>>5342935>15To your great relief, the Novice is able to stabilize the Thief’s condition with her magic. Using a more mundane method—a small jar of aromatic herbs—she is even able to rouse him to a concussed semblance of consciousness.
“Where… Where am I?” he moans. “What happened to me?”
You fill him in on events as you understand them, and he nods, half-understanding.
“Our mission was a success, then?” he asks.
“At great cost,” you say, “but yes, very much yes.”
“Nothing valuable comes easily,” the Thief replies knowingly.
He speaks truly, for it is mere moments later when a cry for aid comes down the shaft. You ascend it again, leaving the Novice to attend to the other badly-injured assassins, and rush to the aid of your forces. You find the Pit-Guard, Apprentice, and a smattering of kobolds blocking a hallway. One of the kobolds clutches an arm, which has a small quarrel—as from a hand-crossbow—embedded in the bicep.
“We found quarters which are still inhabited,” explains the Pit-Guard. “They made to ambush us…”
>17“But we heard their approach, and we retaliated!” proudly interrupts the Apprentice, holding a squirming dwarf aloft.
The mammals is grey-bearded, with one hand a crude prosthetic and one half f his body scarred—an old, injured minor. An elder. It explains why he was not in the battle.
“Are those who remain all like you, then, old one?” you ask him in the northern common-tongue.
His eyes widen, and you know that he understand your speech, but he remains stubbornly, defiantly silent.
“Females, and spawn,” Ivno answers in his stead, helpfully adding: “You can tell by the chest-glands, with the females. The spawn lack the face-fur.”
Mates, and offspring, and the elderly of their race—advisors, support-staff, families. You look down the hallway, to the reinforced door behind which they presumably cower, these so-called non-combatants… Some of the last living examples of these damnable, warm-blooded bastards who killed Infiltrator Paeris, and very nearly killed the thief. You stare at the door a moment, doing nothing… And then something moves you.
It is…
>Vengeful fury—you assume <Augmented Dragonshape> and burst down the door with a roar, to tear apart or immolate the lot of them>Sorrowful grief—this battle has not been glorious, in the end, but wasteful and tragic, and you would rather negotiate their peaceful surrender as your personal prisoners than spill more blood unnecessarily>Cold calculus—as is proper for a member of the Reptilian Master Race, you subdue your passions and instead plan a measured and organized entry, to intimidate and capture these dwarves for interrogation and barter with the Bogbarri>Write-in>>5342936Sorry, just a minute too late! Not that it was shaping up to be a very close vote. 