>>5312506>>5312465>>5312457>>5312444>>5312439>>5312436>>5312433>>5312430You take off your helm and take a seta upon a nearby stone-and-wood bench to consider the options carefully. The Dark Gods’ guidance would be invaluable here, but... Do you really need it? And, if they offer it, will you be obliged to accept it, even if you dislike their demands? As the old saying goes, ‘The Dark Gods help those who help themselves, because the helpless are feeble and deserve to perish.’
“Test your theories,” you allow, to the Novice’s muted delight and Glowie’s rather more exuberant response.
“Some sense rattles around in that quarter-ape skull, after all!” The Novice enthuses, unable to help herself from the little dig even as she ‘thanks’ you. Her eyes linger, though, as you self-consciously run your hand through your unkempt and matted mane of hair. “Hm, maybe not much of an ape-skull at all, once I’m done with it… Almost a shame.”
“What?” you ask.
“What?” she replies, then abruptly shifts back to the topic at hand: “I’ll need a dozen kobolds, young ones preferably—ones who can ENDURE.”
It hardly seems like a good way to build loyalty, you note. She scoffs.
“They’re KOBOLDS,” she says. “It’s what they’re FOR. The worm—”
“Glowie.”
“—GLOWIE is too DIFFERENT from us for it to work. I’m still not certain how her internal structures even work! Is there a skeleton in there?”
Glowie shies away a bit under the sudden intense scrutiny you and the Novice both fix upon her. Her disguised form offers little hints as to what lies below.
“There is another option,” you say.
Slowly, all three of you turn your gaze upon the pathetic creature which the Novice has unceremoniously trapped in a wooden cage in one corner: a creature of kobold size, ALMOST kobold shape, but distinctly un-kobold nature. A bristly, mangy, pinkish and scaleless thing stares back from between the bars, at first hopeful that you are here to let it out, and then wary as the Novice starts rattling with amusement.
