<strong>Ellen</strong><br/><br/>"How boring." Ermon said as he peered through a spyglass at the landscape beyond. For once, he and Rath were in agreement. The half-celestial was holding his arms as he shivered, "How high up are we? I feel like I can't even breathe, and it's much too cold to fly up here."<br/><br/>"As high as we can go. Maybe two miles above sea-level." The captain replied, clad in many more layers than the poor youth could afford with his wings in the way, "We're not too far north, though... Huh."<br/><br/>"I'll be in my quarters." Rath said as he scurried away.<br/><br/>"Wish we could go further." The 'cartographer' said with a sigh, "Heard some of the old kings built entire castles and such in the mountains up here. They probably got buried in an avalanche or something."<br/><br/><strong>Ivette</strong><br/><br/>Idao shook his head, "No more of this 'monster market' stuff..." He said with determination, "It's too dangerous. And maybe no more of this 'Grand Lord' stuff once the nobles get to talking..."<br/><br/>"My lord." Came the husky voice of the captain of the guard as she strode in and knelt before him, "All the lords have been released. They are... asking questions."<br/><br/>"...Stall them. What about the ladies?" He asked, fearing the worst as he beckoned her to stand.<br/><br/>"Safe, my lord."<br/><br/>"...All of them?"<br/><br/>"Yes. Aside from those who went with Lady Ivette... Well, one group was attacked by the displacer beasts. They claimed... a man in a black cloak appeared out of nowhere and killed the monsters before any harm could come to them. Then he dissapeared."<br/><br/>The Grand Lord was obviously bewildered as she went on, "The other creatures were all dead before the ladies had any chance of running into them. Nobody was in the scying room at the time, but we think-"<br/><br/>"I understand." Idao interrupted, looking at Ivette with a smile, "I didn't know you brought backup."<br/><br/>To be fair, neither did she.<br/><br/><strong>Oona</strong><br/><br/>The lupine man choose his words very carefully, stroking his chin as he sorted them out in his head. "Weeeelll... I guess your tribe still thinks of us as bloodthirsty raiders, huh? Okay... Way back when, when we gnolls were still all over the Wild Lands,  the goblin tribes all banded together under the Empress. She was a beautiful goblin woman with a divine mandate from the Great One Himself."<br/><br/>"She formed the Theocracy... but it was more like a horde back then." He admitted, "Using the rituals, she formed pacts with gnolls, orcs, bugbears, worgs, trolls... even some minotaurs. Nearly all the humanoids of the Wild Lands joined her in the Exodus."<br/><br/>"What you see today is the result of those alliances, and the rituals that formed them." Dagyrn said with pride, "Religion is<em>very</em>important here. Without the precepts, we would have fallen apart from infighting long ago. The Empress has guided her flock since the dawn of the Union, so we must always keep in her favor."