---
title: 00002 - shoe shine
created: Tue, 21 Jul 2022 20:32:23 -0600
updated: Tue, 21 Jul 2022 20:32:23 -0600
syndicated: yes
public: yes
---
### 00002

Blavin provides you with a multibeast for your excursion. "Courtesy of the Benefactor!" You pack it up with food and supplies, and trek into the Tammineaux Forest in search of the first Ginnarak Crystal.

The forest is lush, thick, and green. You have to hack your way through the vines and the brush. There are stinging insects, squawking birds, and dangerous forest creatures a plenty. It is hot and sticky.

How will you ever find your way through this wilderness to the dig site?

"Shouldn't be too hard," you remember Blavin saying back at Lucy's, gesturing carelessly and sloshing a little bit of his fourth drink. "They're gnomes, after all! Just follow the sound of explosions and screaming."

Sure enough, before long you hear a mechanical droning and some blasting up ahead, punctuated now and then by high pitched screams, and you guide the multibeast in that direction.

Suddenly you are ambushed by a troop of blahoblins! Awful looking things. Taut rubbery gray skin. Long flat noses stick out way far from their faces. And so do their protruding, lipless mouths full of sharp pointy teeth. You didn't hear them over the noise of the shrieking parrots and, in the distance, the shrieking gnomes.

"SHOE SHINE!!" the first one yells. It is wearing a gold ring on each finger (minus the three fingers it is missing), two in each ear, and one in its nose. It is dragging a vat of black polish nearly as tall as it is.

"SHOE SHINE!!" a second one agrees. It is wearing a nice waistcoat with large gaudy buttons, and a nice looking pocket watch on a gold chain. It is dragging a comfy looking chair stuffed with bits of fluff and leaves and fur.

A third one screams, "SHOE SHINE SHOE SHINE!" It has several gold teeth and carries a huge block of cheese secured to its back with long loops of hempen rope.

The fourth and final one is wearing what looks like freshly painted red shoes and is carrying a lit torch. "SHOE SHIIIIINE!" it screams. It is wearing a gold medallion on a gold necklace.

[www](https://framalistes.org/sympa/arc/tildepals/2022-07/msg00015.html)

