Two Dwarfs and three Men...it seemed to the patient Elf that he was all that was missing from the group now - at least to become the beginning of one of those awful human jokes he had been forced to hear often enough in his extensive lifetime!

[i]"So. Treasure hunting, huh?"

"Well, looks like we've plenty enough of muscle. But where's the brains of this operation?"[/i]

True, where was their benefactor? Each of them [b]had[/b] been hired, he assumed, to undertake the same task as the others, yet thus far there was no sign of their mysterious employer or even the reason they were gathered about in the first place.

[i]"I'm the oldest here I reckon. I outsmarted Forest Grobi, Wutelgi Waywatchers, the ratmen, and Beastmen in their own game of deviousness. Unless anyone here wants otherwise, I think I'll be the leader. Any objections?" 

"Aye, gold-lust was my biggest interest."

"But seeing the world is a wonder is it not? I thought that this was the best way to do it, since I would also be getting paid for it. I can eat all the foreign foods and delicacies, I can play chess with rich gits all over, puff the finest pipes, so on and so forth." 

"My name's Brokk. Brokk Ghammarad, Ranger of Everpeak-Zhufbar-Karak Izor. Who're you all?"[/i]

Trust a stunted member of the Dwarfen race to embolden and embellish every tale he could think of or recollect, although he had to admit that this particular Dwarf had a style about him, one that well leant itself to the sing-song dialect and the whiff of pipe smoke drifting up and out of the hole before him; as well as that, only a Ranger would have the wits to suggest that he had outsmarted an Asrai Waywatcher! No doubt this 'Brokk' had seen much of the world, but that was one claim that Listec would not be under keen to challenge.

[i]"Yes, seigneur, you are correct in that assumption, at least as far my involvement in this enterprise goes. You'll find as time goes on that money in a vault somewhere and a warm place to sleep tend to be more appealing than what a cold night in some strange place has to offer."

"Greetings, Master Brokk. I'm Jehan le Cordelier, formerly of Bretonnia."[/i]

Ah, now here was a fine example of a Man; wishing for only some coin, a warm fire and a roof over their head, it was no surprise that Mankind was so limited...or that Bretonnia, the so-called chivalrous kingdom of knighthood and plenty, was in actuality a backward region of inbred peasantry and arrogant fobs. This Jehan le Cordelier though, there was a certain note in the gruff speech that seemed to hint at a bitterness barely concealed, perhaps not [i]entirely[/i] full of arrogant beaus then?

Thus it seemed as good a time as any to 'throw oneself to the Chracian lions', a time to get in among his would-be companions (although equals, that was a different matter) and test their racial sensibilities if nothing else.

With poise, grace and finesse that would have made a feline green with envy, he squeezed through the hole in the roof – not exactly a hard task, the hole was nearly the size of two men laying side by side – and dropped to the floor of the room just behind where Baltazar had decided to seat himself. There was no [i]thud[/i], no indication that he had even landed at all, save for a slight rustling of robe and a clink of metal scale on scale, the ground beneath the Nagarythi barely registering such a disturbance to its surface as Listec drew himself from a half-squat position and up to his full and considerable height.

Half-concealed in shadow for a moment, the room not exactly lit in any sort of way save by the glare of the twin moons, the Elf took a step forward and to the side of the follower of Ranald. Barely a gesture, hardly perceptible to the human eye, and he had taken one of the other seats on that side of the table. One-by-one he glanced from within the eye-slits of his helmet, black eyes unreadable and the bottom half of his face covered by a section of his blue cloak, nothing but cold calm radiating from his seemingly relaxed but thoroughly alert posture.

“I believe,” he spoke in perfectly accented Reikspiel, “that I am the oldest here, if we are speaking in terms of Human years,” his head inclined to the side by a fraction of a millimetre as he looked to Brokk, “but if the Ranger wishes to lead us...then so be it.”

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