>>5600524>>5600555>>5600567>>5600690You shake off the nagging feeling that you ought to get an update on events in Bloodrise. You left the Bastard, the Thief, and The Pit-Guard there to marshall your kobold forces. Your North-Merchant and South-Merchant are attending to the economy. Your dwarven apprentice, Karz Throat-singer, is there to maintain order among your Duergar soldiery and induct the dwarven slaves into your new order. Aided by Wevenore Drow and by the strong and stealthy bugbears mercenaries, they are more than a match for any dwarven strikeforce. These investigators will never survive t report.
Everything will be fine.
Irinnile certainly had no interest in the matter, simply scowling grimly and nodding in what almost seems parody of the self-serious Green Knight.
“Yes, well, we will have to look into that later,” the False Knight says. “This takes priority, since we’re already here and all. I’ll… Talk to you about this other matter later.”
The dwarf watches the two of your strangely as you turn and leave, hurrying on to find Prince Rufos. You can feel his eyes on you until you are within the palace proper…
And by the Dark Gods Below and Beyond, it IS a PROPER palace! Only the mausoleum of the Red Dragon King comes close to matching the majesty, the expanse... But this is no dead and buried place, but a living one. Hewn from local stone, it has been augmented with imports from the world over—decorated with marble and ivory, hung with tapestries to raise the envious ire of the Drow aesthete-prince Minothel. There is an austerity to the limited colour-palette (white, accented with gold and silver, with flourishes of soft colour here and there), but this only serve to the grandest artworks and monuments, which seem to soak up all the colour and vibrancy and to be come hyper-real, framed and embellished by this great museum to Kings of Men, and to Gods of Light. The effigies of idealized humanoids wearing divine regalia, smashing demons and dragons or presenting boons of plenty, are numerous, standing taller even than the knights—a reminder of the ‘divine right’ of the line of Paladin Kings. It fills you with as much wonder as it does rage. The bustle of servants and courtiers is nigh-constant, so you control yourself.
“Fancy,” Irinnile agrees, misunderstanding your silent stares of loathing and longing.
The pair of you seek out a scribe who, by dress and demeanour, must hold some degree of sway here. Hopping from one such individual to the next, you ask after Prince Rufos, telling the same tale which you spun for the earlier paladin and for the dwarf. You are directed this way and that, none of these lesser officiants seeming to be exactly sure where the prince IS so much as where he HAS been, until…
“You’re looking for my brother?”
