>>5384155You next attend to your high-value captives: the Delegate and the Geologists. You have been denying them food and water, save smallest morsels, for several days now. When they speak without permission, especially to complain to bargain, you have instructed the Pit-Guard’s Apprentice—the young, mighty Steeltalon who often serves as enforcer and warden—to beat them or to inflict small-but-stinging cuts along their flesh. From the way they appear upon your arrival, the Delegate and especially the Daughter have been slower to understand the way of things than the Geologist, who hardly seems to have acquired a scratch.
“I hope you are enjoying the amenitiesss?” you ask drolly.
None of them reply to your mocking ice-breaker, though the Blackmantle Delegate is swift to speak up, saying:
“Listen! I am valuable to my corporation. The President will pay for my freedom—I’m his neph-YAAAH!”
The Pit-Guard’s Apprentice interrupts him with hand smack to the face which slams him into the stone, and then hauls him up by his dark hair. His lip is bleeding, and his once-haughty features now look as if he might burst into tears—though he manages not to, and to thus maintain his feeble façade of dignity-in-captivity.
“We will forsake this place,” he promises. “It will be yours, and more—all the gold you want, or gems, or… Furs? Blankets?”
You narrow your eyes a little. As the cold has worsened outside, your cold-blooded reptilians and scantily-clad elf friends alike have begun to shake and shiver. It clearly hasn’t gone unnoticed by this perceptive plutocrat.
How do you respond to his offer?
>Demand information on the Blackmantle Corporation and their rivals, or you’ll strip his clothes and throw him into the snow to see how he fares>Very well, let’s see about this ransom… Maybe you can extract some value from his captivity, and decide whether to ACTUALLY return him later?>You can’t make contact with other dwarves without revealing your presence or drawing attention… So you won’t, and you’ll ignore him for now and move onto the other two>Ply him for personal information that the Thief can exploit to impersonate him, then make the Geologist or his Daughter kill the Delegate to earn their own mercy>Write-in 