>>5286324When your belly is truly full, you signal for the Bastard and Paeris to join you, apart from the others.
You see a few others’ eyes follow them—especially the Bastard—with a certain amount of curiosity, envy, or resentment. After all, this dinner of dried and cured meats and water is the first moment of camaraderie that you have taken with any of your other allies, save the females. Meanwhile, the Bastard has been your companion in private meditation. Reptilians have no qualms with favouritism, but your people would always prefer it be bestowed upon THEM than another, and to see it instead bestowed on a clanless Mixed One is inherently insulting to those of a certain breeding and status.
“You called, Superior One?” the Bastard asks, himself eyeing Paeris’ accompaniment with a certain amount of suspicion and confusion.
“How may we serve, Dragonborn?” Paeris asks, no less confused.
The elven Degenerate is thin, angular, with a smoothness of skin and pointedness of ear, and an almost-uncanny symmetry of features and grace of movement, all said to be characteristic to his mammalian parent race.
You address Paeris first: “You seem like one with a story to tell—the elf-blood, the music-magic you spoke of. We will be encountering elves soon. I would hear this story.”
Paeris’ eyes flit up to meet yours for a moment in surprise at your interest, before he again casts them properly down.
“I was a Reptilian Infiltrator,” he says. “I infiltrated Iternagreyn, the mystical and government capitol of an elven magocracy. To this end, I cultivated the false identity of a traveling ‘forest elf’, a trader and entertainer. It allowed me to explain a certain degree of foreignness, and unfamiliarity with their customs, as well as excused unexplained absences. However, traveling elves of this sort are known to be bards—players-of-instruments, singers-of-songs. Thus I, too, learned this art.”
“And the magic?” you press. “I recall… During the battle, though I could not always hear it over the sounds of combat, your song carried a certain… Sensation.”
“’Bardic inspiration’, it is called, “ he explains. “The elves of the surface weave their magic and music together, in fact seem to imbue their every mundane action or expression with SOME small amount of magic. It is intrinsic to them. I… Suppose I inherited this ability, from my inferior breeding. This latent ability awoke when I took up the harp.”
“Interesting,” you murmur. “Play for us, Degenerate, while we meditate.”
Paeris is taken aback, but agrees quickly and without question. He quietly strums his harp and hums rhythmically as you and the Bastard settle in for your usual meditation.
