Dus Darkeye

Inside the Goblin Hold/Fort that stands on the last remaining bridge. The bridge that Quick Finger and Torek need to cross to get to River Gate.

      At first and last glance, Dus Darkeye was as memorable as any other Goblin of this world; needlessly vicious, crazed, brutal and ravenous creatures.  Folklore would paint a portrait of horrific and senseless violence; Goblins would punish the innocent and devastate the peaceful. If one were to ever witness the disordered frenzy of a Goblin horde, such events could never be forgotten.  Still, just as crazed and vicious as any other Goblin, Dus Darkeye was the most cunning and sharp.  A mind for controlled chaos, Dus transformed the senseless frenzied horde into a working company of Goblins. The demented creatures of destruction had begun to fight from within their forest fortress, utilizing their notoriously feared home as an instrument of evil.  
      Dus saw no need to make a spectacle of themselves, he knew that men feared most what they could not see. Under new control the horde had taken to kidnapping villagers from the neighbouring River Gate. Residents of River Gate would awaken to find no trace of their missing friends or relatives, and all began to live in fear surrounded by an ever diminishing population. The Goblin horde of Branch Bridge now traded in lives, the forests quiet but mind deafening madness turned their captives either crazed or docile. The docile ones Dus would sell up river to the Valley Clans. The crazed he kept and starved, ever worsening their bloodlust, so that he might release them onto the very place they were taken from.

    Dus had taken to conducting border patrols, from which he and a small company had just returned. They had patrolled east and come across a young boy who had once been someone, but the forest held him now. The boy’s eyes red with fury, his skin shredded and pale, and his mind infected. Dus sought to add him to the rest of the crazed pack of men and women.
    Back within their fortified bridge Dus and his horde went about dealing with the new order he had instilled. Captives needed to be fed, trained and kept alive. Fortress walls manned, lookouts posted and nets casted. Goblins had never known such order, they felt secure in their anarchy.

  Dus tossed scales, bones and innards to the feral souls whom he had kidnapped and imprisoned. He took joy in examining their growing wretchedness; day by day the men and women suffered the sour sensations of the forest. An uncomfortable and broken anger grew uncontrollably within them. Battling and unwanted frustration ever lessened their grasp on whatever remained within; who they once were was lost. Dus Darkeye would not have it any other way, a mangled smile and dark cavernous eyes revelled in the desolation of its own design.
    Broken by sounds from the west side of the bridge, Dus’s captivation soon turned to alarm. A quaking stampede made its way towards their Hold, the bridge began to shake, and the thunderous footsteps grew louder. Goblin lookouts on the western wall began to shriek in terror, arrows barely drawn before a sweeping club threw them from the wall into the white water below.  Frozen from fear, Dus watched as an immense foot broke through the western gate. Through the flying splinters and dust Dus saw a living Giant bearing a man atop its shoulders, he heard barking and orders being shouted. Stunned from bafflement, as well as panic; all Dus could do was watch as the Giant destroyed what he had built with blood and terror. One by one his horde was tossed into the roaring river beneath them. Within seconds of invasion all laid in ruin. The Giant and its rider had torn through their Hold as if it were a field of tall grass, and only he remained. As the giant cleared its path towards the eastern gate its rider looked back upon the ruin and in an instance spotted him and informed his companion. Jolting from his seemingly eternal stillness Dus clambered over the ruins and threw himself from the Hold. He watched as his home drew further and further away and the wind sped past his ears, he hit the water.