>>5459260Your strategy for the common-folk is simple: you brandish your shoggoth-sword, lift high the head of the ghoul supreme, and recount again and again—with Karz’s musical accompaniment and Olu’s infiltration-born knack for mammalian manipulation. You mime the battles, recite the stories like psalms, and leave every crowd of hollow, dark elven faced filled with hope and joy as you promise that such strength and glory awaits any who will follow the Dark Gods… And, of course, stand with House Yvonlace and their preferred candidate, Prince Solinsyr of Lahlabar.
>17You end every such theatrical presentation with a group prayer. Increasingly, the elves bow their heads and join you in thanking the Mother of Dragons from protecting their children, and to the Serpent Ascendant for offering them a path to redemption through personal aspiration. You end the tour flocked by supplicants, who bring what pitiful alms their poor households can spare to leave before the resanctified funerary caves of their ancestors… And to offer their gratitude to the Gods of Death for safeguarding their souls.
This society may be far from a democracy, but the elite would have to be fools to ignore the rising tide of support for you, and thus for Solinsyr’s kingship.
Alas, it doesn’t seem that the Prince-Ascendant and his Yvonlace ‘fiancé’ have had the same fortunes. Over the next week, you met with them several times, and correspond regularly through their servants, and the reports are always the same: unfruitful. Your strategy was a good one, you thought, and you still believe it to be so: you three conspired to distribute the spoils of the ghoulish horde to the minor noble-houses. These would be treated as gifts from House Lahlabar, that they might recommit them to the funeral caves for the social clout or horde them as they like… But always know their providence.
>1Instead, they are flatly rejected, time and time again—turned away, occasionally with sharp accusations of betraying their race and culture to ‘evil gods’ and ‘monsters’.
“it’s Minothel, from Tlintear,” Solinsyr snarls one day, uncharacteristically furious. “I smell his stench.”
“More of a fragrant perfume, really,” Jazkarmel jokes, provoking a snort from Olu across the table.
“A sweet and sickly scent,” Solinsyr agrees, “like putrefaction. Like poisoned wine. He’s heard you’re backing me, and shoring up his base of support.”
It makes sense. You see few representatives of Tlinetar in the slums, but Sambrans—black or white-clad, solemn-faced, purposeful in movement—routinely watch from a distance as you pick off Corandiirn of Sambar’s own supporters. You wonder when or if THAT house will make its move…
>15…But you do not wonder for long.
