>>5286606While you march over the next three days, you also take some time to better know a few more of your retinue. Specifically, the strong instincts of the South-Merchant make you curious about the character and history of he and his northerly counterpart.
Both the Merchants are Silkscales—subtle arts such as those of the market are often performed by their subrace. Both have also, technically, been Reptilian Infiltrators of the surface, as Paeris the Degenerate was. Unlike him, though, their missions were much more subdued and long-term: these two middle-aged males served as messengers, waypoints, emergency contacts, and smugglers of goods to and from the surface-world.
“I traveled to the Southlands,” the South-Merchant explains, unnecessarily. “The humans there are dark in skintone, with many kingdoms and magocracies scattered throughout. They are not very devout to the Gods of Light, preferring their own reason and power—an inclination our race has helped along for centuries now. Some nations, such as the Aardanians, have a nobility entirely in the sway of our Dark Gods.”
“A comfortable assignment,” the North-Merchant scoffs. “The Northlands are no such easy pickings. The temperature in winter is inhospitable to our race. The people are pious to their pitiful ‘deities’. Kingdoms are stronger and more centralized, beneath racial hegemonies of great strength—the damned Paladin King of Hawksong holds dominion by divine right or economic means over most of the humans, the Iternagreyn Mages’ Tower and attendant nobility control much of the Silverwood of the elves, and dwarves and goblins pick over the ruins of our ancestors, where their own ignoble fathers did not already trample them into dust and forget about them.”
“And yet the growth opportunities are immense in the North!” the South-Merchant says, lamenting his own situation: “I have many such merchants as myself to contend with in the South. It is difficult to make a name for myself, to grow my own station and stature for better breeding-rights and clan-status. It is why I joined you, Superior One. A Dragonborn ushering in a new Age of Scales… Now THAT is opportunity for advancement, yes?”
“It certainly sounds more promising than dodging ever-more-paranoid ape-men in the North,” the North-Merchant says darkly. “They grow wary of demons, foreigners… Everything not of themselves. They have detected something amiss—our machinations, maybe, or something else. They grow strict, intolerant… And this makes a miserable job far worse.”
