True Tales From the Kovel

[Harluk]

"True Tales from the Kovel"

item: book
creator: harluk
language: Common
description:  The printing of a discussion on the Kovel overheard at the Laughing Goblin. (if we're giving credit, it's a discussion with Grzegorz Zabinski of the Green Fist)

[Harluk]

You guys have no idea how much excitement you’re missing.
Sure, you can say that it’s only the Banites who worry about the Kovel.  You can say that your mom farts pixie dust, too – won’t make it true.  The truth of the matter is that pretty much everybody living in Phlan owes it to themselves to either help out in the Kovel, or else to support somebody who does.
Why’s that, you ask?
Well, when people look at the Kovel District, they see that it abuts the River District, and assume that the Kovel’s just a problem for the Throne.  ‘Fraid  it ain’t so, grandma.  Take a look at it.  No, I mean, look at it.  Here’s a map of Phlan.  What do you see?
Okay, yes, that is sausage grease.  And yes, it’s from Mack.  Mack’s sausages are the best, after all.  But what’s next to the Kovel District?  Close.  Yeah, the Stojanow Gate is there.  But we’re going to ignore that for now.  Because the Gate… well, let’s just pretend the Gate doesn’t exist.  Everybody else in Phlan does.
What’s next to the Kovel is the Stojanow River.  Who cares?  Well, you should.  Because the Stojanow is frozen for more than half the year.  An that means you can walk on it.  At night, when everybody’s asleep, the goblins could put a hundred warriors over the walls, right into the corner of Podol Plaza by the old Tower, or straight into the old city.  Two ogres with a couple of big ladders, and for most of Phlan it’d be all over but the crying.
That’s right, the Old City, where people are supposed to be safe, right?  You’re not safe at all.  There’s only two things keeping the goblins and ogres and trolls from wiping Phlan right off the map.

[Harluk]

First, theyr’e too busy fighting each other.  The various tribes hate each other at least as much as they hate us.  That’s a big advantage, because let me tell you, most goblins are runts, but some of them can be really rough customers.  There’s a lot of mean in those little scrawny bodies.  And the kobolds and lizard men and ogres, they don’t get alone with each other too well, either.  So as long as no goblin or lizard leader is able to come along and force them to obey, they’re doing half our work for us.
The other part of it is where you come in.  The point to raiding the Kovel all the time isn’t to mount some half-assed invasion effort, clear some streets and go home, just to have to re-do it tomorrow.  It’s not an invasion.  The goblins and lizards don’t’ live in the Kovel.
They live under it.
The whole area, from the Stojanow all the way out to the far side of the Midden Heap, is riddled with caves and tunnels.  Hundreds of goblins and kobolds at least – and I know this for a fact because I’ve killed that many myself – have to be living and breeding down there.
Scared yet?  You should be.
Because the point isn’t just to kill a couple kobolds.  It’s to keep the surface of the Kovel a no-man’s-land, to keep them off-balance so they can only probe the far side of the District and sniff at the Stojanow, until we can get in there and start rooting them out.  Kill all their little goblin mommas and whack the heads off all their little goblin babies, until there aren’t any more. 
‘cause all it takes is one of them to stand on that wharf looking towards the docks and think to himself “gee, if only we had some ladders….”

[Harluk]

Strange things happen during the Kovel War.  I remember the second time I went to fight in there.  What?  No, not the first.  Don’t remember the first at all.  But the second, that I remember.  I was following a couple more experienced guys, hanging back and plinking with a crossbow – mind you, that may not sound real heroic, but it’s a good way to learn the trade, and you earn your keep playing eyes-and-ears so nobody has to worry about getting jumped from behind.  We went after some fins.
Fins?  Lizard men.  Call ‘em fins because they’re big, and if you keep and eye out, sometimes you can see them moving because of the fins on top of their heads.  This was on the south side of Dweomergaart, the old spell-prison with the yellowbelly problem – but that’s a different story – and we saw some of the big dinks by a hell and went after ‘em.
Well, my teammates did.  I, on the other hand, stepped right through the top of a rotten old basement and was out like a light.  Now, I should have been dead.  But when I came to, I was underground and something was nagging my arm, and that’s what woke me up.
It was a rat the size of my leg.
Yeah, they have rats that big.  Sometimes they’re worse than the goblins, jump you six or seven at once from all sides.  Well, I woke up and hit it while it was nibbling on my arm.  Then I kicked it to death – always wear stout boots, you’ll thank yourself.  Saved my butt.  An then there were rats everywhere, screeching and squeaking and biting and what-not, and I kicked the big ones to death, and stomped all the little ones.  Big rats, little rats, momma-rats, baby rats, mice that coulda grown up to be rats… if it was hairy, furry, or looked like it might be a bug, I stomped it.
Little while later, unarmed and sweating bullets from the fever I picked up of the rat bites, I camd back to the Kovel.  And I got some fresh air, and I stood there a moment, taking in another breath of that beautiful cold air.

[Harluk]

And that’s when I realized I was surrounded by fins.  They just looked at me for a moment like they couldn’t believe what they were seeing.  Then they hissed and it was on.
What?  Hell no.  I didn’t fight ‘em.  I ran like the hells were after me.  I bounced off the east wall, ran all the way over to the old loading dock, dodged around the fire pit… I mean, if there were an inch of the Kovel, my boots passed over it that night, ducking and dodging and getting clipped here and smacked around there, half-surrounded by big old angry fins and a horde of screeching rats – yes, more rats – until I finally made it to the River Gate with a little distance between me and them and managed to slip through it while one of Raegar’s boys through the bolt.
And that was that.  The fins and rats couldn’t get through three inches of oak without biting off more trouble than they could chew.
I got cleaned up, bought a new axe and some herbs for the rat fever.   I hate rat fever.  But you fight in the Kovel, you’re going to get it sooner or later, and the next night I went back out to see if I could find my crossbow.  Crossbows, especially heavy ones, are expensive.  They’re slow, but nothing out-ranges them, and that can save your life.
So I say hi to the Raegar guy, and limber up with the axe, and he opens up the gate… and there they are.  Half-a-dozen angry fins.  Whole day later, they’ve just been waiting there at the gate, hoping to get another shot at taking off pieces of me with those big dumb swords of theirs.
But that’s not the funny part.
What’s the funny part, you ask?
The rats were still with ‘em!

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