The entire mountain shook for what seemed like an eternity and all Tindel could do was covering his head with his hands and hope for the best. His spot in Armok’s alley seemed like it could crush him at any moment. He wasn’t sure what had happened; maybe the goblins had decided to dig into the tunnels instead of attacking directly. Perhaps the marching horde was so vast that it was causing the tunnels to cave-in directly on their heads, again he could not be sure.
As the moments past it was clear that their tunnels weren’t going to crush them alive, for their workdwarfship was of the high quality. The supports they had used were all holding, even the flood gate remained perfectly in place. Finally the mountain came to rest, leaving Tindel to wonder what exactly had happened.
That would have to wait for later, however, as the vibrations from marching goblins again started to shake the stone. He wasn’t sure how he knew, but he was sure that the brothers had caused whatever had happened. With a quick prayer to the gods for his friends Tindel got into position and waited for the attack.
The beat of the drums began to echo into the halls, though not as loud as Tindel had expected. Maybe they had over estimated the number of goblins; perhaps they had a chance after all? Then it came, the roar of the goblin charge. The mountain shook again as they came, and their roar was soon followed by screams of pain. A lewd smile spread across Tindel’s lips, his traps were doing their dirty work.
The first element to reach the entrance from above did not hesitate to attack. They had watched as thousands of their brothers were buried in shallow stone tombs, and they were enraged beyond self control. So it was that the bravest and most foolish of the remaining goblins rushed into the halls of Stonemane the Brave.
The very first goblin to set foot into the entrance tunnel was rewarded for his bravery with a crude wooden spear to the stomach. The freshly carved weapon had sprung up from the very stone and pierced him clear through to his spine. The goblin directly behind him was running so fast that he too was impaled on this wooden lance, pushing the first goblin’s still living body even further onto it.
So it went that the first goblin to take a step deeper into the dwarven halls was compensated thusly. Heads were removed by spinning blades of jagged stone, skulls were smashed by falling blocks, and legs were ripped off by overly powerful snares. The deeper they got into the maze the harder it was
to go forward.
One small group of goblins thought they had made it clear of the traps, running side by side down what seemed like a promising tunnel. This, of course, was exactly what Tindel had expected. So it was that the goblins had a most surprised look on their faces when a series of wooden planks swung down from the ceiling, running each goblin through with foot long spikes.
Some traps were more complex than others, and even the most simple of traps killed. Down one tunnel the mason had hammered two ended nails into the ground, each a foot long. With the goblins so focused on the walls and ceilings for traps none of them noticed until they’d already slammed their feet onto the sharp spikes.
Every tunnel that came to a dead end had one last surprise for the goblins that had discovered it. Each passageway had a small pressure plate installed with a simple jack attached to it. Every goblin that stepped on the plate caused the jack to go up another step, pushing a critical block loose a bit more with each level. After ten or so steps that block would fall out of place, and that entire section of tunnel would cave in on the goblins heads.
So it went for several moments, the seconds seemed to stretch out into hours, the minutes into days. One after another the goblin horde succumbed to Tindel’s clever traps, each one as surprised as the last. This didn’t appear to slow their advance however as soon the old antechamber was breached.
Even as a large group of goblin warriors made their way into the antechamber at full speed their brothers were still discovering the wrong paths. So as these lucky goblins began to explore the chamber they’re brothers were being buried alive all around them. The screams of their kin did little to slow them, indeed it enraged them still further.
This room slowed the warriors up, as there were no obvious exits from it. It seemed to them that they had found another dead end. Still the room continued to fill with goblins, even though the first inside had set off a timer for the most deadly trap of all. None of them could guess that there were more traps to come, for the ones they had already seen were all insidious.
More than a two hundred goblins had crammed into the antechamber before the trap began to go off. It started simply enough, with the entrance to the chamber closing with a boom. It was then that the goblins realized that they had made a dire mistake. Heat began to filter into the air tight chamber from an unknown source; the air began to get thin quickly.
With all those goblins breathing up the air and hidden fires burning away the rest it didn’t take long for panic to spread. Soon they began to tear at one another, trying desperately to find a way out. As the hidden fires continued to burn the air in the room was slowly used up. The goblins lungs burned, their vision blurred, and they began to stagger into each other. Soon a group of two hundred powerful warriors were reduced to a pile of corpses, all having suffocated on the spot.
After a set time the entrance to the chamber reopened, air rushing back into the room as the semi vacuum seal was broken. The goblins that stood waiting on the other side were taken aback by the sight of their fallen comrades. They there lay, without a scratch on them, dead as could be. Again the pressure of the horde forced those goblins at the fore front into the room; soon another two hundred goblins met their fate at the hands of Tindel’s most insidious trap.
Hundreds upon hundreds upon hundreds of goblins were slain by this trap, for every time the door would open another group was forced to enter. Soon the hidden fires ran out of fuel and the corpses of goblins stopped the entrance door from closing all the way. Tindel had prepared for this however, and as it became clear the trap would no longer function new doors were opened in the room.
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Baltrog was incensed; nearly four fifths of his army had been destroyed in the massive land slide! He should have seen it coming, should have expected filthy dwarves to try something like this. The years of peace had dulled his mind, he thought, he was not the commander he once was! Still, he ordered his remaining troops to attack. The two dwarves that had triggered the land slide had been buried by it; he had seen that much with his own eyes.
This was not their style, dwarves preferred to meet on the field of battle or fight to the death in their halls. This must be a very small group of them, he calculated, other wise they wouldn’t resort to such filthy tricks. Though he only had one fifth of his army left he still had over two thousand troops. Surely they would be able to crush these disgusting stone mites!
As he drove his minions into their tunnels he heard no reports, no news from inside. The only way he could decide how the battle was going was to watch the flow of troops. If they were flowing into the tunnels faster that meant they were doing well, they were making a lot of progress. Of course, this could also mean that they were dieing by the hundreds!
As Tindel’s master trap went off the flow of goblins into the dwarven halls stopped suddenly. There was simply no more room in the remaining entrance tunnels to fit more troops inside. The warriors that were jammed in were being injured by traps that had already sprung long ago. Their comrades pushing them forward impaled them on spear traps that already killed four goblins before. They ran onto nail traps that had already been stepped on a hundred times before.
This sudden delay was unacceptable; the giant spiders began to tear into the rear ranks that were just standing around waiting to enter. The suddenly slow pace of the battle drove Baltrog mad, and his madness infected his command and control platoon. Soon the giant arachnids were inflicting more casualties on the army than even the dwarven traps could have done.
Every now and again a hundred or two hundred more troops would stream into the halls, but always they would halt. Their punishment was death, and the spiders feasted on the flesh of goblins. The goblins waiting on the mountainside had no choice but to flee their masters, and so the remaining army was scattered into the mountains.
“No! No you cowards! Come back! Fight for your Lord! I will kill you all!” Baltrog’s cries echoed across the mountain side. His vicious screams did not convince a single goblin to return; in fact it insured that they never would. Baltrog had effectively routed his own army in his fury, defeated himself.
They were not yet totally defeated however, for hundreds of goblin warriors were still packed tightly into the tunnels where the giant spiders could not fit. Their only choice was to go deeper, and once the trap had run its course they did just this. Outside their commanders raged, but inside the troops continued deeper.
Twenty one dwarves remained to stand against hundreds of mad goblin warriors. Their best traps had been spent, now was time for personal combat. So it was that the leading warriors of the goblin horde made first contact with their dwarven enemies. This battle would go down in history as one of the bloodiest conflicts in all the land.
<that is it for me tonight, time for me to go home! I didn't have a lot of time to proofread it so this might be worse than normal in that area. Still, I wanted to post it tonight so you could read it now instead of waiting for tomorrow morning 
Tomorrow we get down into the dirty details of personal combat between dwarf and goblin!>
[ January 15, 2008: Message edited by: Railick Stonemane ]
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Topic: The Chronicles of Clan Stonemane - The Rise and Fall of Fortress Stonemane (Read 9634 times)