12 Chirreb 4385: (5 Chirreb) MORE QUESTIONS

[delight-in.livejournal.com]

The bandits kept all their best loot in the stronghold but we found some minor personal enchantments and even some lozens in scouring the place. Stuff for everyday uses that you wouldn't keep locked up. And set off some traps that we could set off without much inconvenience to ourselves. We also tripped some alarms because it's not like they didn't know we were here already. So far all our intelligence had been accurate which was also a very good sign. Mirhandrax fretted that we were getting overconfident.

"Hey if anyone's gotten cocky it's you," I told him.

"Ha ha ha," the Gormoror-turned-pocker replied. Purrzhon snickered.

We didn't find most of Purrzhon's stuff which made him tail-lashy. But when we found a scawn hiding in one of the closets, Purrzhon jumped between us and it. "Let it be," he growled as Nightbloom lifted her spear, and she lowered it. "What are you doing here?" Purrzhon demanded of it. "Are there any more of your kind here?"

"O great Sleeth!" The scawn threw itself at Purrzhon's paws. "Slay me now, great Sleeth! Give me relief from this weak worthless body!" Scawn are little stupid rat-people. Some of them think that if a Sleeth kills them then they'll come back as a Sleeth.

Purrzhon growled. "Answer my questions! Maybe if you are lucky I kill you afterwards."

I kinda thought that we'd asked enough questions by then of enough different people but NO. MORE QUESTIONING!

The scawn babbled obsequiously about being there to serve the mewellicaps and Cani by carrying messages and cleaning and stuff. There were three other scawn servants too.

"Any with tentacles?" Purrzhon asked. Scawn can change their bodies sometimes, adding wings and horns and stuff. I'd never heard of one adding tentacles before.

"No -- yes, there is one." The scawn offered Purrzhon its throat as the Sleeth loomed over it. "She came recently. Was always in Captain Sharone's chamber."

"Where is she now?"

"In the strongroom!"

"Not Sharone!" Purrzhon growled and cuffed the scawn. "The scawn with the tentacles."

"She also is in the strongroom! The greater monsters and Primes, they left all the rest of us scawn out here with you, but the captain took hers with her."

Purrzhon clawed a deep splintery furrow in the ordinary wooden floor.

The scawn said, "Do not waste your wrath on wood, o great Sleeth! Kill me!"

But Purrzhon just turned away, even more tail-lashy than before.

"Don't leave me here! I can't stand this any more!" the scawn wailed.As Purrzhon stalked off, the scawn shouted, "Then I'll make you kill me!" It pounced after Purrzhon with all its claws and teeth and. Nightbloom intercepted it and we wrestled it back into the closet.

I'm not sure if that was a kindness or a cruelty.

Comments

[zeeth_kyrah]

I guess the one thing scawn want more than anything else is to be Prime and not have to die forever or be sick on a whim.

Worse, I like scawn.

[delight-in.livejournal.com]

Whyyyyyyyy would you like scawn they're dirty and stupid and reckless and cringey and annoying?

[zeeth_kyrah]

So bathe 'em and teach 'em and lead 'em well! Bwahar!

Eh, it's a personal preference. At least they're cuter than mewellicaps.

[delight-in.livejournal.com]

I guessssss. I usually like mewellicaps better because they're not so stupid but the scawn here weren't extorting thieves like the mewellicaps so it varies some of course.

[terrycloth.livejournal.com]

I think you can cure the cringey and dirty but the stupid and reckless and annoying is built in.

[zeeth_kyrah]

Oh, I'm sure they're not entirely stupid, though perhaps not nearly approaching great genius. The problem is, when your life is based on wanting Better Things to kill you (unless you manage to overwhelm them or something), there's not much point to developing your literary forms or even your combat tactics overmuch. So a smart scawn just finds a better, faster way to get killed by their desired means, and probably doesn't have many (or any) children. That kind of selects against smarts.

[delight-in.livejournal.com]

Uh huh if I'd been born a scawn I'd want to die too uuuuggggghhhh!

[terrycloth.livejournal.com]

Most of them never see a sleeth, and their life is based on stealing and scavenging. The sleeth thing is just a common religion some of them have; there's another one that says they have to *kill* a sleeth.

[delight-in.livejournal.com]

I bet it's even harder for them to kill a Sleeth than to get a Sleeth to kill them!

[delight-in.livejournal.com]

Ummmmm yeah that sounds about right!

[terrycloth.livejournal.com]

If a sleeth kills a scawn, they don't come back as a sleeth. They come back as a nendrai!

...okay, maybe I made that up.

So the tentacled scawn is one of Purrzhon's missing possessions?

[delight-in.livejournal.com]

Uh huh how'd you know he wouldn't tell *us* because he's a Sleeth so annoying.

I guess scawn and Sleeth do have that in common.

[terrycloth.livejournal.com]

Well... why else would he be so interested? But I'm cheating, I heard part of this story before. Not the part with you but the part with a sleeth named Purrzhon and a scawn with tentacles.

[delight-in.livejournal.com]

Ohhhhh I didn't know you knew Purrzhon maybe I should've asked you about him where did you hear his story?


I hope it wasn't from Kijji! D:

[terrycloth.livejournal.com]

Well, I don't want to say too much because I don't know if the stories I heard are true. Maybe when I hear the rest of your story I'll know if it's really the same Purrzhon and if the things I heard about him doing are things he really did?

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

Scawn are rather crazy. Even by monster standards.

Still --- I would not tease someone who has been turned into a pocker. It seems unpleasant. And that is from my point of view as someone who is far more pocker-like than nearly any other prime.

[delight-in.livejournal.com]

He was taking it pretty well actually and it's not my fault he got himself turned into a pocker he was *supposed* to resist! He had plenty of cley left he just misjudged how much he needed which is pretty funny when you consider how meticulous he is about *everything*.

[gavinfox.livejournal.com]

Hey Delight, I'd like to apologize about saying some really gross and dirty stuff in your other journal. It was really inappropriate of me. At some point, I'd like to try and learn more about your language and what concepts you do have in general and stuff that my language might not have, for 'mundane' stuff. You know, test the limits of the auto translate thing, or find if you have a specific translator entity like Sythyry seems to.

[gavinfox.livejournal.com]

For example, there was a pun in this entry -- about pockers and the term for a male chicken, which also means 'aggressive, headstrong', that I am nearly sure wouldn't be EXACTLY the same in your language. I suppose if people considered male chickens really aggressive and headstrong and self-sure, they might come up with the same sort of term, but I doubt it would be EXACTLY the same...

[delight-in.livejournal.com]

What noooo I didn't make any puns about male extradimensional animals?

[gavinfox.livejournal.com]

Did you make a pun at all? Like a pun on the word 'pocker'?

[delight-in.livejournal.com]

I made a joke about Mirhandrax having a beak?

[gavinfox.livejournal.com]

Ah! That got translated into a pun that equated a word for "aggressive" with a similar sounding word for "a pocker-like animal".

[delight-in.livejournal.com]

I forgive you! And umm all right as long as they're not more disgusting concepts that I don't even want to know if there's a word for them.