>>5751463There are many things you can offer a deformed outcast like this and, champion of hybrids and social lesser that you have become, you honestly have no real aversion to any of them. Still, you are a Reptilian of the Master race, and as such you are cognizant of the costs-authority, respect—which come with offering too much at once, or for too little. It could compromise the ‘strong hand’ which your burgeoning world order requires. And besides, your Serpent Queen is busy already, fixing your food problems and attending to the abortive mutagenic plague which the Serpent Priests attempted to set in motion. You do not wish to distract her overmuch.
Maybe… A small thin?
“Status and be earned, and gifted, in time,” you allow with a tone of grave uncertainty. “Perhaps my mate could even make you whole—she who you met before. Repair the damaged of your ill-fated conception and birth.”
This excites him, but you hold up a hand to halt his excitement.
“IN TIME,” you remind him, sternly. “First… Do this thing for me, prove yourself trustworthy and loyal, and earn yourself respite. An Amulet of Disguise—bespoke, made to your requirements, that you may go where you will and live as you’d like. I will free you from the shackles of stigma and deformity… For a price.”
The Heretic taps his claws upon the desk and hisses with a low gurgle, considering the offer… But his position is weak, and you both know it. You could just as easily torture him for information, or kill him and scour the likely regions of the underdark on your own—it cannot be far, after all, to be of use in this forward base.
“As you say, Superior One,” he relents. “I accept.”
The Heretic travels with a limp as he leads you, and pauses or steps back affrighted from any unfamiliar sight or sound. Your progress is, thus, rather slow going. It is perhaps inevitable, when you cosndier how many decades this Outcast One must have lived in just his small room.
“We will come back, yes?” he asks repeatedly. “To… Collect my affects, my researches?”
“The valuable ones, yes,” you assure him. “Leave anything you do not need.”
“I will need all of it,” he asserts, nervously thumping his truncated, crooked tail upon his leg in a nervous tic as he glances back—yet again—in the direction of his long-time habitation. “It must be put back just as it was, JUST as it was, in the new realms…”
You say nothing, growing irritated even as you pity him.
