Fantasy The Wild North 🌲 || The Hunter's Inn (Tamer's Guild)

[Murdergurl]

[North Lands, undisclosed location passed Baylin's Wall / onset of night]

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An unbridled wilderness sprawled in every direction, halted only by the ruin of Baylin’s Wall. The ancient barrier rimmed the feral forest as far as the eye could see both easterly and westward. As the last feeble glow of a setting sun dipped behind the horizon, it washed the wall’s grey stones in ruddy ember. But very quickly the encroaching night gripped the land firmly in its grasp. Emerging from bracken shadows, Khortja made silent steps to overlook a black-rocked precipice. A stiff wind played at the locks of her dark, greasy hair as she peered over the edge of the cliff. In the welcomed nocturne Khortja's goblin eyes glowed orange. She beheld the miles of forest thicket that overtook the steep mountainsides. Her large ears received the stirring of all manner of night creatures as they rose from their slumber to cavort and feed and hunt. A soft pad of canine paws scratched at the ground behind her and Khortja knew that Hakki, her Warg companion, had also come to inspect the view. Now two pairs of smoldering eyes looked upon the terrain below. The giant, black wolf merely huffed as he sat beside the female goblin.

From their high vantage, the worn towers along the wall looked like they were made for insects. Following the thin barrier easterly, a sprawl of twinkling firelight could just be seen through the screen of trees before disappearing entirely behind a rising crag. That was the city of Colby, built right up against the vicious wilderness. Though the incandescent cityscape could be ascertained from the clifftop, it may as well have been on the other side of the world. Many miles were between the goblin and the wall, and even more to the city of Colby. But that was not their destination. The duo was returning back to the familiar ground of a trapper camp.

The camp was one of many that dotted the Northern wilds. They were set up by the Tamer’s Guild that operated out of Colby. Their organization turned a profit by hiring hunters to venture into the savage territories. Their agents would produce many a creature from the feral lands, entangled in their nets and jailed in their cages. The clientele of the Tamer’s Guild were many: ranging from merchants to wizards to nobility. They wanted the animals of the unknown wilds for everything from exotic pets to weapons of war, to live specimens meant to be dissected into reagents for spells. The Guild made a fortune in filling these orders. But it was lowly beings like Khortja and Hakki that did their dirty work.

The camp was far below them, at the foot of the sheer cliff. The hunters at camp kept their fires out in the gloaming hours, lest they attract unwanted attention from the forest creatures. At night, it would be impossible for most to find the camp. But none of the other trappers were goblins. If Khortja had been alone, she might have considered scaling down the cliff face. It would have been more precarious, but considerably faster than traveling the long way down the back of the slope to the forested valley. Climbing was not an option with Hakki. Wargs could run, they could leap, they could even swim. But they did not climb.

Khortja considered how long it would take them to return. She’d been waiting for the onset of night. For her and the Warg, it was an advantage. Where most of the other trappers wouldn’t dare venture out into the wilds at night, these were prime hours for the goblin and her canine companion. Both of them possessed a nocturnal vision that could perceive the depths of the shadowed sylvania as clear as a human could in daylight. It was the sun that gave Khorta problems, and she avoided treks in open daylight. She had left camp at night and would return the same. After taking in enough of the view Khortja turned and ducked back into the shadows of the forest underbrush, followed closely by Hakki.

“That’s it? We are not hunting?” Hakki growled at Khortja as he caught up in a few long strides. His question was less of an inquiry and more of an irritated observance.

“Dey gots meat in da camp. Dudn’t ya smell it?”, the green barbarian retorted matter-of-factly.

The wolf huffed. “Walking with you, I can’t smell anything but your wretched stink.” he accused playfully. But there was much truth in the wolf's jab.

“Yeh? Den wut about dis? Can ya smell dat?”

Khortja had been lugging a large sack over her shoulder, made of animal hide. The leather had kept most of the odor of its contents contained, but she now stopped in her tracks to open the skin-bag and waft the stink of its contents toward the warg. Hakki was immediately assailed by an eye-watering pungency. The smell coaxed an angered whine from the warg's snarling snout.


“Ugh! To think, people actually WANT those things!”, Hakki put a bit of distance between himself and the goblin as Khortja closed back up the bag and continued her trek down the densely wooded slope.

“Chubb Grubs is good munch. Makes sum ‘proppa killy eats if ya’s mix it wif sum mush”, Khortja expounded on one of her cultural delicacies to the wolf. Hakki, in turn, was disgusted by the notion.

“I’ll go hunt some meat of my own, then.”, The warg turned off from their path and disappeared through the trees, muttering something about ruining the meat with fire and leaving the goblin to continue alone.

Silent hours passed as Khortja made her way through the nighttime forest. Branches reached out and precarious footing threatened to trip up the barbarian, but she moved silent and deft. The goblin’s various worn furs protected her from scraping thorns and rough bark. At length, she had circumvented the cliff face and come around the long way to camp. She could see the circle of tents surrounding supply wagons in the distance. A few hunched figures guarded the perimeter of long wooden masts, sharpened to points. The fence tilted outward in a clear advertisement to keep out. As Khortja began her approach, she caught the familiar scent of Hakki. He’d been waiting nearby, fresh cruor dressed upon his muzzle from a recent meal. The black wolf trotted up to the goblin, nonchalantly, as they gathered without a word.

Neither of the two were particularly welcome guests at the camp. They were tolerated at best. The goblin and the Warg both did enough to make themselves an asset to the Tamer’s Guild and earned their keep. But their species were notoriously ill-natured towards the more civilized races of the realm. The duo’s forbearance was tentative, and they both felt more at ease when the Goblin and Warg had each other’s backs.

They slipped into camp under the noses of the guards. Shouts of alarm were raised, and then abated as Khortja and Hakki seemingly appeared out of the shadows within the camp. The two could have easily made themselves known as they had approached. But there was a certain satisfaction the two enjoyed in flaunting their capacity for stealth in the faces of the other trappers. Of course, this only made their peers that much more leery of them. No one liked being snuck up on by a Goblin and her Warg.

“Aye! And where’d you get off to?”, one of the guild members had stepped out of her tent at the sudden ruckus, spying the goblin only a few paces out. She was a faun, and actually bothered to keep a dialogue with the goblin. Most of the others gave Khortja a passing neglect, and only dealt with her when they needed something.

“Grubs”, Khortja waved the stinking sack of her catch at the faun. The reek of the bloated maggots inside preceded them.

“Ugh!”, the faun recoiled at the stench, ducking back partially into her tent as if to hide from the smell.

“I didn’t think anyone was actually going to fetch those for the docket!”, the furred female exclaimed as she fully retreated into her tent and closed the flap before her.

“Go put it in the trunk before you stink up the whole camp!”

Hakki laughed at the faun’s discomfort, curling up in a familiar corner of the camp and leaving his compatriot to her business.

Khortja scoffed at the faun’s delicate constitution, slinging the sack of writhing grubs over her shoulder once more and making off to the large wagon in the middle of camp. The trappers had been accruing all sorts of creatures for the past several days, readying a shipment of requests to be delivered back to Colby.

Some animals were too large to be caged inside the wagon. They were held in temporary pens and would be loaded up into their own wagons when the new caravan came. They were due to arrive any day now, with the stock the trappers had gathered being nearly complete. The grubs Khortja had gone to require had been avoided by the rest of the group. They were a nasty business, for those that had experience with them. But the goblin took no issue with their retrieval. It was things like this that made her particularly useful to the guild.

Climbing aboard the wagon, Khortja brought about the outcries of the various beasts she disturbed in their enclosures. Hisses and bellows and shrieks erupted in an animalistic cacophony as the goblin sought out a large, red trunk at the aft of the wagon. It had multiple clasps upon it, keeping the lid snug and sealed tight. Setting down the maggot sack, Khortja undid the fixtures and lifted the top of the chest. A reek immediately rose out of the trunk, one so pungent and festering that even Khortja held her breath. She quickly emptied the maggots into the mixture of bile and rotten flesh that sat stewing in the insulated box. The big-eared barbarian then quickly shut the lid and fixed it in place. The animals howled at Khortja's departure from the wagon. And as the goblin descended the vehicle, she was greeted by the annoyed mass of the camp members. They had been shaken from their sleep by the raucous noise (and maybe even the smell) of the goblin’s return. They were none too happy about it, either. Glowering stares followed Khortja back to her corner of the camp, but she shrugged them off and looked for the familiar company of Hakki, instead.