Rolled 16, 8, 10, 6 = 40 (4d20)
>>5435786You decide to trust in the process a little while longer. You committed to this diplomatic approach, so why abandon it before you have to? Of course, there’s no reason toa assume that you will achieve any lasting peace with thee THINGS, even more primitive and pestilent than the already-barbaric Bogbarri bugbears… But a false front of pantomimed peace-talks can easily allow access and assassination to the TRUE Ghoul Supreme!
However, as the ancient Reptilian saying goes: ‘trust, but verify.’ You aren’t exactly comfortable letting the Junior Novice take the lead while you stand idly and dumbly by, oblivious to his true intentions. With scales on his skin and dragonblood in his veins, your semi-mystical affinity for reptilian empathy is capable of reaching him, of parsing his purposes… Though the connection is dim and dull, muffled and distorted, relative to a true member of a Reptilian lineage.
You sense hope.
It’s promising, but the more you focus, the more you sense that the locus of that hope rests not with you, and your strength… But with this other dog-faced ghoul-thing. You sense also shame, and pride, mixed into a complex emotional milieu. Your vague, speculative interpretation is that the other ‘dogbold’ has evinced awe and horror at the Junior Novice’s transformed state, and that Junior is thus aware of his alienated status as an artificial hybrid, mightier than typical of his obviously-scrawny race but also physically bizarre to them.
Does he hope for a life among them, in whatever passes for dogbold society?
“Do not be foolish,” you hiss to your slave quietly, interrupting the chattering, nattering conversation of the dog-faces. “You have strength already. You have POWER, as a result of your dragonblood. Stay with me, and you will grow larger, stronger… You will be rewarded, live well. Look at how this one lives… Would you prefer that ‘freedom’ to the comforts you could be offered at home?”
