Day 1: The Rocky Road of the Lost Coast – Goblins are Assholes, Saturday the 15th of September, 2018

We started out in the morning, not too long after sun up. My alarms still worked, and I had gotten up fairly early. Now I have a bit of ADD, so the fact that we were travelling at a blistering 2 miles per hour was killing me, and I got bored exceptionally quickly. Since my phone was in Airplane mode, the battery was lasting fairly well. Without all of the pollution in the air, the solar chargers were doing exceptionally well too. They were easily exceeding the drain from having to charge up the back-up batteries that I always kept with me. My step kid would joke about me always giving out back up batteries for gifts. I just told them that I always liked to give the gift of POWER! Yep, a bit corny, I can accept it. Now they are turning out to be exceptionally useful.

I managed to keep my boredom under control for a good long time before finally breaking down to try to get someone to talk. Most of the others seemed to want to walk in silence. I asked Jonathan if he wanted to talk about anything. Not really. I'm guessing he was brooding over something. I swear that I could get him a cape and a parapet and he would be talking about how he wasn't the hero this town needed, he was the one it deserved. I asked Dame Rebekah if her title was hereditary. She just looked at me with a look that would kill. That might be a sore subject, might be best to stay away from it. I looked at Faunra, the look she shot me told that even though she didn't understand what I was saying, she didn't want to hear it.

Okay, so none of my companions wanted to talk to me, I didn't have Youtube, the Internet, or texting. The best I could do was listen to music or read. Or both. I liked doing both. I was sitting in the cart with everyone not riding a horse anyway, so I didn't need to look where we were going. I plugged in my headphones and popped up a book on fencing. I figured it might be best to know some things about fighting if I was going to encounter these goblin things. I hope that they are as weak as I remember them being in the games I played. Well, I immediately had to lower the volume on the headphones because the other five (horse and donkey included) glowered at me. Maybe I should have decided to listen to something less metal?

This went on for a few hours, with me book tripping, first the fencing book, then another book on fighting, then a third. Obviously, just reading a book on something won't give me any ability with it, but maybe I'll remember when I see something from it and know how to duck correctly. After around 4 hours, we stopped to eat. I looked at the others as they got out ration packs from their backpack, pulled out a pair of meal tabs – caramel and vanilla this time, and tried to take some of the hay to the Donkey.

The damn thing bit me! I'll leave taking care of the animals to those that are qualified. My brief summer taking care of a horse obviously didn't prepare me for this. Looking for something else to do while the rest of the group sharpens their swords and arrowheads, or takes care of other needs, I pulled up my rifle to take a look at the surrounding area, and damn if I didn't see a rabbit in the distance. A decent sized one at that! It had been a long time since I had shot an animal with anything, so I figured that I would end up missing, but wanted to take a shot anyway. I was amazed that I actually got a clean shot! At 100 feet even. The jackrabbit dropped immediately, must not have known what it was that hit him. I must have hit the head, only thing that could have dropped it so quickly.

I quickly ran over to get it, ignoring everything else. It was stunned, so I pulled one of my Coldsteel knives and slit the throat. When I came back with it, Jonathan yanked it from my grasp and started processing it while Dame Rebekah was mouthing curses at me violently. I sheepishly realized that I had never taken my headphones out to find the thing or take the shot or go running to get it. I pulled them out to hear Rebekah yelling at me, and instantly regretted doing it. I only caught her mid-sentence, but the gist that I got was that she was asking why I did that, why I wasn't listening to her, and that we would be behind in our journey now.

I apologized, and really meant it. I told her that I didn't want to make us late and I just figured that we could process it and have it for dinner for when we stopped for the night. Dame Rebekah stormed off to look after her horse and the donkey to get them ready to continue to travel. Faunra just looked on the spectacle. Apparently Dame Rebekah said something to her in a tongue that I don't understand and Faunra kind of sneered at me too, after that. Since Jonathan was the only somewhat cordial member of this group right now, I quietly asked him what I did wrong. In some brief words, he told me that Dame Rebekah had probably been tasked with making sure that we all got to Sandpoint okay. Honestly, though, in his mind, I had not done anything all that wrong. He did want to know why I wasn't paying any attention to her when she was yelling at me. I told that I had music playing in my ears, like before, and didn't hear her.

Apparently, my music wasn't too loud earlier, I was just absentmindedly singing along to it. With no accompaniment, and no reason behind it. Metallica's One. In a fantasy setting. Shit I felt foolish. I told him I would let him listen to it when with me when we were back on the road if he wanted. He thought about it and agreed as Dame Rebekah apparently told everyone that we were starting back out again. Jonathan translated for me, thankfully. Maybe I won him over with being useful enough to kill us dinner. When we were back on the cart on our way to the first stopping point, I asked Jonathan if he wanted to hear the song that I had started singing back when they were all looking at me. I also told him that I'd explain the song if he needed it afterwards.

So that was Jonathan's first experience with Metal. Metallica's One. He seemed to take well to it. I told him what the song was about, and how we had weapons where I was from that could blow off someone's arms, and legs and take out their eyes and ears. I also told him that we didn't have magical healing back home, which made him confused. I told him that the gods in my neck of the woods had taken a mostly hands off approach. He seemed to understand at that point, and asked if he could listen to another song. I asked if he wanted something similar, or something different. He wanted similar, so I set up The God that Failed. He was intrigued with the notions behind the song especially when I told him that it was written because the author was dealing with his mother dying of a disease and there was no god to cure her, no matter how much he prayed.

I guess that pissed Dame Rebekah off, because she motioned her horse to go faster and get away from us. Faunra was just watching us, a bit perplexed. She asked Jonathan something and he responded in that odd language that I didn't understand. He talked back and forth with her for a minute before asking me a question from her.

"Are you purposely trying to piss her off, or just really this foolish?"

I was taken aback by this and realized that everything I was doing was in some way digging at Dame Rebekah. I thought about it for a good long minute, and told Jonathan, so he could tell Faunra, "I was just a bit foolish. I didn't begrudge Dame Rebekah or anyone their faith, and if the gods were answering her prayers, all the better. I was brought up in a place where the gods didn't answer prayers, but you were still supposed to pray to them and thank them for the good things that happened in your life. I told him that there were people who were so devout that they burned themselves alive in the name of their god, willingly, not moving an inch through all of the pain, for minutes. No relief ever came from the gods they prayed to. That is the realm that I am from, and the music that is there is tinged on every side by it. I might even have something that glorifies one of those gods, if I look hard enough."

There was a little bit of difficulty in translating that, but Jonathan managed to get through it though. She seemed to understand the point that Jonathan was trying to get across. She asked him something, and he translated it back as her wanting to know if she could listen to anything as well. I asked Jonathan if he thought it was okay that I put the music on so everyone can hear it. Jonathan thought that if I was going to do it, it should probably be something on that wouldn't be immediately hated by Dame Rebekah. Apparently Faunra thought about the same. I decided to not go with Rick Astley, I'd save that hell for later. I found some good Gregorian Chant, and had Jonathan proof it before unplugging the headphones and playing the song through my phone's speakers. I made sure to disable the auto-play function before starting it. It was a decent rendition and the speakers were not the actual worst.

Faunra and Jonathan were fairly impressed by the fact that the music was playing from the little box and that I could control the volume fairly precisely. I looked for a book on religion on my tablet to tell them both a bit about the monks. It wasn't much, but at least it would be a little less hostile for a while. I played another Gregorian Chant, unfortunately I wasn't paying attention and it turned out to be a remix version. I tried to stop it before the song got too far into the remix portion, but Jonathan kind of waved me off. Huh, at least this wasn't a trap remix. I'm sure that we would end up in the hell of one hit wonders later. Nice thing was even with the music going strong, my battery live was still decent. With a charge from one of the battery back-ups, I'd easily be able to repeat tis tomorrow. I'm glad I got a lot of songs and videos on these tablets and phones. I don't know how long I will be here, but if I have to break into my downloaded Netflix episodes, we'll be in bad shape.

We made it the almost the entire way to the first stopping point, an Inn called The Broken Axle, when goblins attacked us from the dark. A group of 10 of them. I'm ashamed to say, I froze when the first attack volley came in, and I took an arrow because of it. A grazing hit, but a bad one. At least it wasn't sticking out of my chest. I responded to that with firing off a shot from my rifle, taking one in the eye. I'm glad I hit it, but then someone else took it down. The goblins were shooting arrow after arrow at us, and we were taking hits just as often as they were. I could have sworn that the arrow that hit me flew back and imbedded itself in another goblin's throat. We ended up taking them out, after they got a few hits in on us. I'll try to keep better notes on this for the next time I'm in a life or death fight. The whole thing lasted less than 18 seconds. Of which, I got hit twice, and I think I hit someone once or twice.

After the whole bloody mess was done, I realized that I needed to help out more. People could bleed out if they didn't get patched up! Jonathan was already on it, using what he could to bandage people up, while I was just starting to get out my emergency medical kit. Jonathan took a look at it and asked if he could use the stuff as well. Of course he could. I started helping Jonathan in what ways I could as we patched everyone up. After we got everyone patched up, Dame Rebekah and Faunra saw to the bodies of the goblins. It wasn't like I was going to waste my supplies on goblins that had just 30 seconds ago tried to kill me. Rebekah had been talking to Faunra in that language the spoke, and they started cutting off the goblins ears before removing them of anything valuable. Maybe the ears allow them to grow back? I think I read something about spriggans and teeth in some fan fiction somewhere before I showed up in this area. Maybe it's a tactic to keep other goblins away? At least I can see removing their stuff. It might be good to get some remuneration for the damages we suffered, and it would keep other goblins from getting free equipment to harass other travelers. I guess that it's all frontier justice out here, since there are no police here to arrest the people who break the non-existent laws. Huh, I guess that is how things are now. Don't know how I'll adjust either here or when I get back, but it's more important to get back than to worry about it beforehand. Just like when I was in the military, focus on getting through the time and getting back home.

When we got to the Inn, we were going to have to pay more than a quarter of what I had bargained the study of my car for, just to get a bed, a hot meal, and stabling for the horse and donkey. Since this was a fantasy world, I asked if the Innkeeper would be willing to knock some of the price off if there was a performer that could entertain the crowd for a bit. I knew this trope well enough to try to exploit it anyway. It took some convincing, but they let me give it a try. I decided to cheat a little and read the Cask of Amontillado from my tablet. I don't know where I got the ability to emote like I did for that story, but the townsfolk really seemed to like it. At least enough to stay at the Inn and keep buying drinks and food, instead of leaving after a drink or two. The Innkeeper eventually decided to shave almost a third off the cost of our stay, including stabling, drinks, meals, and every person having their own room. Also, I didn't have to pay! We paid it out with money that we got from rolling the goblins that had attacked us. Later I learned that Dame Rebekah apparently wanted to split it three ways, as she thought that I had not contributed to the effort. Oddly enough, Faunra had spoken up for me. I learned of all of this later, when Jonathan had presented me with a split of what we earned. He told me that the conversation had occurred and he voted with Faunra, saying that he knew that I had tried to do what I could. I thanked him and hoped to myself that I could figure out how to do more with my meager gear and knowledge. All I could do now is keep looking through my e-books to find something, anything that could help. I'll only be able to keep helping out with the healing while I have my kit. I'll only be able to keep up with shooting rabbits and such as long as I have ammunition. I don't know how I'm going to make the money that I have to earn to make my way back home. The way that Ma talked, it seemed like it was going to be a LOT. More than we had earned so far, or that I had even seen since arriving here. Something like 500 pounds of gold! If I remember correctly, that's like 9 million bucks! I don't know what I'm going to have to do to make that much money. I think I'll be here for a while.

After I panicked for a bit, I knocked on Dame Rebekah's door. She wasn't happy that I had interrupted her, whatever she was doing. I told her why I didn't hear her when she was she was talking to me, and that I wasn't purposefully ignoring her. I told her that where I was from there weren't nearly as many dangers as there were here and that I wasn't thinking about that when I had started this morning. The Goblin attack had made that obviously evident that there were dangers here that I wasn't familiar with. She listened to what I had to say, and then shut the door in my face. I hope that I can make this trip not terrible. If I had had my car, we could have ended this in one day. I don't think that I'll get used to this moving 16 miles a day.

About halfway through the night I was woken up by a knock at the door. It was Jonathan, and apparently he wanted to ask if he could borrow my mystical music box and my headphones. I went and got it, the battery back-up had charged it to full, so at least it would have a few hours. I warned him that it might get locked up, and that if it did, there was a secret pattern that I had to swipe on the surface to unlock it. That was the only way to unlock it, but it should still play music until it runs out of power. I put it on random, and gave him the headphones. He put them in and started to listen. He wandered off to his room. Maybe I'll show him the pirated television shows I have on my tablet if he's that much of an insomniac. They are only SD, but I think that he would be fascinated by it, and maybe he can get something out of it. Maybe I'll set him up with the books too. He can spend his nights reading and listening to heavy metal.