Another one would be to proclaim to the world of his land trhough scrying orb, if it worked on the village, it should work on the rest of them, only the scale of such would be to the world. People would consider him a copycat of flos tho. tfc

The issue here is one that I myself made the mistake of: thinking =/= not a monster.

Az’kerash has a whole menagerie of thinking monsters. Crypt worms can clearly think, and they’re undeniably monsters. Many literal monsters have greater variants that are capable of thought, and even tactics. Shit man, CRELERS are capable of thought and tactics, and they’re literally a Kill On Sight target for OTHER monsters.

Being able to think does not automatically disqualify you as a monster.

Trying to contain any number of those humans while the goblins were being attacked and trying to get inside the city where they’d have some defenses would have been difficult. Not that it couldn’t be done, but it would be one more big thing to have to worry about, as opposed to getting her tribe into safety. If she started stopping the humans from leaving, they’d start fighting back, as well, meaning more goblins needed to handle that.

Her goblins were exhausted, poisoned, and wounded. Keeping that many prisoners – and keeping goblins from just ravaging them in anger – would be a chore and a half. They’d also need to be fed and watered, if the goblins stay there more than a couple days, another task that would not only be difficult, but would take away food and drink from the goblins.

They might be useful, but it would also be just as likely that they’d be written off as lost – Laken has so sight in the city itself, so wouldn’t know they were there or their conditions. He also can’t wrap his head around the goblins being able to think at all, so him believing they were actual hostages might not even be apparent to him. If he doesn’t think the goblins can negotiate at all, hostages lose much of their value.

As far as the raiding goes, damage to infrastructure can be more problematic than just killing people. Anyone left alive would have very little left, they’d become refugees and a drain on the resources of other humans. Fewer farms means less food for the surrounding areas. The general terror of mass raiding would possibly be more detrimental than just killing a city. So yes, less people dead, but potentially much more psychological damage to everyone left alive.

It’s possible he learned on his own without any help. Reiss should be a stronger necromancer than Pisces, in an absolute sense – he can seemingly control tens of thousands of undead, while Pisces has only shown the ability to control maybe a dozen. Granted those dozen are probably individually stronger than multiple dozens of Reiss’ generic undead, but Reiss still wins by a few orders of magnitude. He also had draug in the fight against Tremborag and Garen, which could easily be as strong as Pisces’ undead.

Reiss also seemed to have been at least somewhat of a Beast Tamer, as he used a living shield spider as a mount previously. This would have given him a lot of insight into how the spider’s body moved, which would be helpful for modifying a standard reanimation spell.

The problem is the last word in that quote SMoore posted: Unthinking.

Laken should verifiable know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that goblins are not unthinking. They are literally deliberately destroying his totems, an object that should have zero relevance to anything that is supposedly unthinking. The only reason they would be destroying such objects specifically is if they have figured out what they do – and thus proving that they can not only think, but that they can think abstractly.

Even before that, though, he should have been clued in by Rags using actual, very effective tactics against him. Unthinking monsters wouldn’t be splitting up to confuse his omniscience, and then using fairly advanced ambush tactics. They wouldn’t be setting traps for his forces to run into.

There has been quite a lot of evidence that goblins are not just unthinking monsters, and Laken ignores it all.

That’s one of the big things that sets Rags’ tribe apart from all the others. Virtually everyone that has run into them – except Laken – has realized that they aren’t just dumb beasts to be slaughtered.

The word burned in her mind, single, pulsating thought. It did away with notions of mercy, told her to abandon pride and memory and everything else and give in to the bloodlust. It was not darkness. It should have been, but Rags only felt alive as she raced with the Redfang Warriors through the night. She pointed and the group of six Goblins she had saved fell in with the others, cheering.

Is this how Velan felt?

Would you consider that a random nest of shield spiders are meaningfully different than the shield spiders in the dungeon?

He views them as monsters. Unthinking, unfeeling. This view is obviously corrupting his reasoning and is being poisoned by hatred due to the fact that EVERY SINGLE interaction with goblins has so far been horrible… but it’s also very understandable.

If his first experience with Durene had been her trying to kill him, he’d probably be in agreement with the villagers initially. THAT is the difference between Durene and goblins in this story.

We would not assume that the shield spiders in the dungeon are non-violent. He isn’t entirely wrong to assume that Rags’ massive army of goblins are violent and involved with the Goblin Lord, because there has been ZERO evidence provided to the contrary for him. He IS wrong, of course, but only because he lacks very critical information.

Pirateaba goes to great lengths to describe how the world views goblins in general. Huge, extreme lengths. It has been a main feature of the story since nearly the first chapter. They’re evil. They’re monsters. They’re unworthy of compassion. Erin is basically the only person in the world that doesn’t hold this view at this point.

So why in the world are we expecting Laken to view them differently? I see it in every chapter. He has never had a positive experience with a goblin, and never interacted with one in person, but he’s supposed to somehow magically know that they’re anything more than the murderous monsters that nearly razed his home and slaughtered his subjects?

Laken doesn’t have our perspective, and he certainly doesn’t have Erin’s nearly irresponsible knack for befriending everything around her.

Laken’s confrontation with Rags is SO GOOD because they both are caught up in this cycle of hatred. Who’s going to be the first to break it? Will they come to understand each other? Will one of them be exterminated by the other? We’re all hoping that one or both of them will break the cycle, because that’s the right thing to do. We also know it’s not guaranteed, because they both have great reasons to hold on to this hatred.

She could have kept them and relied on the *threat* of harm to get a far better outcome for her tribe without the need for mass slaughter. Or, if she’d really committed to the mass slaughter thing, she could have done that to the townsfolk, who presumably outnumber the handful of scattered villages many times over

the city name is not Muerfurt.
It’s Lancrel.