>>5419992The meat prepared for you is indeed not insectoid, nor crustacean or arachnid. There are bones in amongst the meat, attesting to a skeletal structure—a vertebrate. In spit of this, you have trouble identifying what sort of skeleton they could be assembled into. It is like no reptile, mammal, amphibian, or even fish that you have ever supped upon. Further, the flesh is greyish, and strangely lumpy and tumorous. It tastes good enough—in fact, better-tasting than many things you’ve been served in your own birthplace—and yet the texture is… Off-putting. It is like fresh meat that has the texture of rotten flesh.
“Is it to your liking?”
“Yes,” you lie to the Elf Queen, glad mammal-folk are so bad at reading Reptilian expressions. “What is it? It isn’t like anything I have eaten before.”
“A scampering sort of thing,” she says, with a wave of her hand. “We call them ‘ghouls’, but they resemble… Little goblins, or monkeys, but pale and with big heads and fat bellies. They root through our dead, and we then catch them.”
“Ah,” you say, again reminded of the poverty of these people in spite of their attempts to retain their famed, ancestral sophistication, that even their nobles eat such things.
You had not planned to drink, better to keep your wits about you, but you do so now in order to wash away their slimy grease-jelly which coats your tongue. You see Olu follow your lead, though Ivno declines to do so. The Throat-singer quaffs the elven alcohol with dwarven enthusiasm, reminding you of his race’s reputation in spite of his virtual beardlessness.
You decide that, if you are to eat and drink sparingly, you will busy your mouth with matters of important conversation instead. You skip the usual mammalian small-talk, accustomed as you are to the directness of the Drow soldier-class.
“I understand I was summoned here for a reason,” you say. “your people are going through a transition. Your matriarchy is coming to an end, in some… Cycle. Soon, your race will have a king once more.”
The Elf Queen looks to Jazkarmel, who shrinks and laughs nervously under the look—not a glare, nor glower, yet clearly a form of attention she is uncomfortable with. A subtle expression of the elves, foreign to you? Or is Jazkarmel, confident frontierswoman and military commander, frightened by the silver-eyed matriarch by default?
“This is true,” the Queen says, looking back to you.
“My race holds the males to be the more warlike and purely-logical sex,” you say.
“I had heard you were a race dominated by priests, and not priestesses,” the Queen replies.
A silence passes.
