The mission itself is pretty straightforward: We're doing some mop up. Some goblins wandered out of the local dungeon and established a vilge, where they're breeding like goblins do (far faster than rabbits!) and from which they're sending out raiding parties every few days… about half of which ignore their orders and go establish new vilges instead. The town is safe enough (goblins don't exactly organize well, and die from arrows from the wall readily enough), but they are a problem for trade caravans, and build up fast if they're not handled swiftly… so we and several other inexperienced groups are being sent out to handle the various known goblin vilges… burn them to the ground and kill all of the inhabitants, basically. It's going to be regur fare for a while: It's tricky to ensure all the goblins die, and those that run away will start new vilges if they encounter each other, which means the whole thing starts over. The town can find the goblin nests faster than they make more… usually.

  Yes, we're on a mission of genocide. Goblins are evil, nasty, stupid, and aggressive little things that will not permit peace. So we're going into the homes they carved out of the otherwise uncimed wilderness, and killing every goblin we encounter without having any knowledge of specific crimes of the specific goblins in front of us… even those that raise weapons against us aren't actually doing anything wrong at that time: Anyone's permitted self-defense in their home. From my mom's perspective, it's murder. But there's not really a better option. It's war: The goblins decred it when they hit the town walls and caravans, we're just ending it by violence, because that's basically all goblins understand. No, nobody has tried talking to this set, because everyone knows it won't work. The stupid bleeding heart negotiators that occasionally try talking usually end up either running away when the goblins attack, or never reporting back at all. The ones strong enough to ugh off the goblins' attacks and negotiate anyway find that goblins don't keep to their word… even if the particur chief they spoke with is honorable, goblin chiefs don't st long. And yet, the goblins still have enough intelligence to make pns, strike deals, carry on conversations, and build their own tools… they're people.

  So we're murdering them all at the behest of the crown; it's just how this world works… sometimes I hate those philosophy courses Mom made me sit through.

  As I'm registered as a Druid, I'm tasked with the outdoorsy stuff: In this case, navigating the party to our assigned vilge. Which is trivial: Everything is since the gift. We walk a trade road to start and will branch off into the woods proper once we're close.

  I pause a few miles in, a bit before a bend in the road within a densely forested area, “Ambush. Goblins. Four archers in the trees, two pikemen ready to block the road, and two more waiting on the sides… I presume to cut off retreat.”

  Roger (the halfling trap handler - of course I got everyone's names eventually) frowns, “Seems a bit more organized than most goblins….”

  Wesley (the party's arcane caster) nods sagely, “Indeed. It's generally quite hard to get them to follow orders and track details.”

  Bearcw ughs, “We're paid to kill them all anyway. They're just making it easier by splitting themselves up into smaller groups, aren't they?”

  The halfling smiles, “Indeed we are. Tell you what: I'll see how many of them I can kill quietly, and when they find me I'll call for help, at which point you all come running… sound good?”

  I shrug, “Sure.” I could just walk into the middle of it all and be fine.

  The half-orc frowns, “Don't take too long; I want in on the fun too.”

  The elf, on the other hand, “Take your time… no hurry….”

  I chuckle as the halfling tries to fade into the woods… I can see him easily, both with my eyes and the other senses Mom gave me. Dragonsight gives me blindness out to a range of about five hundred feet or so, the Greater Blindsight spell gets me something nearly as good as sight out to sixty feet, the Tremorsense spell tells me what's in contact with the ground in a thirty foot range (useful when I'm burrowing underground via another effect), the Telepathy spell and the Mindsight feat let me see every thinking being in a hundred feet, Greater Arcane Sight shows me all the magic auras (and roughly where they are, and what spells they are), Aura Sight tells me everyone's alignment (and where they are) if they're very strong (my party isn't there yet), See Invisibility and True Seeing stop illusions cold, and I'm really good at just pin spotting things: I'm really hard to surprise.

  Thanks to Mom.

  I wait as instructed, watching the leather-cd short guy sneak through the trees and shrubs, as he slits the throat of the first goblin intended to cut off retreat, and as he steps on a branch that cracks when he goes for the next, alerting his quarry who shouts out an arm… which is our cue.

  I cut loose with my sling, sending six stones flying, one goblin per stone, hitting each in their left eye and virtually causing their heads to explode… including the one swinging at Roger. Winding Key for an extra standard action, Mythic Haste for an extra move, Juggle Load to reload a sling quickly… which means I get to full attack twice. Rapid Shot gives me a second attack in a full attack, Haste a third. And thanks to Stack Metamagic (which lets Mom apply a metamagic feat multiple times to the same spell), Fell Energy Spell (a metamagic feat that increases the bonuses from spells when applied to undead), Attuned Mysticism (which lets type-specific spells target alternative types), and Mom's unlimited metamagic… my “base stats” are absurdly high. Seriously, if I unch one of those sling stones at a cliff face, the cliff shatters: It's insane. Still… one goblin unaccounted for. My animal companion takes off like a shot, nding on top of the one still unaccounted for… but doesn't nd the bite. That's okay: I cast a Quickened Magic Missile spell with my Swift action, which takes down the st of them.

  Bearcw turns and looks at me as the st one dies, “You didn't leave any for me?”

  Wesley just looks at me, fear in his eyes, “What are you?”

  Oh, right, “I'm registered with the guild as a Druid… and I can fill that role just fine…”

  Roger walks calmly up while I'm talking, wiping goblin blood off his face and cleaning his swords, “I'm thinking it may be time for you to come clean, Marty: What. Was. That?”

  I shrug, “Some sling stones and a spell,” I don't even bother buying sling bullets; rocks work just fine for me, despite the penalties, “I am on my first gig, I just have some blessings from my family,” mostly Mom, “that… well… let me do things I really shouldn't be able to do. I don't want to just coast on my family name though, you know? So I'm out here doing the grind, just like everyone else.”

  “You do realize,” I can tell the halfling de-facto leader is seething, but he's also terrified, as he's figured out he's not a threat to me, “that you could have simply told us all this before, and we could have pnned for it.”

  I try to calm him down, “Would you have believed me if I said I could do something like that?”

  …and it works remarkably well, “I suppose not,” he sighs, “but let's go over what you can do, huh? We'll need it for pnning….”

  I shrug, “Yeah, sure…” I walk over to a nearby oak… looks a hundred years old or more, a nice thick trunk… and punch it, producing a cloud of shattered splinters where the trunk once stood. As the tree starts to fall, I fly up and catch it in one hand, then toss it away into the forest. I then fly back down, sink into the ground, and pop back up on the other side of the party. I then start casting random spells from the Druid, Wizard, and Cleric lists: Fireball, Fme Strike, Entangle, Magic Vestments….

  On spell eighteen, the elf stops me, “Perhaps it would be faster if you tell us your limits, instead?”

  I pause, “Sure… ah… I can't do sixth circle spells or higher…” for now, and past that, I'm drawing a bnk.

  The elf pauses, “But you can do fifth and lower?”

  The halfling adds, “And handle traps at least as well as you spotted that ambush?”

  The half-orc purses his lips, “And hand out the dakka like nobody's business, melee or ranged?”

  I nod, “Both priestly and wizard spells, yes, and yes.”

  “Why am I even here?” all three ask at once.

  I have an answer to that… “Look, I have no real experience with this stuff. I know all the theory, sure. I can probably just pin sughter any opponent who tries to take a stab at me, sure. But kicking abyssals and taking loot surely isn't all there is to this. There is going to be stuff I miss, because this is my first time out, and really, who's going to take a complete greenhorn, no matter how talented? Plus the Guild doesn't hand out missions to loners,” and I can't currently afford to register my humanoid summons as adventurers and cover the party charter fees too… I might be able to make that work after a run or two, though, given that I have basically no expenses, “so if I'm going to be an adventurer and do the dungeon delves that keep society running… I need you guys.”

  Roger pauses, “Give us a minute to conference, all right?”

  I nod and walk a good hundred feet back up the trail, hopefully convincing them I can't hear them clearly. They whisper anyway, not that it actually helps.

  “So…” Roger starts the conversation, “How are we going to handle… this?”

  Wesley answers first, “I don't mind someone else taking point, but this kid's insanely overqualified for this.”

  “So we get him for a few guild missions,” Bearcw fires back, “get some fat paydays from him, and then let someone else outbid us and snipe him when they figure it out.”

  “I'm more concerned about his enemies,” the party rogue reports, “I mean, the kid got that strong somehow. People capable of handing out that much power have got to have powerful people looking for leverage… like a naieve youngster. You think we’d be more than a bloodstain on the wall if someone came looking?”

  “That will be a bit,” the wizard shrugs, “I can see the magic he casts, but I can't see any on him. Whoever or whatever granted him power also warded him up. A couple missions, then let a better equipped team snipe him. We get some nice paydays, he gets his experience, someone else deals with whatever demons may be after him in a few weeks: Everyone wins."

  The halfling considers, then nods, “Okay. We didn't exactly get into this business to py it safe, did we?”

  They all smile, break the huddle, and wave me back over….