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<span class="mu-s"><span class="mu-b">Winning Option: Bribe him with a good word to your mother.</span></span>
<span class="mu-s"><span class="mu-r">Diplomacy 18+17 = 35 vs DC 35. Success!</span></span>
The little scamp stares up at you with his bright blue eyes filled with hope that his talk of oaths and secrecy will get you to drop the matter. From the way he quivers beneath your gaze, you must cut an imposing figure as you stare down at him. The tremendous height and lean, muscled figure that your bloodline is heir to have done little to bring you suitors, but when the situation calls for looming you would not give an inch off your height for an inch on your bust. Nor would you give up even a touch of your strength to broaden your appeal as a woman.
No, in the flashy and colorful townclothes that your mother prefers you wear to simple comforts of your armorsilks, the wiry and coiled muscles born from twenty years of strength training strain against the fabric of your clothes. They do not bulge like those of a man. Even arms as thick across as yours have just the faintest hint of femininity to them. Wyfs and weirs have different shapes to their bones, and no amount of tomboyish strength and athleticism could take your womanhood away from you.
Though you doubt Lothar sees a <span class="mu-i">woman</span> looming over him in this moment.
No, he must see must see a stern and stone-faced giant staring down at him with a frozen frown and single, baleful eye as icy cold a blue as the sky before a blizzard. An eye whose twin is hidden behind a thong of gilded black leather inscribed with gardener runes that speak a blessing against the temptations of the dark. No wonder he shivers in his boots. Most his age would crack beneath the coldness in your eyes like a dam without maintenance in winter, letting a river of secrets spill forth from their mouth.
To his credit, Lothar has not started babbling about whatever Damien and the Earl of Lavendel had him purchase on their behalf. Yes, both of them were involved, he let that much slip - <span class="mu-i">clients</span> have him sworn to silence, not a single client. Something bubbles up behind your right eye, restrained by the curse-suppressing relic wrapped about it. A terrible and burning pressure that yearns to be released. <span class="mu-s"><span class="mu-g">You'd have your answers quicker if you just let it out and crushed his resistance beneath the weight of your will</span></span>.
If you suspected espionage and treason, you might have done what that little voice in the back of your mind wanted. Chicanery and annoying games of politics, however, are not worth burning your relationship with the boy you suspect will one day be your brother-in-law.
So you chastise the voice for being hasty and say, "Keeping your oaths is commendable Lothar, so I won't ask about whatever it is that Damien asked you to do."
