#like would I have them duke it out by pairing? Like which INSERT PAIRING goblin is the most superior

[spiritshaydra]

I think it’d be hysterical to do like,, a sparkling battle Royale bracket

like which shitty little gremlin is most likely to be shoved in a locker and which one is most likely to be the one shoving them into said locker

Just straight up channeling the wise words of Grunkle Stan “CHILDREN FIGHTING! I CAN SELL THIS.” Of course with no actual profit or anything of value being made because wtf even is this

[jotawakening-blog]

30 Fentuary, 5A 169: Rule #1 of Ratcatchers

After breakfast, I start today off with a walk to the Grand Exchange and some more shopping.  This time around, I get myself a runite pickaxe, which will make me the bane of ore deposits wherever they may be; a raw swordfish and cave eel, to further my less-than-perfectly ethical experiments with creating hybrid animals; some studded leather chaps for my very mysterious rendezvous in Draynor, since I’m not confident in my ability to make my own; an agility potion for Tamayu, which I hope will help him to defeat his nemesis the Shaikahan at last; and as many adamant melee weapons as I can afford, since it’s high time I upgraded those.  I soon run low on money, and the reason for this is the wily young prodigy Ali Morrisane, Jr, who somehow convinces me to buy a load of willow branches for eye-watering prices!  I don’t know what I’ll do with them— make a basket, I guess?

Once I’ve bought as much stuff as money allows, I do a quick scan for Bob using my catspeak amulet, to see if he’s around.  Unfortunately, he isn’t: the amulet shows that he’s still somewhere in the Falador area.  So I turn around and busy myself with another cat-related errand: visiting the sewers to see whether Gertrude’s tip about the ratcatchers was correct.  Down below the streets, I don’t spot anyone new, but the creepy women are still around, and I have a hunch these might be the people Gertrude had in mind.  So I go up to them, ignoring the sickly-sweet smell of vinegar that attaches to them, and tell them Gertrude sent me.  The two are less than impressed with my pitch: I tell them I want Minou to learn some tricks to catch rats more effectively, but to them, this is preposterous: ‘fuzzies’ don’t learn ‘tricksies’, only dogs do.  Before they will teach me anything, they set me a test: I need to get Minou to catch eight rats for them.  With the sheer amount of rats down here, this is no sooner said than done, and I return to the gruesome twosome.  After having a laugh at my expense for trying to emulate their way of speaking, the pair tries to blow me off, but I manage to convince them to give me something to go on, rat-catching wise.  They give me a wooden pole from which… one can hang rats, I suppose?… and tell me about a contact of theirs in Ardougne named Jimmy Dazzler who might be able to help me along further.  The way they say it, it seems like another joke at my expense, but hey, it’s not like I’ve got anything to lose from getting in touch with him, right?

Anyway, Ardougne is a long way from here, and I’ve got stuff to do closer to home.  For instance: I’ve brought back all those skins from the Fremennik Province for the odd old man of Paterdomus, and it’s time, I think, I cured them.  So I go to the bank, get rid of all the clutter in my bag, and take out the skins, several bags of salt, my hatchet and my tinderbox.  I go with these to Paterdomus, where the old man has prepared a curing rack.  And then it’s just a simple algorithm: rub skin down with salt, stretch skin on rack, light a fire, wait for skin to cure.  The setup is quite effective, and I get through all the skins in fairly short order.  The snag occurs when I get to the rock crab carcass, as I can’t think of any way to put it on the rack without damaging it.  So I show it to the old man, to see if he has any ideas.  The old man takes a look, and he tells me the carcass was not what he had envisioned at all, and that he’s very sorry about this.  As he says so, I can hear a distinct sniggering from the bone sack on his back: it would seem that whatever creature lurks inside is enjoying the fruits of its practical joke.  As for the rest of the skins, the old man takes them without complaint, and while he has nothing to reward me with, I must say I’ve learnt a fair bit about killing stuff and lighting fires, and meditating on bones and death has, I think, increased my bond with Saradomin by a touch.

Predictably for the odd old man, the furs aren’t the end of the services he wants.  He’s spent the time I was hunting furs composing another wish list of bones that he wants me to procure.  This one consists mostly of stuff that will be really hard to get (for instance, nine dragon tailbones, each from a different variety of dragon), but there are some things I can get started on right away, such as the shoulder of a giant: hill giants happen to be quite abundant in the dungeon beneath Edgeville, and since I’m already here, that’s an item I can fulfil right away!

With this in mind, I return to the Grand Exchange, finish up my purchases of adamantite weaponry, grab my key to the back entrance to the Edgeville dungeons, and go down and start whaling on giants.  Very quickly, the expedition becomes a success, as I find a suitably impressive shoulder bone, wrap it up in cloth, and put it in my pack.

I’ve done all I wanted to in Varrock, more or less, so, since there’s plenty of daylight left yet, I repair to the next area where I have stuff to do: Lumbridge!  The quickest way there is to teleport, so I grab some runes, cast the spell, and get pulled through the Abyss to the courtyard of Lumbridge Castle.  Once there, my first move is to bring the slop of compromise (as I’ve come to call Mudknuckles’ masterpiece) into the time-frozen banquet hall, and see whether it has any effect on unfreezing the goblin generals.  And… it works perfectly!  As soon as I insert a spoonful of the slop into the generals’ mouths, they awake and vanish from the banquet hall!  Gypsy Aris congratulates me on this first success and hands me some pages from the Culinaromancer’s cookbook that she’s found within the time-slip while I was away.  These teach me not only a few cookery tricks, but also how to farm various ingredients!  Very useful stuff.

Okay, that’s two Council members saved, and seven to go.  The pirate slumped on the table next to where the goblins were seems like as good a person as any to begin with.  I ask Aris what she thinks I could feed him, and she relates to me a vision that she had while I was away: the pirate loves fish cakes more than anything in the world.  It’s not a recipe I’m familiar with, despite having grown up on the sea, so I ask her if she knows how to make them.  She does not, but she recommends that I speak with the castle cook: he might know.  I leave the time slip and ask him.  He doesn’t know the recipe off the top of his head (and is surprised that I don’t, given that from his perspective I’ve already defeated the Culinaromancer), but he looks it up, and finds that one would need ground cod, ground kelp, ground giant crab meat and breadcrumbs.  The cod and breadcrumbs are obvious enough, but kelp and crab meat aren’t exactly commonplace ingredient.  I ask the cook whether he’s got any ideas; he mentions that Murphy, the owner of the fishing trawler in Port Khazard, used to pull up giant crab, and he would also know where one could find kelp.  Okay, sounds like a plan!

Before I can get started on any of it, though, I run into the Duke, who tells me he’s got an assignment for me, his go-between with the Dorgeshuun, if I’m willing to take it.  It turns out that the cave goblins have reached a point in their diplomatic negotiations where they’ve decided to send an emissary to the surface to report on conditions there.  It would be quite important, he says, for someone to accompany the emissary during their trip to the surface.  Mistag will have the details, he says.

Okay, that’s a job I wasn’t expecting, but I won’t pass on the opportunity, so I grab my lamp, head through the hole in the cellar wall, and let myself be guided through the winding passages to the cave goblin mines.  He confirms what I heard from the Duke, and adds one unexpected detail: part of the embassy will involve infiltrating the HAM base, to determine whether the cultists have further nefarious plans vis-a-vis the Dorgeshuun.  Thus, I will need to find two complete sets of HAM robes for me and the envoy to use.  I should get the robes and meet her at the cellars of Lumbridge Castle once I’ve got them.

Sounds like a plan.  It’s getting late, though, and I doubt I’ll be able to pilfer any robes today, so with what’s left of the day I return to the surface, bake a loaf of bread and grind it into crumbs, as the fishcake recipe requires.  Then I retire to the thieves’ guild headquarters, where expansion has been proceeding rapidly, for the night.