When the emperor finished his greetings and asked if there were any questions Keenan subtly turned his attention to the rest of the adventurers. He already knew everything he needed to about their mission and instead wanted to gauge the caliber of his soon-to-be companions and, eventually, adversaries. 

He little scrutiny to those that were already there, staring would hardy give him much, and looked to some of the latecomers first since their introductions could still be heard...for one of them at least, the page seemed to have gotten lazy in the past few minutes, but the one he did hear had amused him. The mixup between Lord Garthan and this Adra brought a slight smirk to his face, he silently wondered whether it was the emperor himself that had sent the letter to a dead orc or if that task had been delegated to scribes. 

Keenan was brought back as a few of the assembled party actually responded to the emperor. The disciple had requested an artifact, serenity, for his church and the Fae asking for something that was perhaps greater: the outlawing of slavery within the empire. They would both likely get a promise of fulfillment, or at least not an outright denial, no matter how hollow the promise was. Serenity especially seemed like it would cause trouble in the aftermath, if they made it that far, as the throne was unlikely to give up any of the artifacts of it's power. But of course they needed people now, failure meant the end of the known world as far as most were concerned.

Not that Keenan had much care for what the answers would be. He just scoffed and turned toward the emperor, acting like he was waiting for his response in order to hide the contempt in his eyes. [i]These[/i] were the kind of people that killed his sister.

[hr]

Lothian, for his part, remained largely quiet after his own introduction, uncomfortable in this setting as he was. He merely glanced at the others, looking over the motley crew. It was a varied enough set of skills between them to give the Elvkiin some confidence that they might have a chance of actually pulling this off, the feeling brought a small smile to his lips.

Though he had not received a letter, as almost no one among the empire had even know he existed, most of the details of this mission had been explained to him by Keenan on the ride here. This left him with only one question left [color=82ca9d]"your majesty, forgive me, but just what are these artifacts?"[/color]