Husband of the Goblin Tribe

[Interludes Vol. 1.5] In which we meet Mint, a goblin with a mission.

~~** Interlude | Mint **~~

I’ve been playing this VRMMORPG for as long as I can remember, I knew all the races and factions inside and out and had raised nearly a dozen characters to the counter stop. However, I had only heard snippets of the so-called Bloodmaw Goblin Tribe in all of my playthroughs. In the beginning of almost every main story quest, when first encountering goblins, a certain NPC named Yx is met, who wanders the world looking for the last remaining Bloodmaw Goblin, hoping to find them in order revive the lost tribe.

Yx would appear whenever a quest took you to one of the many goblin factions around the world, whether for negotiation or subjugation, continually lamenting about how not a single goblin they had come across contained the origin blood of the Creator.

There were speculations on some forums that there would likely be a payoff to doing the questline in a future expansion of the game. Maybe Yx would finally locate the last Bloodmaw Goblin or some hidden tribe and it would lead to a new playable race opening up? I admit to being excited about the idea since I loved the worldbuilding lore and the difficult magic system that required detailed learning of the Rune connection system for creating and using magic.

I never would have thought that while exploring the game’s world randomly one day, in an effort to be the first player to report one-hundred percent map completion, that I would stumble across them. The last remaining Bloodmaw—An NPC named Ark Wyze.

It didn’t make sense to me at first. Ark Wyze?

The name Wyze was unmistakable to anyone who had ever played a magician-class character.

Salondra Wyze, one of the most powerful mage NPCs in the game and the only Tower Master to have reached the ninth circle in the last one-thousand years… there was a book in the private library in her mansion which spoke of her once having a son who met his end as an adventurer.

No traces of him or his party were ever found.

If Ark Wyze was her missing son, why was he a goblin and not a human? Salondra was known for her active hatred towards the uncivilized races, whom she considered to be a blight and plague upon the world—and to which goblins were at the forefront.

The look on the face of the last Bloodmaw Goblin was etched in sorrow.

“Why have you sought me out, Adventurer?”

Engaging with the NPC, there were two dialogue choices to answer with. The first was to say that you were here to take the head of the last Bloodmaw and prevent the resurrection of the tribe that Yx was aiming for. The second was the exact opposite, offering to help restore the Bloodmaw tribe back to its once legendary greatness through any means necessary.

Naturally, I wanted the secret storyline I had found to continue onwards, so I chose the second option.

“I would have chosen the first option, Adventurer.”

Huh? Did the NPC know I had a different selection available?

“No matter. For you to have found me, it can only mean that damnable thing, Yx, eventually will, as well.”

He knew Yx? The story was starting to get good!

“I no longer have the strength to witness losing my loved ones yet again. I can feel the age seeped into my bones, Adventurer, and I know that I’m nearing my end. Since you aren’t here to kill me, would you like to listen to an old goblin’s story? I would say old man, but I’ve long since lost my humanity…”

Holy crap! Am I going to get to hear the backstory of the Bloodmaw Tribe straight from the source at last!?

I quickly chose that I wanted to listen to his tale and was invited to follow him to a nearby cave. Upon entering, it was an absolutely unremarkable cave with nothing in it… that was, until his hand glowed and the wall opened in front of us, turning into a long passageway.

“Just a little bit further…” the NPC spoke.

When we reached the end of the passageway, I saw an amazing sight. A single elaborate cavern expanded into view. It looked like a small palatial mansion!

“Surprising, isn’t it? I tried to reconstruct it from the original, but it has been so long, I’m sure I’ve forgotten more than a few of the details…”

An option came up to ask about the original.

“When I was a lad, I wanted to be an adventurer and see the world. I never would have expected that on my first goblin subjugation quest that I would be captured and made to be breeding stock for them.”

A small mirthful chuckle exited the mouth of the NPC.

“Given the choices being to breed them or die, I hope you can understand that as a youth full of life, I wasn’t exactly looking forward to letting it end prematurely. Still, I couldn’t have known that it was my destiny to be part of something as great as the Bloodmaw Tribe. That’s not to say I didn’t have my points of contention with them. I had many, and we clashed often due to how different our societies were. But do not for a moment believe that the Bloodmaw Tribe wasn’t civilized—They were! It’s just a matter of perspective, you see…”

He gestured with his hand all about the room.

“Dak. In the language of the Bloodmaw, it meant Husband. To them, that’s exactly what I was. The one and only male to be used by the remnants of the Bloodmaw Tribe after a subjugation had wiped out all but a hidden few females protected by a single elder goblin known as the Old One a year earlier. Hells, how she hated me! Ha ha ha! This room once belonged entirely to me, and I called it the Breeding Room. My task back then was each night to put a child in the belly of one of the fourteen goblins who were of age to repopulate the tribe. I had only thought of how to escape at first, but… things changed rather quickly for me.”

The goblin NPC walked over to a section of the room that had a number of pillars with various items situated on top of each of them.

“When my first daughter was born, thoughts of escaping had all but left my mind. I named her Diana Artemis, and she was a paragon of what it meant to be a Bloodmaw Goblin. She was the future hope and Guardian of the tribe… but that didn’t matter one iota to me. Even though she was born a full goblin in appearance, I never once saw her as such. She was my daughter… as human to me as she was goblin to them. Ah, I should touch on it briefly, that I was originally a human.”

He held his hands out and turned them over, showing off his green skin.

“I chose to become like this only after I lost everyone. Before this I wasn’t half-bad in appearance as a human. Now where was I? Oh yes, my first daughter, Diana…”

He pointed to the pillar in the middle, at what appeared to be the severed claw of a bear.

“Would you believe that she was hardly a month old and hunted down a bear? It wasn’t by herself, but it hardly made a difference… she was mostly responsible for its death, and she was someone I was immensely proud of. You see, my fourth daughter, Button, was in the process of being born at that time, and she thought it would be nice for us to have a feast for her arrival. Say… do you like mushrooms, Adventurer?”

His words were soft and filled with warmth as he talked about his goblin daughters for what felt like an extremely long time.

“By the time six months had passed, the number of my daughters running around Goblinhome had almost reached twenty. You can see why most of the other races regard goblins as vermin. They can reproduce three times as fast as a human can. It’s not like I don’t understand the desire to cull their numbers, and when it comes to other goblin tribes, I may still share that sentiment. But the Bloodmaw were different…”

There was what looked like a small shrine that was immaculately kept. Within it was what looked like an infant goblin skeleton.

“My eleventh daughter, Mint. None of us knew why, but when she was born, it was like she had already given up on life. I often wonder what kind of goblin she might have grown up as. It wasn’t a week after she was born that she died, and Ebony, my tenth daughter, took it quite personal, since she wanted nothing more than to be a big sister, and went so far as to use her magic to animate these bones. I must say, as a skeleton daughter, Mint was quite affectionate.”

What sounded like a horrible life event was talked about with a smile on his face.

“It wasn’t long after my first round of children were born when the troubles began. What should have been a safe area protected by Yx was suddenly set upon by a number of foes. The boundaries of the Bloodmaw’s territory were a forest of black trees to the west, a big rock to the south, and a clear stream to the east. The cavern happened to be part of a mountain range to the north so there was little to no threat coming from that direction. From the other side of the stream came the orcs, who had grown too large in number and were forced to split their tribe to settle more territory and hunting grounds. Just past the big rock to the south were the Black-claws, gigantic ferocious wolves who had established themselves as the primary enemy of the tribe and were playing a waiting game. I believe you adventurers call them Shadow Wolves? And from the west, what else would come but the natural enemy of a goblin… self-righteous parties of adventurers filling subjugation requests.”

The NPC walked a bit further past the pillar displays and to a wall full of armaments.

“What killed the Bloodmaw weren’t the foes on the outside, but me from the inside.”

He picked up a spear and twirled it around.

“I killed them because I couldn’t kill the last vestiges of my own humanity. What makes the Bloodmaw so strong is not their individual abilities, but how they come together as a unit. What killed them was the lack of numbers that I was made responsible for re-creating. Tell me, Adventurer, if the survival and advancement of your own race rested entirely on you needing to procreate with your own progeny, could you do so willingly and still think of yourself as a human? It sounds uncivilized and rather taboo, doesn’t it?”

I expected a selection to appear for me to choose from, but none did.

“That was my folly, you see. If I had only accepted that I was already a monster by that point… that I had already become a Bloodmaw Goblin, same as them… things might have gone differently. The secret of the Origin Blood is that it is Divinely given to the ones called Bloodmaw by their Creator. So long as one can procreate with it, there will never be an issue with whom. I only wish there was someone who could have convinced me to do what needed to be done in a way that made sense, so that I wouldn’t have lost everyone important to me.”

The goblin NPC sighed.

“Adventurer… there is no need for you to burden yourself with restoring the Bloodmaw. For as long as they exist, the entire world will be their enemy until they are strong enough and plentiful enough to overwhelm all the other races. Only then might the Bloodmaw know peace…”

Finally, the selection box opened up. The two options were to offer to stay with the NPC until they passed away, which would be soon, or to volunteer to make the whole world my enemy and try to preserve the origin blood of the Bloodmaw Goblin Tribe.

That second choice had to be it… had to be how to unlock the Bloodmaw goblins as a playable race!!

I hesitated a bit before pressing the button. I made sure to screenshot everything. I was going to be famous on the forums for being the one to open the door to one of the game’s most niche secrets!

[I volunteer to make the world my enemy.]

“Are you certain? I will not ask again… this choice will directly affect your life, Adventurer.”

I chose the follow up option.

[I will preserve the Origin Blood.]

“I see… I have no time left to test your true conviction. I will ask for your forgiveness then, for what must happen to pass along the origin blood… is not very civilized, I’m afraid…”

The NPC’s hand began to glow and I was hit with an unguardable paralysis spell.

“When you wake up, I will be dead, and you will become the last Bloodmaw Goblin. Goblin instinct will take over for everything else, so whether you consume my body or not out of necessity, I will not hold any grudge. I ask only one thing of you from this moment on… please name the child you will give birth to… Mint. I at least wanted to give her a second chance at life…”

What happened after that was something R18+ that shouldn’t have been in a video game meant for minors to play.

I felt extremely violated, yet I couldn’t close my eyes to it.

After it was done, the NPC who had initially appeared as a goblin to me began to change shape into that of an old human male with a white beard, looking at me with an apologetic face.

Then, pixels filled my vision until there was only darkness.

[Your quest has ended. Would you like to begin your life anew as Mint the Bloodmaw?]

There it was! Wait? Did that mean this character was being deleted?

Damn, I had some good items on this one… but… argh, it’s a new playable race!

Fuck it, YOLO!!

[Transferring player now… ]

[Emergency Quest: Survive!]

[You must escape. Failure to do so will result in permanent death!]

Huh?

Where am I?

I… can’t breathe!

I felt a desperate urge to get out of wherever I was!

I found myself clawing through a tight passage on my way towards a single speck of light below me.

I had to hurry!

I was almost there, just need to push my hands through and pull myself out of this hole…

Plop.

I was suddenly in a dimly lit cave, surrounded by many goblins and a single human male. They were all talking, but I couldn’t understand any of the words they were saying.

Looking at them, I saw names above each of their heads.

What looked like an umbilical cord was stretching out from me and going into the one named Pepper. There was a middle-aged goblin called Old One. Four small goblins: Diana Artemis, Button, Glace, and Ebony. Two goblins who looked to be in their late teens with the names Jewel and Berry, and the lone human… who was rather attractive, actually… Ark Wyze.

Did I somehow get sent back into the game’s past? Is this a divergent storyline?

Ah~, I was tired as could be. I needed to log out for now and make a quick post on the forums before taking a nap. My gamer blood was surging and I couldn’t wait to see how this storyline continued.

…

Uh… where’s the logout button?