The goblins of The Lie of Rhymes, ever-yearning to increase their number, would resort to the age-old tactic of stealing infants from their unwary neighbors when their females did not bear enough young to meet the yearly quota.
This was pretty much every year: Even goblin females, not being the romantic sort, would often skip the whole courtship-and-marriage phase and "produce" a child via kidnapping, as often as not preferring to simply torture and creatively dismember their suitors. It was hard for the average Snodub to get lucky when the fairer sex compared him to the master that ruled their civilization with an iron fist; no matter how long his yellowed fangs, how jade-green his lumpy skin, how rippling with muscle his twisted thews: They just couldn't compete with an unholy four-armed abomination festooned with long magenta feathers. (The fact that the lawgiver could also spit webs--from which orifice it was never made clear--was also patently unfair, the men thought. Lesser mortals like them had to actually go out and steal acquire some ropes and chains to prep their boudoir for a night of passion.)
So it was not at all uncommon for the dank obsidian creches of the Lies to be filled, at the end of each season, with a variety of new infants and sub-adolescents, each different and yet equally loved treasured counted as a member of their group.
Ngokang, however, was different. The kidnappers brave liberators of lost children returned that season, emptying their «troll leather bags» of dwarven, human, and elven children (there were a few kobolds, too, but since they usually didn't survive the first week, they didn't count). Even among the panoply of species, Ngokang was... special. So special that the goblin responsible for bringing her into the fold was initially reluctant to take credit.
"What is that?!" demanded the Arch-Matron of Childcare and Slow Flaying when she saw the odd, translucent-white, roughly-child-sized-and-shaped blob.
"Iunno," mumbled her rescuer, shuffling his feet.
"You were supposed to bring us a child. Instead you've dumped a pupa on my floor!"
"I have not!" he protested. "I haven't since I was two years old!"
"I said pupa, you dolt. An insect larva." The Matron scowled. "Well, too late now. If she doesn't molt into anything interesting, maybe the cook will know what to do with her. Insects are a remarkable source of protein, you know."
"Ewww!" chorused the children.
The Matron crossed her arms. "Ew? Ew? I'll have you know that in my day, cave spider intestines were a treat that every gobboling loved! I stabbed my best friend for a plate-full." She smiled briefly, eyes going misty. "Now, speaking of that: It's time for your 1 o'clock dagger-wielding lessons!"
Ngokang never did make it to the kitchens, not so much on account of quickly maturing (she didn't) as the cook's predilections ("Do you know how astringent ants are? Get that thing out of here!")
Her childhood was painful and brutal--even by goblin standards. Often the butt of jokes, never chosen first for any game, the young antwoman child lived in terror of her peers. The one ray of light in her dismal existence was their yearly picnic and volleyball tournament; she would gorge on creeping-eye-jelly and peanut butter roasts as the other children played.
It was at such a picnic that her talents first revealed themselves: Ngokang had an instinctive command over animal life. She tamed her first animal in her twelfth year: a bear attracted by the pic-a-nic baskets. (It ate several of her classmates first. She expressed regret; after training the grizzly beast for war, she made sure it never devoured any other children: "It's horrible for their digestion, you know, and kids are just chock-full of cholesterol.")
That was only the start of her blossoming into womanhood--err, drone-female-hood. She would go on to master the very secrets of life and death, commanding corpses to walk once more, divining the means of immortality.
Ultimate power was at the very tips of her forelimbs; she was only a few dwarf corpses away from completing her research. She crept nearer and nearer to the crude start of a mountainhome, chuckling dryly between her mandibles, reading her unholy necromantic spells, and then--suddenly!--inexplicably!--she found that the bars of a +featherwood cage+ had closed about her.
TL;DR: Srsly. Antwoman necromancer?! I love this game.
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Topic: [story] Ngokang Usnarūd, Worker Ant Woman Animal Trainer necromancer (Read 1211 times)