Rolled 12, 2, 9 = 23 (3d20)
>>5335312>>5335309>>5335251>>5335224>>5335220>>5335216>>5335210>>5335202>>5335182>>5335174You hiss in displeasure, drawing a wary look from your opposite number here, as if the Bugbear Boss suspects you are taking some action. He takes a step back, which you take some small measure of pleasure in. He is not SO confident, then, that he does not fear your power. A fantasy of simply setting upon him—activating the Berserker Belt and demolishing this foolish creature AND his authority over his inferior race—flashes through your mind. Perhaps you could even do it… But what then?
No, this will take a subtler touch. Luckily, you think you’ve got just the plan.
“You can have the gold, the jewels, whatever else… Not all, but much of it… But not the meat.”
The Bugbear Boss sneers a little. “What is wrong with half?”
“My people are hungry, too,” you say. “And dwarf… Dwarf is delicious. Seasoned with… With their malts, hops, their alcoholic spirits. We have been hungry ever since we left our home, came all this way DREAMING of that delicacy… I cannot deny my people this meat.”
Of course, it’s nonsense. You’ve never even gotten to taste human meat or blood—something reserved for the Serpent Priesthood, and the elites of each clan, at special ritual feasts. To supply all your race with the flesh of the intelligent mammals would be an absurdly-difficult undertaking. Acquiring them in great numbers would risk exposure. Farming a race which can scheme, make tools, use magic would be incredibly dangerous and foolish… And all of that, as an enterprise at any scale, would be a total waste of slaves and test subjects.
…But these bogbarri, the bugbears… They do not know that. You can see it in their faces, their dentition, their carriage: they are a hungry and desperate people, without stable food resources. Their ‘Boss’ all but admitted such—they prey on lone travelers and feast on them out of desperation. They are an isolated people, hunters—coins may glimmer and glitter to amuse them, but you seriously doubt they deal much in trade.
And you, you can use all that against them, with a bit of clever reverse psychology.
DC 12/14/16