>>6322064
Zith-Zi at least seems to take your meaning, huffing and turning away to survey your destination. You gravitate to Empy—who isn’t exactly your boyfriend, or even a BOY, but even so—and smooth down his spines until he’s flat and faintly gelatinous once more.
Turtledove itself has changed since you last saw it. It’s still a little patch of greenery amidst all the brown, sandwiched between the foothills of the brown mountains beyond and thus trapping rain and tapping mountain streams to slake the thirst of plants, animals, and people. Where once it was a welcoming little oasis for those few traders still doing the south-north schlep, though, it is now armoured-up: wooden walls with spear-like points have been erected on the side facing the north, and a bigger barricade of imported timber and local stone blocks off the southern pass entirely.
“Huh,” you comment, “guess they don’t want any of what they’re sellin’ anymore…”
Khorine, meanwhile, hews closer to Zith-Zi and looks down with her oblong-pupiled eyes wide, and asks: “Zith-Zi, did you not say this was a SMALL settlement…?”
“I would not call it overly large,” Chang comments neutrally.
“Well it ain’t no Hawksong or River’s Mouth,” ZZ agrees, “but it’s definitely grown…”
When last the two of you visited, Turtledove was a town on the outs, in all honesty. With such limited trade between the Southlands and the Northwestern Realms, there was little purpose for such a port. Now, though, it is a curious contradiction: with open war on the horizon, it has exploded, such that shanties, shacks, and many a tent have spilled out beyond the smaller wooden wall, and lanterns are still alight in many quarters as people go about their business.
“Garrisoned soldiers can become a captive market, in a prolonged campaign,” Chang notes.
“Like a bandit camp economy, ey?” ZZ sniffs. “Been there.”
“Testa must be thrilled, at least,” Veigar says with a rueful smirk. “She always did like a big, strong man in uniform… Poor Pearce.”
While your wizard-friend reminisces about his school days, ZZ approaches you and nods for a sidebar. You join her, eager to prove yourself.
“Whaddaya figure?” she asks. “I mean, obviously we can’t bring the hundun, but I figure we can maybe gather some intel, if it’s just a few of us… See what’s goin’ down, who to watch out for. Recon.”
You consider this, grateful even to be asked after everything, and suggest…
>Who will you bring? Who will stay?
>What instructions will you give those who remain outside Turtledove? Will you have any sort of signal for them?
>What is your objective: go straight to Testa, or roam around the night-markets and alehouses?
Remember CZ’s spell-list includes Transmogrify now…
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>>6300272
…
Once you are done explaining the situation to Zith-Zi—and once she’s done chewing you out over the matter—you immediately hurry down through the levels of Patmo-Shoka, toward the forge.
The uncanny smoothness of the stone walls is broken up only by precisely-carved geometric patterns, and by those glyphs which are nearly invisible until activated to open doors. You pass by the boglins on your way—the dungeon’s original denizens, or at least their left behind security personnel—who offer stiff and militaristic waves unbefitting a goblinoid. You can feel their dismay and disgust at your current countenance, and the shame spurs you deeper, faster.
You’re hurrying such, and your horned head is hung so low, that you actually crash right into someone without noticing. You are both knocked onto your asses, and you are torn between the urge to apologize and a countervailing compulsion to rip into the offending obstacle both rhetorically and maybe LITERALLY.
Well, at least until you realize who it is.
“VeigaR!” you cry. “you’re back!”
The wind is knocked out of the minty-green caster-clone by your second, more deliberate impact, as you throw yourself into his midsection and all but hug the life out of him. You only stop when he starts tapping your back insistently, in his desperate need to breathe.
“It’s… Haaaa… It’s good to see you too, Carazzi.”
It’s funny to think that it was Tips—and thus Veigar, too, sorta—who originally gave you the odd-for-a-goblin name which you’ve since embraced. Just like you, Veigar is a ‘monstrous’ doppelganger of a prettier and pinker ‘real’ person, though in your opinion he’s still PLENTY pretty. Of course, he’s also Ayla’s, so you don’t say that last part out loud; you, better than most, know what a cambion’s envy and wrath can metastasize into.
“You came just in time,” you tell Veigar. “We’re about to do the, uh, you know. The whole forge thing!”
“I know,” he replies gently. “Ayla summoned me here and told me what happened. Well… More or less.”
His half-sour, half-smiling expression is that of a man (well, half-man half-elf, embodied in reworked goblin-flesh) who has married a demon, and well knows her propensity for deviousness and duplicity. So, too, is his face that of a man who loves her anyway.
(Now YOU’RE the one who’s envious…)
…
Once you are done explaining the situation to Zith-Zi—and once she’s done chewing you out over the matter—you immediately hurry down through the levels of Patmo-Shoka, toward the forge.
The uncanny smoothness of the stone walls is broken up only by precisely-carved geometric patterns, and by those glyphs which are nearly invisible until activated to open doors. You pass by the boglins on your way—the dungeon’s original denizens, or at least their left behind security personnel—who offer stiff and militaristic waves unbefitting a goblinoid. You can feel their dismay and disgust at your current countenance, and the shame spurs you deeper, faster.
You’re hurrying such, and your horned head is hung so low, that you actually crash right into someone without noticing. You are both knocked onto your asses, and you are torn between the urge to apologize and a countervailing compulsion to rip into the offending obstacle both rhetorically and maybe LITERALLY.
Well, at least until you realize who it is.
“VeigaR!” you cry. “you’re back!”
The wind is knocked out of the minty-green caster-clone by your second, more deliberate impact, as you throw yourself into his midsection and all but hug the life out of him. You only stop when he starts tapping your back insistently, in his desperate need to breathe.
“It’s… Haaaa… It’s good to see you too, Carazzi.”
It’s funny to think that it was Tips—and thus Veigar, too, sorta—who originally gave you the odd-for-a-goblin name which you’ve since embraced. Just like you, Veigar is a ‘monstrous’ doppelganger of a prettier and pinker ‘real’ person, though in your opinion he’s still PLENTY pretty. Of course, he’s also Ayla’s, so you don’t say that last part out loud; you, better than most, know what a cambion’s envy and wrath can metastasize into.
“You came just in time,” you tell Veigar. “We’re about to do the, uh, you know. The whole forge thing!”
“I know,” he replies gently. “Ayla summoned me here and told me what happened. Well… More or less.”
His half-sour, half-smiling expression is that of a man (well, half-man half-elf, embodied in reworked goblin-flesh) who has married a demon, and well knows her propensity for deviousness and duplicity. So, too, is his face that of a man who loves her anyway.
(Now YOU’RE the one who’s envious…)