Intermission 8 Page 46
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“The things I told you about… the goblin relocations, the travel restrictions, the abductions that happened later…”
“The Empire has been bad for a lot of people, but it must feel like goblins have been targeted more than others. Right?”
“Well, it’s true.”
“There’s one thing they drilled into us Guards from day one.”
“The low ranks, like those we’ve encountered up until now, all they know is that the activities of goblins must be reported, and those that leave the city must be observed.”
“But anyone ranked Elite or higher knows what it’s really about:”
“Killing the goblin with Dungeon Eyes.”
“Originally, before my time, there was a policy of widespread goblin extermination.”
“I suppose the reasoning was that if every goblin was dead, the one the Emperor was looking for would be too.”
“But something changed.”
“Now the goblins are kept close, followed, questioned.”
“All to find… you.”
“I don’t know why.”
“But my impression was that the Emperor is getting desperate.”
“I was serious when I said to keep it secret, Ricki.”
“Please.”
If it’s revealed without doubt that your regular self has a grand magical destiny, that’s the face I would pick as a rational accepting response.
Bad news, if we clear out enough dungeons those higher ups will start to suspect things
But we’ll also keep getting levels! Soon enough we can kill a god-emperor, right? He can’t be higher than what, level 10?
20?
100?
She already used up Grit, she can’t just go sit down at the table without a few minutes to process that bombshell
If she can make it TO the table, people are going to know something is very, very worrying
Wait why would an emperor want to kill someone with dungeon eyes? I can think of two options.
Option 1, it could be directly. Maybe clearing dungeons and levels are known to the emperor, and he fears what happens if a goblin can do that. Maybe he has dungeon eyes himself, as the source of his ascension.
Option 2 could involve the emperor’s power coming from dungeons staying around, remaining uncleared for some reason. Do guards clearing dungeons get levels? Does anyone in this setting know how levels work?
Or it could be something else entirely, but I imagine it would have ties to these ideas on some level.
Siding with the rogues instead of the guard from the last mission suddenly doesn’t seem so bad because yikes
Now I’m worried – who else in the party knows, besides Kamau? I don’t think anyone’s a mole (except maybe Daisy, always been suspicious of that one). But someone could have a moment of weakness…
…I’m suspecting that would be the Kolbold Macadamia not because they are evil or something but we already saw how they brought the guards involded in the kolbold area. So if Mac goes to the guards about our location, we are in BIG trouble.
Obviously the mule was the mole.
Lohk knows. She too made Ricki promise to keep it secret.
So before they were just trying to kill the Dungeon Eyes, but now it seems like they are trying to capture it. Maybe the emperor needs to use her?
Nah, sounds like killing is still the end goal. Overt genocide just had a higher risk of Cassandra effects, where the actions taken to avoid a prophecy end up fulfilling the prophecy. If the goblins are hunted too much, they go into hiding and the one the Emperor is after slips away.
How does the Emperor even know that something like “Dungeon Eyes” does exist? [And he obviously even knew before DungeonEyes.com went online!]
He strives to become a god and seems to be successful in doing so. Would have been strange if he didn’t knew about stuff like this. He already has some powers that uncover secret knowledge for him, like locations of hidden goblin camps.