[center][h3]The “Cleanup” Crew[/h3][/center]

A flustered Keylock took off his spectacles and began rubbing them in a bid to stall for time, his near-blind eyes looking at the blurry outline of the dwarf (which now, to him, rather resembled a lumpy boulder) and betraying a hint at the incredulous attitude that came about when anybody questioned one going about party business. Fortunately, a smooth talker was on hand to defuse the confrontation.

Steelwin, a gentlemanly lad raised as the third son in an old-money aristocratic family back in the Kingdom, had made of himself a fairly successful paralegal. In time he expected to move up a few notches in the Red Cap Party’s bureaucratic totem pole, so to speak, especially with his uncle Delfus there to oil the gears. But for now, his youth and inexperience had held him from attaining any senior position. He was left to do the [i]dirty[/i] work, like oversee expeditions out in the savage mountains and negotiate impromptu right-of-passage agreements with the local barbarians...

“Ho there, and good morning,” he called out to the guard as he walked a little ways up the path so as to be able to maintain a conversation without the barbarian being made to shout through his beard. “Be at ease, my good fellow, for we come not as intruders but as friends. You see, I have yet to make the acquaintance of this king, but you may rest assured that the various debris and rubbish scattered across this mountaintop was our property. Not to be troublesome, our Director has generously sent us to pick through what is left. We’ll salvage what’s to salvage and dispose of the rest; you may think of us as a clean-up crew. So come along now, surely your king and kith would not object to us sorting out this here mess? I should hope that this friendly encounter doesn’t need to turn into a prolonged litigation, but if it need be, I assure you that my knowledge concerning property rights is-“

There was a faint [i]clink[/i] as Keylock started tossing the first of the red crystals into a small sack, taking care to add plenty of other stuff to pad it before he tried to cram in the rest...Upon feeling the stares of those around, he offered a sheepish grin and claimed, “Figured your talking was nice and all, Steelwin, but isn’t it about time we got back to work?”

[hider]
[b]I)Take diplomatic action[/b]

The gnomish explorers in the mountain let a paralegal do most of the talking. He tries to brush aside the dwarf guard through a strange concoction of disarming friendliness, deceptive claims of their presence being there in the capacity as a “cleanup crew”, dismissiveness, and finally an allusion to the threat of legal action should the party’s property rights be disrespected. Hopefully one of those arguments appeals to the dwarf and makes him bugger off while the gnomes run off with theirbrocket-fuel grade crystallized Kook-Aid.[/hider]