming android (gynoid?) (???) in a society of synthetic intelligences. :p
 
4.4
Alessa led them from their camp, the goblin patrol falling in on either side of them. It was dark – the party was traveling without the aid of fire or lightstone, trusting the goblins' night vision. Lillywick walked next to Alessa, while Iris found herself walking alongside Bors, Chiri close behind her.

"How do feel about our chances?" Iris asked.

Bors looked at the goblins on either side thoughtfully.

"I hate fighting against goblins. They cheat, they backstab, they never fight fair if they can help it." He suddenly grinned. "Creatures after my own heart, in some ways."

It took about an hour of walking to reach the outpost, which was little more than a wooden shack with a guard outside. At first Iris didn't know how it could hold a goblin patrol, until the guard pounded on the door.

"Patrol returning, with, uh, prisoners I think?"

The door flew open, revealing a hole in the ground and a ladder. Instantly, a dozen goblins spilled out onto the surface, then twenty. One of them had a red badge on his sleeve, some kind of senior officer.

"Oi, Lillywick you shiftless bloodyhearted layabout, what's all this? Why are these prisoners not bound, or better yet dead?" the officer asked, a sneer on his face.

"It's cause they ain't prisoners, Swedge." Lilly stepped forward, drawing her knife.

"That's Police Captain Swedge to you, Lillywick Parser. I think I'll have to report you to the Big Boss for this, see if I don't. Rank insubordination, disobeying orders, failure to properly address an officer, aiding and abetting the enemies of the state, and there'll be more if you want to keep talking."

"You really don't get it, do you? I've had just about enough of you bossing me around, Swedge, you – ah, fuck it."

She buried her knife to the hilt in the officer's stomach, and his eyes went wide in shock. He dropped to the ground, gurgling and writhing feebly as he bled out. His blood was green. Iris stared, wide-eyed, shocked at the sudden violence. Lilly pointed her blade, coated in blood and dripping, at the rest of the goblins.

"Any of you want to join him?"

Most of the goblins cheered, some threw down their weapons, and a few tried to slip off into the dark, only to be pounced on by their comrades.

"Lillywick, you're a fool," another goblin said, twitching his cloak back and settling a hand on the hilt of his knife. "You know you can't beat boss Smivey, you'll end up dead as the last conspiracy."

"Ain't a conspiracy, it's a bloody uprising. Lads, take Patrol Captain Peck and his unit into custody," Lillywick said. About half a dozen goblins were surrounded, disarmed, and forced down the ladder into the underground outpost. The officer who had spoken up scowled, but let himself be disarmed with the rest.

"Well, we're in it now," Alessa said.

Lillywick gave a few more orders to her rebels, then turned to the party.

"Right, we march on Goblintown. Are you ready?"

"We're with you," Alessa said. Iris licked her lips.

"Sorry, Lillywick, but…what's the plan?"

"Plan, eh? Can't say I really have one. Just kinda makin' this one up as I go along."

Alessa's visor was down, so Iris couldn't tell what sort of expression she had on her face, but she did hear Alessa's heavy sigh.

***

Bryn Mawr – now Goblintown – was half in ruins. The walls were crumbling, though in some places there were signs of repair, scaffolding and cranes and dressed stone ready to be hauled into place. Iris heard a shrill whistle, and tried to place where she'd heard something like it before.

"Signal for a shift change," Lillywick explained. She gave a few whispered orders to some of her goblins, who scampered off.

"So, what's the next part of your…plan?" Iris asked.

"We get into Goblintown and head straight for the Big Boss. The city's seethin'. Goblins may not like workin' together, but they know when they're bein' stepped on. There've been riots and mutinies and conspiracies before, but they were all, call 'em, in the moment things."

"Spontaneous. And easily defeated, I'm guessing."

"Right. But, once my lads hear someone's taking on the Big Boss, they'll all start rising up at once." She was silent for a moment. "Sorry to wrap you up in all this, but we need all the help we can get."

"I'm happy to help, Lilly. I would've volunteered if I could."

"You're a good one, Iris Penny. Shiny."

"You are too, Lilly. I mean it, you're a better person than most humans I've met."

Iris didn't know goblins could blush. She meant it, though; in the brief time she'd known Lilly, Iris had the impression of someone fiercely independent, brave, and possessed of a strong sense of justice. They weren't qualities she'd expected to find in a goblin – but then, she'd only ever known goblins from stories. Lilly was a real person, not a monster.

Lilly drew her knife.

"Come on, doll, let's spill some fuckin' guts."

Well, Iris reflected, Lilly could be shockingly casual about violence, but nobody's perfect.

Lillywick didn't intend for them to head straight for the main gates – they were well-guarded, huge things bound with iron bars and chains. Instead, she led them to a postern gate.

"Right, who's good with locks?" Lillywick asked.

Alessa motioned to Chiri, who stepped forward and raised her hand, speaking a word that Iris didn't catch. There was a loud click as the door unlocked itself.

"Magic," Iris whispered as she passed through the gate. Within was a tunnel, running along the inside of the wall. They crept along as silently as they could – Lillywick and a dozen goblins, Alessa, Bors, Iris, and Chiri. Iris wasn't sure how far they went – they could have traversed a third of the city's circumference, but it was hard to keep her bearings in the dark.

Lillywick stopped them at a gate made of iron bars that led to the inside of the city wall. Chiri opened the lock with a magic word, and Lillywick led them through.

Somehow, they had come out onto a landing, twenty or thirty feet above ground. A staircase led down to the street below. Iris guessed that the ground the wall had been built on was uneven, but the tunnel inside the wall ran level, so the foundations of the wall were now lower than they had been at the postern gate. In any case, it gave Iris a good look at Goblintown.

It was cramped, for one thing. Stacked, windowless tenements went right up to the walls, interspersed with workshops, refineries, and smithies, their windows glowing orange in the night, chimneys belching smoke that shrouded the stars. There were open pits, and here and there Iris saw buildings of an older, sturdier construction – the ruins left by the humans who had built this place, reclaimed and repurposed by the goblins.

"That's strange," Alessa said, "In a human city, there would be a space cleared between the walls and people's dwellings, to let troops move effectively."

"Aye, the better for us, then," Lilly said.

"Ugh, and it stinks here," Iris said. Alessa sniffed at the air.

"It's the noxious trades. Tanneries, dyeworks, breweries, alchemical refineries. In human cities those would be restricted to the outside of the walls, but here…"

Here, they were crammed right alongside dwellings.

Iris turned to Chiri. The catgirl's tail was bristling, all the fur standing on end, and she hissed.

"Iris, I don't like this place. Terrible things have happened here."

"Then let's put a stop to them," Iris said grimly. She didn't feel afraid. She just felt her heartbeat, slow and steady, pulsing in her ears…

Lilly pointed at an older building that could have once been a palace, now a frowning, imposing edifice.

"That's Headquarters. Orders go out, but lots of stuff needs to go in. Supplies, reports…prisoners."

"Lillywick," one of the other goblins hissed, "There's guards in the street."

"Regulars?" Lilly asked, testing the point of her knife.

"Military police." The goblin spat.

"They're the worst bullyboys and thugs," Lilly explained to Iris and Alessa. "Right, take their coats."

A trio of goblins slipped away, and Lilly sat on the top step and waited.

"How many goblins live here?" Iris asked, scanning the cityscape. Lilly counted on her fingers.

"Couple…dozen-hundred?"

"Two to three thousand," Alessa translated. Bors swore.

"Most of em live belowground. Shave off the prisoners, the children, the old and infirm…well, those as Smivey Demple hasn't had off for being workshy."

Iris felt vaguely nauseous.

"And the able-bodied adults?" she asked.

"Ummm most are workers, those as hate the bosses but ain't exactly makin' a stand…couple hundreds of managers and other types, bullyboys but not fighters. Leaving three to five hundreds of soldiers and guards. Of those, maybe a third ain't been broken to the lash, they hate the boss and all his plans and schemes. Then another third is just followin' orders." Lilly's tone was not charitable. "The last third'll follow the boss' orders no matter what."

"Meaning we're fighting between one and three hundred goblin soldiers," Alessa muttered.

"Closer to three hundred, aye. But if we spike it, they'll be confused and spread all over."

"Well, let's hope your faith in your people isn't misguided."

"I ain't exactly guideless, doll." Lilly stood up, dusting off her hands. "Think my lads are done daring now."

She was right. At the bottom of the stairs were two goblins with their throats cut, lying in pools of their own blood. They both had red badges on their shoulders, like the captain Lilly had killed back at the outpost.

The group crept along, keeping to the shadows. Iris fumbled along, Chiri close behind her. The catgirl was clearly on edge, and once she hissed as they darted past a huge factory. Iris shuddered; she wanted to avoid even imagining what was going on inside. She looked up at the stars, judging that it had been three hours since they had joined forces with Lilly.
 
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Bryn Mawr – now Goblintown
Someone has read their Tolkien, it seems. And missed the point so hard that it's almost funny.
It was cramped, for one thing. Stacked, windowless tenements went right up to the walls, interspersed with workshops, refineries, and smithies, their windows glowing orange in the night, chimneys belching smoke that shrouded the stars
Ah, good ol' 19th century factory towns. At least he did have enough reason to not build polluting industrial underground... I hope.
 
"That's strange," Alessa said, "In a human city, there would be a space cleared between the walls and people's dwellings, to let troops move effectively."
Is that something RL walled cities did too, or just something that you decided makes sense given the apocalyptic plague massively reducing population density?

Either way, I'm guessing the lack of that space is a sign that either settlement walls are a recent thing for goblins or Chickenthief is an idiot.
 
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I kind of assumed that the differences between Goblintown and a human city that were noted were meant to show how goblins think a little differently than humans. Their preference for ambush heavy combat and a higher tolerance for certain odors.
 
Is that something RL walled cities did too, or just something that you decided makes sense given the apocalyptic plague massively reducing population density?

Either way, I'm guessing the lack of that space is a sign that either settlement walls are a recent thing for goblins or Chickenthief is an idiot.

This was a feature of walled cities, at least when they were well-planned and well-governed, but an urban planner Smivey Chickenthief is not.
 
How ramshackle the whole Goblintown project is around the edges I think really helps sell this as a dark satanic mill that also happens to have a town around it and a police-state that has a government also in the room. Good ol' scrap-iron zero-safety gobbo aesthetics, but justified as through the fettered mind of Boss Smivey and his Oprichniki Bobbies and Pinkertons.
 
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