Rolled 12, 12, 17, 4 = 45 (4d20)
>>5579672As you stare down this human’s unflinching antipathy, you start to feeling something new in this encounter. Your heart is pounding in your chest, but it isn’t anxiety. Your grip tightens on your sword, but you are not in the grip of terror. You feel not fear, but… Exhilaration.
“I must admit it,” you address the Green Knight (and in your native tongue, since he evidently speaks it), “I am glad you are a worthy challenge after all.”
“Spare me the pretension to honour, snake,” she spits (in his native Northern Common-tongue, you note, perhaps seeking to avoid an embarrassing accent just as you now are). “It is alien to your motherless breed.”
That comment stings a little, but you resist the urge to avenge. You instead circle slowly, the hand bearing the Ring of Protection raised in mirror of the Yosef heir’s own silver shield. You feint, he recoils and raises his blade… But instead of attempting the strike and falling into his counter-attack, you stop short, and place your mother’s diadem upon your head. Seeing his trophy upon your brow instead of his own only seems to infuriate this knight all the more.
“Not motherless,” you correct him.
He laughs, a bitter and mocking sound of disbelief.
“I know how your lot are grown. Hatched in clutches, abandoned by your parents. Don’t try to weaken me with a sob story. I have no time for crocodile tears, creature.”
“Then what of you?” you ask.
You’re admittedly a little curious, even if it’s MOSTLY just an effort to distract and occupy the human male while you look for a gap in his defences, and allow the blood-loss to take its toll.
[Diplomacy, DC 18]
