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All at once, it was alarmingly clear just how these nasty little buggers had managed to concoct such a bloody uncomfortable and jarring trap, at the same time it completely boggled the mind the daft things were able to come up with the necessary intellect to create the hinges and mechanisms that went into the damned things. After an altogether dishearteningly quick siege, filled with enough horrid features and melted faces with bugging yellow eyes to feature in the coming nightmares of at least three lifetimes (and that’s dwarrow lifetimes, so at least a couple centuries if not more), the Company found themselves being led individually by at least four or more (Dwalin was being particularly ornery at the moment) pungent little lack wits all in a row towards the inner sanctum of their nasty nest. Nori was the only one who saw as Bilbo slipped away but none saw their would be savior fall as he was wrestled off the ledge into the deep dank and dark below. All of the dwarrow did see their weapons and packs stripped from them as the grabbing claws dirtied their already filthy travel gear as they drew them further and further from all possibility of escape. Once again one had to marvel that anything in this godless hovel managed to remain erect as leagues of the grimy critters scurried about on rickety old plank bridges that seemed one good hop from collapsing out from under them all. But it was clear, even should half the bridges fail and send them all screaming to their doom the lads were completely out numbered and in a frightful mess indeed. Seeing the fattest pile of lard and mucus they’d ever seen in the entirety of their beings, only made more horrifying as it bloody opened its maw and began to actually talk, made the structures around them even less likely to be hanging on by anything less than magic and a prayer.
“Who would be so bold as to come armed into my kingdom?” well that left almost all of them questionin’ what the bounds of the word ‘kingdom’ but they were smart nough to keep it to themselves when disarmed. “Spies? Thieves? Assassins?!” It was heartening for some to see even piles of cow shit and pig fat could prove rather paranoid at times.
“Dwarves your malevolence,” now wasn’t that a mighty large would for something that had a brain the size of rat shit, hmm?
“Dwarves?” curious how anytime they ran into something stupid it seemed to repeat itself or its compatriots.
“We found ‘em on the front porch!” Now the lads were questioning the abuse of the word ‘porch’.
“Well don’t just stand there! Search them!” the creeping critters surged forth to do their gagnanimous King’s bequest, “Every crack! Every crevice!” And now the dwarrow were experiencing something that wouldn’t be invented until the year 2001 in a dimension similar to their own and yet completely different: airport security. Of course, here we have a case of blatant profiling, but they had no legal representation that could have any hope of saving them, so onward forward people.
“What are you doing in these parts?” This was met with the traditional stone silence of the stubborn peoples, hewn from mountains and children or Mahal they were and damned if they defiled themselves or their maker by being anything near compliant.
“Speak!” More silence, though a wee bit o’ movement from a few as they checked on their fellows.
“Very well! If they will not talk, we’ll make them SQWAK!” A din ran across the lieges of goblin waiting in the rafters, as a wave of motion rippled through. If the lot had anything resembling proper timing they’d have invented the wave right then and there! “Wheel out the Mangler! Wheel up the Bone Breaker! Start with the youngest!” poor Ori had been doing rather well, staring with all the hate and malice his wee self could embody, but that that and the obvious indication from the Goblin King’s own hand his face fell to terror (partially because in the bleedin’ books he’s not the bloody youngest by a fair bit thank ye kindly but we do with what we’re given).
It was only then as the crawly bastards made to wrench the lad onto a wrack that Thorin’s voice flew from the horde of dwarrow with command and intimidation, “WAIT!” Silence fell and the bedraggled King stepped forward to face down the large voluminous creature that was threatening his men, his family, his quest.
The blob’s eyes got bigger as he took a step back to marvel at the majestic King’s ascent to the front of his men, “Well, well, well. Look who it is.” Thorin paused in front of the goblin and gave it his harshest stare. Just as he was about to retort to the obvious mistreatment of his people those bulbous eyes suddenly rolled up and into the pimple like head as the jaw went slack. Taken aback the Company as a unit seemed to cringe backward, as it did Nori was once again the only one to take note that the creatures holding them had suddenly become a might more fuzzy then they’d been a mo’ ago. Watching the King they gapped as the head suddenly popped off and revealed itself to be placed on the end of a diamond scepter (with a microphone on the end of it) the fat folds of the bulbous creature fell back as though it were cloth and out stepped… a man… elf… thing?
He was tall and svelte as any elf, with strange fluffed hair as blonde as a daisy, dressed in tight fitting leather pants that seemed to bulge rather inappropriately in a very specific area (Dori slapped his hand over Ori’s eyes just as Fíli did the same to Kíli and Dwalin to Fíli, all three lads yelping their indignation into the sudden shocked silence) and a loose flowing white shirt that had been left half undone to reveal sparkle laden skin and a navel. He smiled down at the group, reveling rows of sharp teeth, and stared at their King with his one blown eye (the pupil so dilated it practically engulfed the iris) and the other ice blue. Suddenly, it spoke, “You remind me of the babe,” and in his voice was an echo, as though they were hearing an enhanced version of this creature’s vocalizations from his own mouth. A small beat was being taken up in the background of the cavern, where it originated none could tell for sure.
Thorin, seeing he was obviously meant to say something, came with the only thing he could think to respond, “What babe?” his brow creased further in his displeasure as the beat continued and grew, the tiny fluffy creatures that had suddenly infiltrated the goblin nest cackling and jumping with it.
“The babe with the power,” the creature suddenly strut away back to the throne and sat across it in an indecent pose that had Dori trying to cover Nori’s eyes, only to have the elder lad beat back the ridiculous priss as he demanded into the din, “What power?!”
“The power of voodoo!” the voice was almost insulted as he continued to stare into the masses that were beginning to dance and flap about the cavern, his hand directing the group as he did so.
“Who do?!” one of the fluffy bastards popped up out of apparently no where right by Dwalin’s elbow and received a startled curse from the old warrior and a concussion as it was knocked into the wall by a large fist.
“Remind me of the babe!” suddenly the queer looking creature spun in the chair and pointed at Thorin, “A goblin babe!” and the cavern was filled with laughter that over shadowed the startled insult the dwarrow were putting on. It was hard to maintain anything for very long as in the next second the creature was up on his feet, strutting about and bouncing with his little fuzzy companions as he sang into the glittering scepter, “I saw my baby! Crying hard as babe could cry! What could I do?” the pouty look he sent Thorin was both inappropriate and terrifying as that bouncing ponce drew closer and his package seemed to become more engorged the longer you stared at it (which made not staring at it damned near impossible). “My baby’s fun had gone, and left my baby blue! Nobody knew!” and suddenly all the fuzzy creatures were suddenly hanging from the air and walls as they circled their leader and stared out at the confounded dwarrow as they chorused, “What kind of magic spell to use?!”
“Slime and snails,” that one was punted across the room by the terrified Bofur who’d jumped back into his elder cousin’s arms upon doing so.
“Or puppy dog tails,” one more bit it into a wall as it startled Glóin.
“Thunder or lightning! Something frightening! WOOO!” that something frightening was the bottom of Óin’s boot as he avenged his lost hearing horn on the fluffy thing.
As the Company was lost to this newfound terror, our stories hero was just waking from the small kip he’d taken after falling face first into some rather large and rather convenient fungus. The glow in the elfish blade was dim but still there. With caution bred from not being a bloody idiot he crept out of his small fungus nest and saw the dying form of the goblin that had attacked him. He reached around him for his blade, his hands grazing something metal in the dirt that was tiny and curious, and for later rumination. Remaining quiet as possible he watched as something gruesome with a bulbous head came up to the goblin and thwacked it in the head with a spray can. Then it sprayed the beast in the face and announced, “Twenty-four!” the light in the blade went out just as Bilbo reached for it.
“And whatchu think yur doin’? Don’t you know where’s you are? This is an oubliette! There ain’t no ways outta here.”
Bilbo was shocked at the sudden address from something that had quite an alarming continence. It looked diseased if nothing else, but it walked as he did and talked relatively similar. But before he could sate his curiosity about that, “An oubliette?”
“An oubliette, labyrinth's full of 'em.” The creature was stomping off in the other direction, Bilbo following a safe distance behind, his sword drawn for safety.
“Really. I didn't know that.” Bilbo was fairly certain they were in fact, in the Misty Mountains. Now if there were some kind of labyrinth in the Mountains he wasn’t looking forward to working his way out of it.
“Oh don't act so smart. You don't even know what an oubliette is.” The gruff thing was walking further and further away, pausing every now and again to spray at some of the fungi growing around here. It appeared Bilbo was lucky the wee keeper hadn’t gotten around to the bed he’d fallen into. Whatever was in that canister withered them up instantly.
“Do you?” the burglar was affronted by the crass behavior of the creature and had just about enough.
“Yes. It's a place you put people... to forget about 'em!” His brow creased, he hadn’t liked the sound of it at all. No it would seem oubliettes were far from his favored place to be.
“Are you forgotten then? A forgotten hobbit?” the clear disbelief probably wasn’t polite but he’d just been thrown to his doom after all, can’t expect perfect manners from the damn near concussed.
“Hobbit? I’m Hoggle! Hoggle! And I’m the keeper of doors. Not that you’ll be needin’ a know any of that seein’ as you’re stuck here!” the creature grumbled to itself as it started to take off with its spray canister.
Now, Bilbo wasn’t normally so forward, but a keeper of doors must know the ways in and out of a place so who better than this to ask for directions. “Well if you’re keeping the doors shouldn’t you be able to get me out of here? I’m in a bit of a hurry to get back to my friends…”
“You’re friends are as good as cooked! And why should I help you? What would be in it for me anyway?! Hmm?” the creature suddenly turned to stare the hobbit down.
Bilbo started patting at his waistcoat when he realized there was something there and he remembered the trinket he’d found in the mud. Taking out the thing he saw it was a rather plain looking gold ring.
“HEY! That’s my ring! Give it back!” the thing started to move forward and make a motion to grab the trinket, a fevered look in his eye.
Bilbo swung the blade up between them evenly, “Tell you what, you get me out of here and back to my friends and I’ll give you this ring back. Deal?”
“Them's my rightful property. It's not fair.” The creature put on quite a pout but Bilbo was far from impressed, having dealt with far worse from the fauntlings around the Shire.
“No, it isn't. But that's the way it is.” He brushed some dirt from his waistcoat as he replaced the ring, “Shall we?”
The grumbling was most unbecoming.
Back above with the dwarrow the ‘Goblin King’ had sung another round of verse and the dwarrow had stopped kicking the surprise creatures through walls. Well, mostly, Kíli had some pent up aggression he was working out. Either way the lads were getting rather board when suddenly another player enter the game. This was a large furred beast with horns curled on either side of his head, sporting a very familiar gray hat and a gnarled staff. Before anyone could question the Wizards knew appearance he was howling into the mountain, cutting through the thrice cursed chorus of ‘dance the magic dance!” Before anyone knew quite what was happening the fuzzy ‘goblins’ were being ran over by boulders of every shape and size and their King was up off the seat in a rage, tossing his minions this way and that, calling them to arms. With a last bleating howl the orange beast in the grey hat took off and the dwarrow snapped up their weapons to follow.
They found themselves fighting off puffs of fur and ridiculous birds that chased after their own riders. At one point the tiny bastards wheeled out a cannon that a rock rolled into and blew the tiny bugger up. The dwarves weren’t quite sure how to approach this foe, most taking Kíli’s enthusiastic route as he kicked and punched through, feeling it a mark of cowardice to draw blade on the addled things. It wasn’t until they cornered them on a failing bridge the Company began to question their own mercy. When the ‘King’ suddenly appeared at the head, the fluffy wizard drew back his blade and cut his blonde head right off, sending it and them into the abyss below. The fall would set dwarf kind back for ages as the lot were well and truly done with anything ‘high’ for the rest of their existence (that list had grown to include music, and leather pants in their time in Goblin City). As they ran out of the cavern they heard the screeching continuance of the song “you remind me of the babe!” and knew their dreams would be haunted forever by what they’d seen, done, and heard in these chambers.
Outside the Mountain they pulled to a stop in a small glen to gather themselves. Turning to their wizard? Maybe? They saw a light engulf him as his previous form returned and Fíli and Kíli were two of the first to engulf their friend in a deeply felt hug. When Bilbo stumbled into the reunion he was a little battered but no less welcome as, at least he was fuzzy and strangely cute in a familiar way (though Bofur came damn close to punting the lad into the nearest tree).
Seeing everyone safe and sound the wizard looked them all over harshly and announced, “We will never speak of this again, do you understand?” the unanimous reply was both heartfelt and eager (especially by the presently turned about Bilbo who’d been accosted by something called ‘false alarms’ right before finding his dwarrow again and leaping out of the hole without paying the rather boorish Hogwart).
Before anyone could say anything further, however, their very beings froze at the sound of a rather high pitched, “AMBROSIUS! THIS WAY! NOW YOU COWARD! THEY’RE RIGHT OVER THERE!” and before they could find out what else these cursed Mountains had in store for them, Gandalf had led them to the ledge of the cliff and onto the backs of his Eagle allies. Really Azog would have been a bleedin’ treat after all this nonsense.