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> SELECTED: Sit. Wait. Watch and observe. The connection between the makes of those armours cannot be written off, but now is not the time to press for that information. Not until you get settled into this new role. You watch the Black Knight and the inner four very closely. [Divine]
The hairs on the nape of your neck rise as you are struck with the same sensation a game animal must feel upon catching an unfamiliar scent, the tinge of potential of danger but bereft of any confirmation. Where before you had kept your peace to avoid any further potential political mishaps among your fellows, now your silence is absolute and all the keener. You scan the dias of the 11th Command Talon with the same wary scrutiny you would reserve for a peaceful glade in the far reaches of Fallavon, trying to detect if a predator lies in wait.
Not far from where the command talon is seated lurks the Medusae Caste’s Cantonian cohort attache and her apprentices. You use the word lurk but, the resplendent golden mask depicting a growling lioness that rests on the head of their leader could hardly be said to be surreptitious. While the Black Knight and most of the command talon remove their helms and partake in food, drink and talk, the four ‘Sanguine’ lookalikes do not. There is something about their utter immobility, and the presence of the nearby high-ranked Medusae, that gives you pause. The more you look at them, their uniform stance even at the dinner table and inhuman stillness, the more you are reminded of the animated husks that the outcast Death’s Head medusae surrounded herself with.
Granted these would have to be a far more advanced and formidable version of those, it doesn’t take a sorcerer to garner that animating a functional set of heavy plate armour takes some degree of greater effort than conjuring linen and leather into action. If it didn’t, there would be little reason to animate one and not the other. Perhaps these four ‘bodyguards’ are just that, gifts of the Medusae Caste charged with the wellbeing of one of the most senior officers in the Dragon Guard. Or perhaps their assignment is less charitable, less sentry and more jailor, but the more you observe the more you confirm your suspicions that the four stygian black wardens are not in fact human at all. Unfortunately, it doesn’t in the least explain why they seem to be near identical in appearance to the Crown Prince’s own Paladin Sanguine.
The tables stir and chatter stills as the Black Knight rises to his feet, empty or half-eaten plates discretely taken away by the attendants and replaced with more wine.
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