>>5713206>>5713170>>5712934>>5712526>>5712392>>5712338>>5712311>>5712291If diplomacy can be called ‘war by other means’, then you have spent this last season pursuing a tertiary form of war-and-diplomacy in your evenings. While Natvodosk expands his mind under the surprisingly-patient tutelage of the Occultist—out in the stables, where no humans will catch them engaged in demonological lessons, naturally—you study the humans. Each day, you assign the Thief to don his mask of Many Faces and to slip unnoticed into the populace. Each evening—or most evenings, for sometimes he travels further—he returns to tell you of what he is learned. He tells you of the moderately-populous village a half-day’s travel from the baronial keep which is your temporary residence.
“Several hundred humans dwell there, and a smattering of the so-called ‘halflings’,” he tells you. “Few are war-worthy. The halflings… They resemble simply slimmer dwarves. We saw similar creatures in the Eastlands, during my time there. They were… Hairier, though. More primitive in their technology. ‘Orang pedak’, I believe the locals referred to them . These ones are more like dwarves—specifically, rather like the Throat-singer. Perhaps they have admixed with the dwarves, or the humans, or both?”
The local economy seems to be as you suspected—it is largely self-contained and just above subsistence, though, the general health of the population is better than one might expect, owing largely to local religious organizations. The petty priesthood of the local agricultural and forest gods dole out minor miracles—divine magic, like that of the Paladin Order of the sword-god Moroth in Hawksong—and also run charitable organizations to give and take food in some socialist redistribution scheme.
“They are not nearly so deadly a foe as a paladin, however,” the Thief notes brightly.
“Good,” you say, though you aren’t exactly certain that armed conflict with the clergy is on the table just yet.
