>>5329866Lastly, you visit with the Elf-Specialist, who seems almost despondent in his lethargy. He is utterly removed from the festivities, such as they are… But then, such activities are beneath a Serpent Priest like him, even WITHOUT the involvement of mammals.
“You know,” he begins as you approach, not waiting for you to speak first, “I admire elves, after a fashion. I know they are an inferior clade of creature, a lesser race, but of all the mammalian scum, they have the most majesty. Culture, legacy, long lives with which to refine these arts, magical ability…”
He sighs, and looks up at you briefly.
“These dark ones are all wrong,” he laments. “They have been separated so long, turned into shades of their former selves by isolation, degraded by circumstance… Their tongue does not flow like proper Elvish. Their beliefs are alien, even to me—and crude! They are obsessed with gender-concepts beyond rational, biological comprehension… With seasons utterly REMOVED from the surface-season they originally alluded to. And their CUISINE!”
He hisses lowly, tail flitting, head bowed and shoulders slumped.
“I hate it here,” he admits. “I wish to leave.”
How do you reply?
>Encourage him to make them BETTER< more like the elves he knows… Through the lens of the Dark Gods and Reptilian culture, of course>Point out the virtues of their culture—pragmatism, warfare, utilitarian ideals, adaptability—and encourage him to emphasize these in his teachings >Agree to bring him with you on your expedition to recruit the spiky-men, and thereafter to send him home—he is no longer needed here[Cont., sort of]
