Mirtul 28
Well, the adventure went off without much issue for our merry band of a half dozen kids. It ended up being a bit of an interesting experience to have more interaction with some of Pelsot’s social circles, I of course knew Felpirn and Jesler just from seeing them often enough. It was a chance to interact with them as closer to equals though, and more directly interject myself into their typical dynamic.
As much fun as we all had I’m quite sure we all ended up exhausted after today, too much running around the Docks District followed by the fighting with the trolls. Much as I did enjoy the riddle-solving section, in some ways, our success at it meant we were somewhat tired out by the time we reached the actual ‘troll’ hunt.
Props to them though, covering that many grown men in green body paint and getting that many costume props ready took some actual planning, and for the most part were of decent enough quality even if they ended up looking a bit silly in retrospect. Truly though, the thing to sell that whole experience was the illusioned ‘troll’. The surprise was a bit spoiled for me before her arrival thanks to the bugs feeling around the illusory work, but the in-person act did quite well at selling the savage monster trying to maybe capture or kill us for real.
Maybe a bit too rough though on both sides. I got a bit too mean about defeating her, almost a bit too much Skitter in the strategy of a small child. I doubt the adventurers had really put much thought into what would happen when a person was force-fed the alchemic mixture they had handed us. I pitied the actor afterwards, just from what I could sense through my bugs of how much she seemed to be miserable afterwards.
The adventure was a hit though, Pelsot came home with a giant smile plastered on his face. It was all he wanted to talk about when we came home around dinner time, though Virla had seemed a bit concerned from hearing some of the details of the actual troll hunt. Jespa hung onto his every word, and to his credit, Pelsot had done a half-decent job in his dramatic retelling.
Tulgor though surprised me a bit with his response, he initially seemed far more interested in the riddles we were given to solve. He would ask for us to recite which ones we could recall and seemed to take joy in his trying to solve them himself. He also took a bit of time to ask for some descriptors for the ‘trolls’. I think he was looking to see if he could figure out who was who, since he probably actually knew some of the guys that got hired.
I’m looking forward to going to sleep once I’m done writing this, I think I pulled a few muscles from the exertion. Even after my bath I still feel sweaty and a bit gross.
10 Kythorn
Ah, spring has finally started properly. The leaves are turning the trees green, and grass is growing in the parks and sides of the streets. No late frost killing what bugs had come out too early. That meant that today had finally been a good day to go out with the lizardfolk to collect new bugs for the workshop.
That had initially been a lot of the spiders since most other species that might have been venomous had died off. Collecting them during winter had been tempting, but would have been difficult since the sudden cold would have been poor for their long-term health.
Now though, it was a simple job of being careful ordering most of them out of the nearby buildings when people weren’t looking to be collected by Laraek and Durah in their barrels. Just this single day of collecting them would triple our current numbers, though they’d need to be fed more to get them the nutrients they’d need for what were pretty arduous amounts of harvesting.
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
It wasn’t just spiders though that we were working on, there were also a number of wintering wasp colonies I had picked up on during winter. While I’d certainly keep plenty of the nests around in the more hidden areas in the district for my safety, I also directed a number of them towards the workshop. The lizardfolk seemed to have thick enough hides that they didn’t have to worry about being stung for the most part, only their vulnerable facial parts like eyes and nose were vulnerable. That meant that given some time to build up a couple proper hives they could double as a new venom source as well as a security measure for the building.
The real gem of a find though, actually came from using my power to search the sewers. My power has proven itself to be slightly unreliable for some of the more exotic species in this world, and I can’t really determine the exact causes for it. It’s more limited in general for control and range, so maybe there’s more selective criteria for targets as well. The troll adventure reminded me of how extensive the sewer system was for the city. So after a bit of searching, I had found nearly half a dozen healthy specimens of a large species of centipede. When I say large, I don’t mean by typical centipede standards.
I’m pretty sure these things hunt cats and dogs, or probably people given the opportunity. They thankfully had scaled up the venom production to their scale, evolution hadn’t selectively removed it for simply physically overpowering prey like I knew some snakes had. That meant they had a lot of venom to harvest. Actually keeping them though would be the hard part, I wasn’t sure how many we could actually keep in the workshop, and honestly, I feel like I’d rather get stuff like spiders that can also have silk harvested along with their venom.
The five that I collected though showed quite promising results for milking, nearly a vial each. Time will tell how long it takes to replenish their venom glands, but that’s still quite the significant payoff for how much I think they need to eat.
23 Kythorn
Chief Balthsvk has sent me a third assistant that arrived today, or perhaps more accurately he sent me a student. Slaan, as he introduced himself, looks much like Laraek and Durah in miniature with swampy green scales and somewhat unique patterns of brownish-red scales. Slaan in this case seemed to have the reddish ones around his wrists, shoulders, and some around his face and neck. He was still a bit bigger than me though, much as I was growing still.
I stand at around 4 feet tall, maybe an inch or two more. Slaan though I estimate to be just shy of 5 ft. I ended up asking Laraek a bit about how the lizardfolk growth cycle worked. Apparently, they reach rough maturity at around five or six years old, though obviously there’s still a degree of mental development and teaching afterwards. Slaan was only two years old.
Two.
Still though, he was capable enough of speaking in draconic and understood at least a tiny bit of common. I ended up spending much of my allotted workshop time of the day having Laraek help translate between the two of us, since my spoken draconic was abysmal, and Slaan’s common wasn’t much better. Durah got to go stretch his legs outside collecting some of the bugs I could scavenge from the nearby area while still inside, or going out to collect food scraps to feed the bugs.
So as explained thanks to Laraek, Slaan was a bit of a weirdo in the clan’s group of youngsters. He’d had some fascination with me since I had visited the clan, or at least with my powers, as well as the various bits they would sometimes bring back from trading in the city. So he had sort of volunteered to be one of the clan members to learn to speak common and become something of a trader. I was being voluntold to help tutor him on the subject, as well as all the various bits of cultural knowledge that might be helpful. In exchange, I got a third lizard to help with the workshop, which would likely be useful given our suddenly increased population that would need handling.
Honestly considering how he pretty much literally spent most of his life in a cave, he seems fairly smart. He at least was able to follow Laraek’s example for taking out and caring for the bugs, and didn’t do something silly like try and eat them (I’m not forgetting Durah’s attempt at a snack anytime soon). I’ll also have to actually work on teaching him though, maybe I’ll try writing a few worksheets for him to study or something.