"Oh no, nothing like that. I used to have a badger actually, but we were separated by circumstance by long enough that our bond faded, and rather than renew it again, I left him to live out the rest of his life as a slightly larger and hardier, but otherwise essentially normal, creature of the wild. The areas that my duties usually take me to are...rather inhospitable to any mammal, even a burrower; just because I could overcome his natural aversions to gain his aid in my work doesn't necessarily mean I should. I may let Xolenon go too, eventually (in favor of a wasp, perhaps, so that I could fly on its back when required), when he and I have both grown and changed enough to grow apart. But for now, and the forseeable future, my commitment to him is as deep as any druid's, to his animal brother.spiderwrangler wrote:"If you and Xolenon have only been traveling together a short time, surely it was not your connection to him that caused you to leave your clan?"
"To be clear, I was never cast out of my clan or anything like that; I still write back to Dad and my siblings. They know the work I do is important; they just don't understand, and find it vaguely unsettling, in a 'don't track mud all over my nice clean carpet' kind of way. Moradin bless them all, but I just couldn't share their perspective, knowing what I know, nor could they mine. So I leave them to the world they prefer, and I patrol the borders, to help them with the things they'd rather not deal with. (Which, incidentally, is how I happen to be out here, above what we call 'the ceiling of the world'.)
"A pleasure to meet you as well, good humans...Cassien, Quinton," the traveler adds finally. As he's talked, he's also circumnavigated the clearing casually, putting him close enough to Eileen that he can add an aside in Dwarven, which only the sharpest ears can catch: <"Your friend is very transparent, is he not?"> The word for "transparent" he uses has strong and usually-complementary connotations of "totally honest and forthcoming", and is used in that sense far more often than it is literally, particularly when referring to persons. (If Eileen can hit 15 on Sense Motive, it may occur to her that Ryritan probably made his reference to "humans" while assuming that it excluded her. Whatever manner of being Commander Varshyl was - he alluded to not considering himself human, though perhaps he simply considers his draconic heritage more dominant; that doesn't necessarily mean that the odious Zarite "Apex of Racial Purity" would refuse to sit on his head - perhaps Ryritan knows the type, and took you for a member of it.)
