Guns, Goblins, and Steel (Strolg the Inventor) - Prologue (Patreon)

"Boss, enemy's knockin'!" The hoblin aide threw open the tent cover and squealed in a panic. Right then, he remembered that the boss's tent, doubling as a workshop, was filled with contraptions to protect his back when he was working.

The aide dropped to the ground and covered his head, barely dodging the automatic crossbow volley - except for one bolt that pierced his buttock. Jumping up in pain, he screamed at the top of his lungs.

"Shut-shut up! I'm almost done 'ere!" The boss's voice emerged from behind the stacks of scrap. Light flashed and threw a giant pointy-eared shadow against the back of the tent, revealing a sharp-toothed maniacal grin.

The aide slapped his hands before his mouth and suppressed the urge to keep screaming. The boss called him by a number rather than his real name, just like his predecessors - all of whom had been killed for disobedience or lesser reasons. He was number seventy-two, which told him volumes about the chances of survival in this line of work if he ever stepped over it.

Roars of battle and screams of greenskins dying reached Seventy-Two's ears, but his eyes were fixated on the light show inside the tent. Nobody understood what the boss was doing or how his mind worked. He cared about the lives of his peers as much as any other hoblin or olg did, but they followed him for a simple reason.

His leadership led to victory.

"Yes! Yeees! It's finished-complete!" With a maniacal cackle, the boss declared in a triumphant tone. The sound of tools dropping to the floor and banging against each other as something big scraped across the workbench was followed by an angry expletive. "Seventy-Two! Call-summon Orgha."

"Boss, Orgha died last week." The aide whimpered in response, still hurting from the crossbow bolt stuck in his buttock. He had to hold himself back from saying that it was the boss's invention that killed the olg.

"Any olg will do-suffice, then!" Came the dismissive response across the scrap heap. "Now-now!"

Seventy-Two limped out of the tent and quickly waved over the first olg guard he could find. Ever since the boss took over, race meant nothing in the horde's hierarchy. Only the favor one enjoyed from him informed one's rank. As the numbered aide, he was essentially the second in command in the camp - for now.

"Dergu 'ere. Whatchu want, boss?" The olg towering at nearly twice Seventy-Two's height pulled aside the curtain. He saw the arrow in the aide's backside and deduced that the trap was no longer active. Instead, he very nearly lost his head to the sharp bear trap swinging by. "Boss, can'tchu switch off dem traps when you call us in?"

"Come-come 'ere. Carry dis." Ignoring Dergu's complaint, the boss raised a sharp-looking tool over the wall of scrap and waved him over. When the olg made his way deeper into the workshop and rounded the corner, he beheld the hoblin he readily bowed his head to.

Strolg the Inventor, boss of the Steelmongers, looked every bit like a regular hoblin except for the outfit he wore. He had the foresight to avoid sustaining burns from sparks and heat, so he was covered from head to toe in thick boar leather. Normal hoblins wouldn't even stop to consider doing that.

"Quit ogling-staring, you slack-jawed cretin!" Lifting the dark goggles from his eyes, Strolg glared up at the olg with what many believed to be the source of his otherness. His blood-red irises showed intelligence that his green-skinned peers only ever saw in the manling leaders and mages. Perhaps it even surpassed theirs. "Get to work and take-carry this!"

Strolg pointed at a large metal drum with a crank on its side. It looked like it could be worn as a backpack, with a long and thick belt extending to another part that the boss held in his hands. The latter consisted of six pipes on a complicated box-shaped mechanism with a handle and a folding tripod.

"Is dis...?" Dergu had witnessed the boss's earlier experiments and knew that he had been working on this gadget for quite some time. The horde had been specifically instructed to scavenge those pipes from the manlings with thundersticks.

"All you need-have to do is crank this when I tell-order you." Strolg was never interested in explaining his inventions to his men, so Dergu didn't question it. He took the drum and began turning the crank right away.

The box mechanism in Strolg's hand sputtered, and a metallic click signaled that something was engaged. The boss turned and glared at Dergu with such overwhelming murderous intent that the towering olg began to shiver.

"I said-said when I give the order!" Picking up a small hammer, Strolg hit Dergu's knee with it. It caused the latter to flinch in pain, but a hoblin's strength was only so much that it didn't cause any more damage than a surface bruise. And the boss wasn't exactly known for his physical prowess even among his kind. "Now-now, to battle!"

With an eager roar, Strolg tried to run out of the tent, only to be yanked back by the tether connected to the drum in the unmoving Dergu's hands.

"What-what is it this time?!" Getting visibly fed up by the dim-witted olg's repeated mistakes, Strolg screamed at him.

"Oh, right." Scratching the back of his head, Dergu began to walk. The boss blinked his eyes in incredulous gawk, then looked down at the ground with his eyes wide open. One of these days, he might lose it and kill everybody in the camp, but his mood was too good after completing his long-term project for it to be today.

The hoblins and olgs stationed around the boss's tent followed him when he ran ahead. By now, most of the troops had already gathered at the front of the camp where the massive manling army specifically formed to exterminate their still budding horde besieged them.

As Strolg made his way through the camp, the few remaining greenskins slow in their preparations saw him and knew what would happen. They dropped everything and joined the rowdy throng forming behind the boss, their tension rising with every step closer to the gates. His eagerness to test his latest invention was contagious, and everybody was looking forward to witnessing what wonders it would perform.

At that moment, as the one running right behind Strolg, Dergu felt as if he was at the center of attention. To think that the boss experienced this on a regular basis but had as much interest in it as hoblins and olgs used to have in tinkering. It felt like a waste.

Before he could let his thoughts wander down a dangerous path that would have landed him a place on the boss's throne - as a bleached skull - they reached the camp gate. It was close to breaking from being battered down; the ram must be steel-capped, as the repeating crossbows and scavenged thundersticks on the battlements did nothing to slow it down.

Strolg set up his tripod a short distance behind the gate and aimed the tubes at the creaking wood. Then he gestured for Dergu to put down the barrel behind him before grabbing his collar and pulling his ear down to his mouth.

"Turn-crank it at a consistent speed. Like dis." The boss explained slowly and used his free hand to turn the crank a few times. "Too slow, and it stalls. Too fast..."

Opening his fist to symbolize an explosion, Strolg left the rest to the olg's lacking imagination. At least that much the muscular greenskin understood, and he nodded while swallowing audibly. The last thing he wanted was to die before killing any enemies.

"Like dis, boss?" Testing it out to make sure, Dergu asked for the boss's guidance. For the first time, he beheld an approving grin directed at him, and joy overcame his simple, murder-filled brain. The sound of wood breaking and giving away pulled him back to reality.

"They're thru!" Seventy-Two cried and attempted to score some points with Strolg by leading the charge against the enemy that would doubtlessly swarm inside the camp through the breach at any moment.

"Outta my way! Crank it, Dergu!" But the boss roared and aimed the six pipes at the broken gate. Everybody knew better than to stand between Strolg's invention and its intended target and jumped aside in terror. Would it be like the explosive thunderstick, or would it shoot a volley of crossbow bolts?

For a moment, there was only the clicking of the contraption on the tripod spinning up. Everybody stared at it in silence even as the manlings pushed the broken pieces of the gate aside and entered the camp.

Then, the new weapon unloaded a stream of bullets at the heavily-armored soldiers with the noise of a hundred war drums played at once. Unlike the single-fire thundersticks that both hoblins and olgs could wield to similarly impressive effect, this one kept going without the need for reloading.

Steel shields, plate armor, soft flesh, and brittle bone - all was shredded under the relentless fire of Strolg's newest invention. The deafening roar echoed across the battlefield, causing friends and foes alike to cover their ears. But even though it should have been impossible, the hoblins and olgs in the vicinity heard something else mixed into the noise.

"Gyahaha! Hahahaha! Aaahahahahahaaa!" Strolg was laughing maniacally to the rhythmic sound of his invention, his darkened goggles reflecting the muzzle flashes as he took in the carnage before him as if it were the most beautiful sight in the world. With every beat, another manling body blossomed into a flower of bloody red. The screams of the wounded before a follow-up shot scattered their skulls was like music in his ears.

As with his eagerness for testing, his unbridled glee at the efficacy of his invention was contagious. Momentarily stunned by the new weapon's overwhelming firepower, his followers soon regained their composure and began cheering. Olgs used to consider ranged weapons tools for the weak because they could never create carnage as beautiful as their traditional sword-ax hybrids called Meat Hackas.

If their boss began mass-producing this revolving thunderstick, they would doubtlessly move on from that tradition without a second thought and never look back.

"Gyahahahahaha! I am death-demise, manlings! Know you died at the hand-claws of Strolg, greatest-best inventor!"