>>5566744You, Roth, and Olu gather your supplies in the morning to do so. The old Dragonblood guides the two of you back to the main trade road, and from there it is a straight shot. The closer you get, the more traffic you see, coming and going.
“Nothing like the old days, though,” Roth notes, a little smugly. “We put the fear of the outside into these people, so that their trade became a trickle, compared to the bustle of their glory-days. Even as they learned the wisdom of purity, it was too late—they had become too bloated with populace to sustain themselves, too reliant on the outside. More friction. More cracks.”
Indeed, you notice many patrols of guards traveling up and down the road, on horseback or in horsedrawn carts. All are armed and armoured, stern. The travelers are all tense. Most are pink-skinned, round-eared, and human height, though you see some yellowish or brownish humans, some with the pointed ears of an elf or the stature which beliefs a dwarf. You see scant sign of any other, more exotic ‘demihuman’ race.
“Goblins, half-orcs, lycanthropes, demonists, and of course the Southmen served as perfect scapegoats for our activity,” Roth boasts.
You have to imagine your own burgeoning efforts at engineering conflict between North and South have only exacerbated this. It will only make it harder to gain access to a princess of this ‘shining city on the hill’, tarnished in trust and guarded against the foreigner.
Your thoughts are interrupted by a shriek—a terrible sound, high and quaking, felt in your bones. Your companion both go grey at the noise, freezing in place and buckling at the knees as if to fall to the ground and crawl away. You aren’t QUITE so stunned, but your hand does find your blade, and you follow their gaze to…
“A gryphon,” you acknowledge.
You catch your first sight of a Paladin of the order which is your antithesis. Clad in silvery armour, you spy a servant of the God of Light Moroth, called Swordgod and Oathkeeper, Father of Good, and a bunch of other silly and pompous titles he doesn’t deserve. This human is broadly-built and strong, with an impressive-looking sword held in outstretched hand. The beast he rides is even more imposing: nearly double the weight of one of your pet fire-lizards back home, walking on powerfully-build legs somewhere between those of a cat and a bird, with wicked talons; its face, screaming in predatory rage, is that of a great eagle.
The paladin and his gryphon are presently menacing a merchant, who can only stand by and shout in protest as two guards in simpler attire ransack his cart at the Paladin’s command. The merchant is coloured and countenanced similarly to you, albeit much smaller and a little paler—an Easterling, as they are sometimes called.
