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As Hadhan’s band treks down the road in the morning light, you fall beside Farthorn.
“So, you seem to know a lot about fighting goblins.”
“Hunting them.” Farthorn grunts, “I wouldn’t call the culling of beasts such as Goblins the same thing as a battle. In battle, it’s your lack of knowledge about your enemy that shapes it. But in a hunt, you best know your quarry well. To hunt goblins properly, you must spend months observing a den. Note their preferred hunting grounds, their water sources, ideally their next target. Only fools and the ignorant take on Goblins without having prepared.”
“If you already know where their den is, why don’t you kill them all in one fell swoop?” You ask.
Farthorn snorts. “Impossible. Have you seen the size of them? A big one would barely reach your chest. And the tunnels they dig are cramped even for their kind. Crawling on your belly, you’d be easy prey for even the smallest of them.”
“So then how would you hunt them? Wait for them at the entrances of their burrows?”
Farthorn shakes his head. “You’d never find all the entrances. You’d be hamstrung from an ambush from another while watching the entrance to the one you found. And even if you escape, they’d have your scent. Once you leave to sleep, they’d track you down and kill you. No, to kill goblins it is either in swathes or not at all.”
You nod. “I’m at a loss of how to do it then.”
“Poison their watering holes.” Farthorn replies, “Drive away their prey. When they must send raiding parties onto tilled earth for food, slaughter them and leave none alive to remember your scent. Goblins are cowards by nature and on long forays away from their dens, they’ll group together. That is when they are at their weakest. Pick off as many as you can with your arrows before closing in if you must. I’d rather not fight goblins at all, but ten goblins in a field are worth a single goblin in the forest.
“Where did you learn how to hunt them so thoroughly?” You wonder. To you, Farthorn seemed to have a lifetime of experience in the matter of hunting Goblins, and yet he couldn’t have been much more than a handful of years your senior.
Farthorn sighs. “Five years ago, when I was a warden for the King of Rosland, he decided to clear his royal woods of Goblins. It was a grand effort, involving hundreds of his most experienced rangers and thousands of inexperienced huntsmen. Even some knights deigned to join the hunt. I left his majesty’s service for fear of my life six months into the hunt, and swore never to hunt goblins since. There are still goblins in those woods to this day.”
You whistle, “Six months and you learned that much goblin lore?”