When Warriors Return

As I suspect these draft extracts are starting to show, Goblin Launderette isn't really a story about a party of adventurers on a quest together. It's more a series of interlinked stories of people on their own journeys, who all find they have the same end.

In that regard, I already know who our full party is, and I know where they're going. I know, to be a bit writerly, their ultimate goals. The fun part is watching them evolve on page as their reasons for doing so emerge. I find that's always a combination of their proximate goals converging, but also their hopes and fears becoming clearer in my head as I write them.

With all that in mind, over Christmas I've been working more on Em's story. More specifically, her relationship with her father. Because Em is the child of someone who did bold deeds and lived to deal with the human consequences of that. When I'm playing RPGs or reading fantasy, I often find myself thinking about the human consequences of the inevitably high death toll such worlds include. In GobLaun, Em's father, and her relationship with him, are one of those consequences. Because when his adventures ended, he found his small moment of peace. But that came at a cost.

Anyway, hope you enjoy. The normal caveats about this being early draft still apply, and - as usual - do feel free to forward this email on to others. And, if you like this stuff, don't forget to tell people about this newsletter online as well. Just point them to this landing page.

And with that, I'm off to make a cup of tea, and spend the day with Scrivener and one of the characters you've only met in passing so far. More on him at a later date...

Aside from her time at university, Em had lived in Gamlinberg her whole life. Growing up, her friends would moan about how dull the town was and that they couldn’t wait to go live in one of the great cities, or become adventurers and travel the world. She’d never understood that. To her, Gamlinberg was home. The world outside of it was fascinating, sure, but it was also scary and overwhelming. So Em was perfectly happy experiencing it through the words of others. This was why she never objected when her friends suggested they visit the Launderette. Em’s father was someone who their own parents talked about in hushed words and with his scars and his eye-patch, he definitely didn’t look like the kind of man who had spent his whole life drycleaning in Gamlinberg. They didn’t know what he’d done, but he’d definitely done something. For her friends, those visits were a chance to quiz her father on the wider world. For her it was an extra opportunity to spend more time with him. So they’d all sit in here, on the same bench she was sat on now, pestering him for stories about his days as a fighter, begging him to tell them about monsters and demons as he folded sheets on the counter or worked through a load of washing.

Em closed her eyes and allowed herself the luxury of falling into memory. She could see her dad now, almost a giant in their eyes, describing epic battles, and incredible beasts of legend that he’d encountered in the mountains and deserts of distant lands. All while quietly ironing or sewing up a torn pair of trousers. Even at that young age they could recognise that many of his stories were just versions of the old legends they heard at school or from bards in town. None of them minded. Adults like to think that children can’t tell when they’re lying, but it’s not true. It’s just that over time adults forget what they once understood without question when they were children themselves: That sometimes the truth needs to be protected by a tale.

Em and her friends knew that most of the stories her father wove for them while darning socks couldn’t possibly be true. But even at that young age they’d learned to recognise the look that enters a soldier’s eyes when the memories are a bit too close to the surface. Her dad got that a lot. So if he found it easier to tell a tale than share a memory, then they didn’t feel the need to point it out. All that mattered was that he told them something. So they sat there, listening, enraptured.

She remembered that one day, at school, she’d overheard a couple of the mums discussing her father when he arrived to pick her up. The first parent, new to Gamlinberg, had asked who the fighter was. When the second told her that he ran the launderette, the first one started to laugh, then stopped. Em heard her say, with a curious mix of sympathy and humour, that maybe it wasn’t such an odd career move on the part of someone like that.

“Perhaps the smell of soap covers up the smell of blood.” She’d said.

Em hadn’t really understood what that meant at the time and, as she became a teenager, she began to resent that her father never opened up to her. Whenever she tried to ask him about his life before Gamlinberg he’d deflect the question. The more she pushed him, the less he said and the angrier she got. Indeed by the time she’d left for university they were barely talking at all.

It was only as she’d grown older, and more aware of how the world - and people - worked, that she’d finally understood what the woman had meant that day. That what Em had seen as his refusal to let her into his life was the exact opposite. For whatever reason, he wanted her to know him only as the person he’d become. The peaceful launderette owner. The man who wielded a needle, not a sword. But by the time she’d realised that it was too late. He was dead.

Em wasn’t a person who had many regrets, but that was one. She’d never been able to tell her father that she understood his silence now, and that it was okay.