>>5266700>What mammals are in the area to be concerned about?“None—the self-satisfied slaves have, for all their whimpering weakness, managed to drive the mammals from their territory. However, the journey there poses risks. You will be traveling territory outside of our control, be it through old tunnels or lands above.”
“What dangers lie along each path?” you asked, excited at the chance to think strategically, and the prospect of proving yourself.
“Beneath the earth, the tunnels have become home to some sort of outcast elf,” the Chaplain answered vaguely. “They are magical little monkey-creatures, though these ones seems scrawnier and weaker than most. Our operatives who have spied them say that they are canny, though, with keen senses and a knack for hunting in darkness which exceeds what we know of their surface kin. They are said to have some sort of affinity for spiders and centipedes, and other crawling things.”
“Appropriate to a scrounging scavenger,” quips the Novice, quietly so as not to draw her father’s ire again, “to consort with like beings.”
“The surface world in this area is less known to us,” The Chaplain continues. “It will make for easier travel, but you will need to maintain secrecy. NO mammal-man of the surface may see you and live. It is NOT yet the time for open war, and to see an obvious dragon-spawn… It would rouse the very sort of attention we seek to avoid.”
“Woodlands are known to play host to bandits, where surfacer society INEVITABLY falls short and creates want,” the Novice adds quietly. “Goblinoids—a fast-breeding and aggressively unmagical variety of monkey-creature—are especially common in the area, I have read.”
