>>5689458“The Bogbarri shall have their keep,” you say. “You have earned it.”
The Bugbear Boss grins his snaggle-toothed smile, and you reflect on just why humanoids must find your own attempt at such unnerving with renewed understanding.
“You’re alright, Theral,” he says. “Is good to be working with such generous lizard!”
Not ‘Dragon King’ or even ‘King Theral’, you note. Just ‘Theral’—or, rather, ‘Copper’, the nickname which he gave you and you adopted, without any significance to this brute besides a crude descriptor of your lustrous colouration.
Of everyone here—even the Duelist, even the Translator even your wives—you think this spiky, shaggy monster of a male probably regards you with the LEAST reverence. Such might even be BEYOND the leader of the cobbled-together assassin-clan, you consider: his race is too simple, too savage, and his own self-concept bundled up in his title of ‘Boss’—in dominance-displays and martials wager. The road to sophistication and civilization starts here, though. You gift him the most ruined of the keeps—more than his little band needs, but with room to grow, and a NEED to build if it is to become something worth owning. You make a note to organize teaching in architecture, engineering, literacy… And basic hygiene, while they’re at it.
After all, we all have to start somewhere.
In the here and now, though, you have other balancing acts to maintain… Like the Drow of Wevenore.
