>>5426561You spend the rest of the day with Jazkarmel’s assigned guards, Sengar and Jhamrius, and some of the other members of her scouting party who you had previously converted. Jazkarmel sadly cannot accompany your herself, busy as she has now become ingratiating herself to her household’s dominant female, and reporting in greater detail upon the many happenings towards and above the Bloodrise-adjacent underdark. Her elf-men lack the Princess’ effortless charm, and despite your best efforts and previous successes, you feel your own stirring rhetoric is not translating as well as you’d hoped.
>16Still, your mission is a noble one, and has a certain appeal to the elven natives. Destroying such an abhorrent threat to their traditional lifeways and funerary rites—a threat, one might say, to their very SOULS—is a worthy task for brave young elven warriors on the face of it. Elf-males, elf-females, and elf-androgenes join you from among the lower rank-and-file of the warrior-class. They are strapped with leathers, with stoen blades; they are accompanied by beetles and spiders of unusual size; a few even bristle with an aura which speaks to limited spellcraft.
A messenger from Lahlabar, however, ‘regrets to inform you’ that the Prince-Ascending is too busy with preparations for the changing of seasons and potential kingship to attend to such a quest at this time… Nor, to you consternation, does he even offer a token of support. Jazkarmel and her men had all seemed fairly certain that he would at least bestow a fine steel weapon or offer a warrior of his house’s retinue in his stead, as a show of mutual aid… But he does not.
Perhaps it has to do with the many squinting-eyed, glowering elves, in their white noble-robes, who you see on the outskirts of your small rallies, watching you with wariness and irritation. You are, by now, widely known to be here on invitation of the outgoing Queen. Perhaps Lahlabar’s candidate for kingship is reticent to hitch his fortunes to a foreigner, a non-elven monster… Or two a queen with so many enemies?
You must make do with those you have attracted thus far, you suppose: a dozen-and-a-half elven warriors, small and lithe and deadly, and their menageries of chitin-clad little war-beasts. It is still a reasonably-impressive force, to one who knows the ferocity and tenacity of Drow soldiery!
And besides… You have one more trick in your arsenal: a <DIVINE FAVOUR>.
