'I read your map well enough.' the behir insisted.

With the abandoned and ruined farmstead around them, it would be easy to find a plank or board Tseran could sketch a simple map on that the behirs could carry as they travelled.

 "Excellent. Then one to a similar scale, but resilient enough to survive being carried between teeth or in claws." Tseran answers, looking up and over at the damaged structure before rising and brushing himself off, then moving in search of some suitable material - eventually settling on the planed-down surface of a table made from a single cross-section of a tree. He brushes it off and produces some of his tools before settling back down and beginning to use the knife with which he shapes ivory to etch the surface to take ink while noting "You may wish to settle down to digest your meal. I hope you have no objections to our party doing likewise?"

'No.' said the male behir through a mouthful of meat.

The behirs had already turned back to their meal, messily tearing apart and devouring the slain livestock they found. After finishing off their cow, bones and all, they found a fat sheep. They each took a leg and suspended it between them, as if about to play a grisly game of tug of war. But then sparks crackled in their jaws and smoke rose from the sheep as the wool burned and the flesh charred, thanks to the powerful current running between them. When it seemed done, they stopped and ate it together, but it was clear the male was leaving the choicest cuts to the female and her unlaid eggs.

'D'you wanf shome?' asked the female, dripping gore.

'Ah, you are too kind, thank you, but you and your young will need it more than us.' Maelarra declined politely, looking paler than ever. She'd always been willing to try anything once, and with unflappable dignity and grace, but seeing the livestock dismembered so messily had quite put her off thoughts of food. While behirs could swallow beasts whole, they unfortunately chose not on this occasion, perhaps so they could divide up the meat.

'May I ask, why was food so scarce in the mountains?'

'Orcsh.'

'But surely orcs are no trouble to such great creatures as yourselves?'

'Lotsh of orcsh.'
This message was last edited by the GM at 01:57, Mon 15 July 2019.

Slove just adds.
Now killing orcs.  That something I could sign up to any day.
We all have our weakness.

Orks. Aerin nodded in understanding. If they were so numerous and so bold to venture near Calaunt, then they were either very desperate or had been united by a strong leader. It wasn't the first time and it wouldn't be the last.

Turning to the behir's once again the Rashemi asked "So, if there are so many orcs, have you noticed where they gather? The place where they bring up their young?" she asked, it seemed that the scions' disappearance actually was caused by orcs, and if they were still alive, they'd be held captive at the main camp.

Angel beamed at her success and nearly preened herself at the male's compliment.



"That can be easily remedied," she replied to the wizard and then transformed into a regal-looking lizard-woman. "Ssssseee, I'm even game for sssssome roleplay; jusssst the way you like it." She teased, her words accented by saurian sibilant hisses as she ran her hands over her own sunlight-glinting scales.



"I'd be delighted," Angel-lizard replied, moving toward the female... and thankfully turning her attention away from tormenting Tseran

[Private to GM: I'm pausing here to allow you a chance to have the behirs react to Angel's transformation and roleplay the female giving Angel a piece of electric-roasted mutton.]

 "Thank you, but I had breakfast this morning... Your offer is most gracious however." Tseran answers with impeccably fastidious manners, only to be jolted out of his work - in which he's using a fine, shaped chisel to carve out exquisite little curves of the surface of the sanded-off table surface so that he can apply ink to them for a more resilient surface - by Angel's shapeshifting, which earns her a painfully dry "An improvement, if only because you now seem appropriately venomous." before he returns to his work, rapidly submerging himself in duplicating useful details from the smaller map to the larger.

Aerin didn't comment on Angel's antics, merely suppressed a chuckle. This was a special one, she thought to herself. For the time being she left Tseran to complete the map, while she scanned the horizon for any incoming threats.

'No, not a dra—!' Maelarra began, as loudly as she dared, as Angel completed her transformation, but by then it was already too late to stop her. She certainly didn't dare to complete the word "dragon" in front of two behirs.

The male was about to give Aerin an answer when the female happened to swing her head Angel's way to offer a hunk of half-burnt mutton on the bone. Then the male looked her way too. Then they looked from Angel to Aerin for comparisons. 'You are dragonspawn!' the female hissed, both rearing up with lightning crackling in their jaws.

ooc: Who are they looking at, Angel or Aerin?

OOC: One each. :)

Aerin rolled her eyes at the behir's minds catching up so slowly. "No." she said with resolve. "She's a shapeshifter playing around. - I'm the only dragonkin, but I assure you I'm just as much human as I'm dragon." the Rashemi pointed out, hoping to draw the behirs' attention away from Angel, "Perhaps you can explain what's your issue with dragons?" the warrior-witch demanded to know, her arms defiantly resting on her hips.

"Whoa!" Angel exclaimed, holding her hands out in front of her in a beseeching, stopping gesture, even as she changed form again into the red-haired she-elf of her normal form. In the light of the behirs' reaction, all joking and playfulness had left the mischievous female and now she was all serious. "I'm an elf! Just an elf!"

Seems Tseran and the others had finally found the key to countering Angel's teasing torment -- all one had to do was genuinely threaten her life.

'You're trying to trick us!' accused the female, who'd been suspicious and not wholly intimidated at the start, and remembered it in full now, with an added sense of betrayal. 'You send us into a dragon's trap!' Sparks fell from her jaws like froth.

The male raised a warding paw to his mate, not holding her back but indicating to wait, and answered Aerin 'Humans hunt us to say they have slain a dragon. Dragons hunt us and say we are competition. We say "count the legs" but they never do. So we will never go into a dragon's land, nor let one into ours if we can help it.' He regarded Angel with a scrutinising cat-like eye. 'Prove it. Prove you are not a dragon-spawn.'

Behind them, Maelarra put her face in her palm. 'Oh, goddess.'


OOC: Diplomacy check, please. Or Bluff or something else that improves attitudes.

Prove it?! Angel thought. How the Nine Hells am I supposed to do that?! But the she-elf's mind was quick though and after only a few heartbeats she suddenly hit on an idea that might cast enough doubt on her being a dragon that it might seem like proof.

"Here! Look!" She exclaimed, quickly pulling out coins that were hidden on her person. "See!" she added, meeting that behirs' gaze as she hurriedly dropped them to the ground in front of herself. "All I have!" She continued, dropping the last coin on a pitifully small pile of maybe a dozen silvers, half-dozen gold and a platinum piece or two. "And it's all yours. Now if I was really a dragon don't you think my hoard would be much bigger? And what self-respecting dragon would willingly part with a single gold piece?"   

[Private to GM: 22:25, Today: Secret Roll: Angel rolled 28 using 1d20+11. Bluff check.]

 "If we were intent on provoking a fight, I assure you that I would not be sat within biting distance and patiently carving you a map... I would, by contrast be hiding behind a boulder, preferably one on a different mountain." Tseran states without looking up, displaying all the diplomatic savvy of a dwarf with a headache while still continuing to work on his map, seemingly without concern that he's going to be involved if a battle develops...

 ...although the truth is simply that he's of the opinion that he'll likely be eaten before he can cover five yards of ground anyway so panicking and flailing will just provoke worse trouble.

Aerin was not at all skilled at diplomacy, however, she was skilled at combat. Moving slowly into position to breathe fire at both behirs, she hoped the situation would not become hostile...

Initially concerned that the alleged not-a-dragon was just showing off her hoard, the two behirs watched and counted carefully as Angel laid out the coins. They looked between her and the coins, then at each other. 'Dragons never give away money.' 'And they usually have more than this.'

With a few more moments' thought, they accepted Angel's proof, and her gift. 'Very well. We accept you are not a dragon.' the female decided, and clawed the coins toward herself, regardless of what she might do with them.

'Do not surprise my mate like that! Not in her condition!'

'What do you mean "my condition"?' she demanded of him.

'...Hangry.'

 "My understanding of these matters dictates that you should now apologise. It does not matter that you have no idea what you have done to require doing so, females rarely have reasons for such things that males are able to comprehend." Tseran advises as he starts to delicately set up inks that he can use to stain lives into the wooden map... Having, it must be said learned about women the hard way (from books), something which no doubt explains a great deal.
This message was last edited by the player at 02:33, Fri 26 July 2019.

Slove sat down and watched.
He was trying to put everything that just happened into his long memory.
He was sure this was a tail he could sell to some bard in some town in the future for nice price.  He was sure this could be major part of bard epic tail.

He was laughing to himself but nobody could see or here.
He did not want add to confusion the behirs kept having over what was happening.

The male behir chewed on this concept, or maybe just a bit of meat stuck in his mouth, then bowed his head to the female. 'I am sorry, for something.' His mate snorted with a puff of warm, ozone-scented air.

Maelarra stood behind Tseran to check his progress, and to say softly 'Can you possibly make this go any faster? I'd like to be back on the road and away before we must intervene in a domestic dispute.'

Angel released a breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding when the behirs concluded that her "proof" was sufficient to judge her "not-a-dragon". Taking the opportunity afforded by Tseran's dry comment and the behirs' further social interaction among themselves, the she-elf gratefully slipped into the background...

 "I could simply scrawl some crude diagram and be done with it... Or I could do my best to ensure that this couple have the best possible chance to find a safe place to hatch their clutch in good health while avoiding any conflict with local villages." Tseran states, starting to add stain to the etches in the wood, marking out the rivers in blue and known areas of forest in green, using red for villages and towns and black for the roads that link them, raising his voice to cast it to the group as a whole "On which topic, does anyone know anything of the local area that might not be common knowledge to the rest of us? Rumours of beasts or bandits, druid groves..?"

'Ah, there are sometimes bandits along the Cross Road, here, though they shall not bother behirs. For one, they have little to steal.' Maelarra warned, speaking up for the behir's benefit and distracting them from their own dramas and those of dragons. She indicated the next road south of Blaern's Trail. 'Regardless, crossing the road will be the hard part. I suggest you do it at night. There are caves and hollows around here you may shelter in, but stay far from the farming settlements here...' With her help, Tseran was able to add a few more landmarks and warnings.

'Now, the forest may, and I mean it might possibly, be home to druids, fey, or other woodland folk. It's a second-growth forest, cultivated by druids to undo orcish devastation in times past. Be honest about your intentions and promise to protect the woods, and I don't think you shall have much trouble. Even the Malarites in this land are moderates and they will respect behirs' right to hunt.' she said optimistically.

'Hmm. We will remember this and be careful. Thank you.' the behir said solemnly.

 Working with the Behir to make sure that they understand the map as he's transcribed it, Tseran adds a thin layer of surface varnish over the pigment and then puts his equipment away, returning the various tools more usually intended to fashion exquisitely complicated moving parts and coloured plates to their pouches and pockets then rolling them all back up and putting them away before standing and noting "There. Give the varnish a few hours to dry and it should be waterproof.", after which he glances back at the Behir couple and smiles before dipping his head, "It has been a pleasure to meet you both and again, my best wishes for your clutch."