>>5686271>>5686276>>5686289>>5686315For all that you have caught up with your retinue, there is one faction—key to your burgeoning kingdom, and near and dear to your heart—that you have not yet visited. It is time to meet with your first mate and your first clutch of sons: Glowie the Great-Worm Queen and her Wyrm Warriors.
You find them—and Hamaraska the centipede Lancer, and Honemdyn the Centipede—all in Glowie’s preferred cavern. It is a ways away from the most heavily-trafficked areas of the kobolds’ ever-expanding and ever-more-cosmopolitan warrens, closer to the tomb where the Red Dragon King’s doomed sons and daughters met their premature end. It was from their bodies that you drew forth the blood that empowered your <Dragonshape>, and made great and terrible monsters of Glowie’s first clutch of eggs. It seems appropriate that they now nest near that source of power, even if you are somewhat sad to see them detached from the broader community of Bloodrise.
“Theral!” the Lancer greets you as you approach, standing and smiling.
You nod in turn, momentarily thrown by the lack of honorific. No ‘King’ or ‘Dragonborn’ or ‘Superior One’ or ‘Master’. Hm. Still, this androgynous elven insect-warden knew you as friend before ever you were sovereign. Even now… Well, has the lancer or Duelist ever actually pledged ALLEGIANCE to you, exactly, or just come here in a show of companionship? Huh, funny that you never really considered this…
“Lancer,” you greet them in Dark Elventongue. “I hear congratulations are in order! You are a veteran of glorious battle, yes?”
Hamaraska looks embarrassed, nervously stroking their many-legged companion, and shrugs.
“I didn’t do much except keep the wyrmlings on-task…”
The elf’s eyes drift past Glowie’s warrior-brood, who have noticed you and now jockey to come see you, and to bundles of silk and glowing mucous upon the walls.
“Mostly of task,” the Lancer amends.
You squint, and make out shapes within—the silhouette of dead and bundled dwarves, food for later. Lower down, on the ground, several more such cocoons are split open, and dark brownish-red seeps through the blue-green glow of the cottony casings.
Hm. Maybe best that your first family live a little further from prey-sized sapients, at least for now.
