Log:Troll Toll

2020/10/31 Lennox Gruglug 1

Troll Bridge  IC Zone

A relatively small stone bridge over a narrow but deep chasm in a comparatively remote part of Greater Faerie. While supposedly on the way to a legendary (?) castle called the Archive, home of the long-defunct Knights Witness, it's ... the long way, at the very least. In decent (but not great) repair.

In many ways, the Fae realm of Undermoon is ... small; their population is less than Earth-1's London, the total amount of 'real territory' they control on various Earths is barely more than all of the British Isles. But the rest of those worlds is less than 'uncivilized'; much of it is actually uninhabited, save for a brief span of trail from one place to another, a fragment of a route through the Ways from one Undermoon city to another. With some justice, the Fae can often say that a journey of hundreds of miles may take only a few dozen -- with the right Ways.

Alas, Ways change across the years, and it's been several hundred of those since Lennox has ridden the roads of the Heartlands; fortunately, trade with Earth-1 means that before crossing, Lennox can get an equitable exchange rate. Unfortunately, a lot of the fae still have a strong tendency to think of humans as a lesser species -- and while to a degree they're right, whether in beauty, Second Sight, magical talent, lifespan, grace, or whatever, they're also /deeply/ mistaken. The fae evolve, yes, but with painfully slow incrementalization; humanity these days bounds after progress like a sight hound after a rabbit.

It specifically means, however, that going without a guide means that Lennox is misdirected at worst, or sent 'the long way around' at best. It is one of these latter occurrences that has him and his horse (an iron gray Morgan, both enduring and elegant) clopping up to one of the few bridges over the deep-chasmed 'river' cutting across the region. Like most bridges, there's a toll. And a troll.

It may be a cruel joke that has Lennox directed to this bridge, as the local fae would know it's guarded by a Troll put there some time ago. It's a bridge less traveled and in questionable disrepair, but it looks sturdy enough for crossing.

As Lennox gets near, a giant boulder is tossed in front of the bridge, large enough to block his horse from getting by. A troll atop the adjacent hill rumbles in a gravelly voice, "None may pass. Not without paying the...the...toll! Toll."

The Morgan shies at the crash-thud-splinters of the boulder landing -- bouncing!! -- not very far in front of it; it does so hard enough for the rider to lose his seat and go sliding right the hell off, thumping to the ground as the horse gallops off a ways to get itself clear of the place where half-ton hunks of stone fall out of the sky.

The rider, a night-black-skinned male, slowly pushes himself off his face and into a sitting position, looking with bemusement at the rock. "Yeah, big guy," he says without actually looking towards the troll, "that's the deal. You /do/ know you're supposed to not beat the road up in exchange, right? Keep the bridge in good shape?"

The troll looks down, squating amid more rocks. "Don't guard the road. Jus' the bridge," he rumbles grumpily. The hulking creature squints down its long nose at Lennox. It's thick greenish hide is shiny and wet looking, even though there's no sign of a river or rain. "What're you supposed to be? Too ugly to be fae." Really, what human can compare to the Fae? Though the Troll clearly isn't familiar with humans coming to its bridge."

Waaaall, now, thar hain't been a hyooo-man in these-yere parts in a god's age. Naw, boy, that hain't a whatchamacallit, reversal-thingamabobber. Couple-a thousand years, like, maybe, or so. Jes' not many of 'em around, y'ken?

The troll gets a long look -- maybe there's a bit of grumpiness there -- and then the black not-a-Fae pushes himself to his feet. "Human," he says. His armor shifts only a little as he moves, a sign of well-made and -fitted gear; his sword remained on his belt, and so came with him. "And the ... oh, to hell with it, I'm not your damn keeper. You going to come down so I can pay the toll and get across the bridge, or am I going to have to come up there and spank some courtesy through your thick skull?"

It should be noted that although he has a strange accent, the human /is/ speaking the 'lingua franca'.

The troll has a good chuckle. "I thought humans were a myth," he snort-laughs at Lennox. The troll lumbers his way down the rocks, leaping the last twelve feet down to land in front of Lennox. Turns out the troll is also about that tall as he finally stands up to full height. His black hair is a greasy main, and his apparel consists only of a dark hide loincloth held up by rope. There are a few pouches tied to the rope belt as well.

The troll jabs a finger into the corner of his eye and rubs some crust away. "Lemme see this human that thinks they're gonna spank Gruglug." The troll is as broad as Lennox is tall.

Lennox steps back as the giant-kin drops down the last dozen feet to rattle the teeth. His head tilts one way, then the other, his spine popping a little as it decompresses. "Only if I have to, big guy," responds the black man. On the other hand, he knows there's some use to the occasional fight .... if only to keep him in trim.

Gruglug plants his hands on the ground to lower himself to view Lennox at eye-height. It takes some doing, with his arms more ape-like in length. He takes a few big sniffs. "Huhhuh, you ain't got no smell of magic on yuh," he laughs in amusement, his fetid breath washing over Lennox. "And the way you fell off yuir horse! No fae would ever do that," he laughs more.

White teeth in a black face get shown. "True," he agrees. "But unlike the fae, I haven't had to ride a horse into battle for a hundred years. Humans have developed ... faster methods of moving. But none of them really cope well with Ways, and everyone keeps giving me the run-around. I swear there has to be a shorter route to the Archive."

"The Archive?" The Troll asks with a tilt of his head. His greasy mane flops with the tilt. He lets out another guffaw. "How'd you get around all those years without a horse?"

Lennox'

Lennox's mouth twists a little. "There's something to be said for anonymity," he half-mutters, "but people just going and /forgetting/ ... tales aren't being told." He sucks in air between his teeth, looking at the troll. "The Archive is the castle of the Knights Witness. Have you heard of /them/?" He asks. The question about getting around all those years without a horse ... well, troll don't need to know (yet) about mechanized warfare.

"Hrrrrmmmm," Gruglug rumbles as he thinks on that. "Never heard of that before. How is the night supposed to witness anythin'?" the low-brow troll asks.

Lennox inhales as if to explain what he's about, then exhales in a long hiss of breath. "This," he says, "smacks of deliberate purging. You," and he points at the troll, "you wait right here. I need to get my horse."

Lennox is not, alas, an expert horse wrangler, but you don't get familiar with the beasts without learning a few tricks. Like a treat -- always carry a few carrots, or apples, or sugar cubes, on your person and not in the saddlebag. Today it's carrot for Lennox, and as he strolls down the road, near (but not at) the Morgan, he makes a show of taking the orange tuber out of his pocket and 'brushing it clean'. Doing so gets the scent into the air (a little bit, anyhow), and calls the horse's attention to the shareable treat. With his human teeth, he crunches off a bite, pausing and looking away from the mare in such a way so that it can only see one of his eyes. Loudly chewing, he contemplates the distance, then crunches off another bite, his eye turning to regard her slow, careful approach. The exchange of carrot for trailing reins is an equitable one, and with her once more in hand (and her enjoying her greater half of the treat), he extracts another carrot from his saddlebag, puts it in his pocket, then leads her back to the troll at its bridge. "So. What's the toll for this ..." He looks past the big being and at the admittedly-solid but poor-looking bridge. "Span," he finally finishes, looking back at Gruglug.

"You just brought it," Gruglug smiles toothily and points a fat digit at the horse. Some drool dribbles down his chin and drops to the ground.

Lennox looks slowly up at the troll, then gives a deep, deep sigh of regret before turning the horse around and, with a deliberate and hard smack on its ass, sends it trotting back down the road. "Looks like," he says, drawing his sword from its sheath with a minimum of effort and an utter lack of the typical fae posturing and flair, "like I'm going to need to give you a lesson on the proper way to interact with travelers. Courtesy is the hallmark of every civilized species; let's see if we can smack some into your skull, shall we? My apologies ahead of time for the nicks and cuts you're going to get -- and you /are/ going to get a cut or two. This ain't some dandy's blade, this one actually works for a living. Probably do a job on even your tough hide. I can demonstrate first, you want; that boulder you used there might be a good example."

"Courtesy?" Gruglug gives a belly laugh at that. "This ain't the palace," he retorts as he finally rises back up to his full height. This funny little human is amusing. Look at how it holds a sword! "I've seen fae babes hold a sword with more skills." Of course, it's also a very different style of fighting. "You hold it more...more like a goblin! Har!" he laughs.

Gruglug punches a hand into an open palm and cracks his knuckles. "Don't need no demonstration. You don't pay the toll, you don't pass. Simple. You pay, you pass. Also simple. You fight? I thump ya," he grins, showing off his crooked yellow sharp chompers.

Lennox nods. "Rules are rules, right enough," the black man agrees, and starts for the troll, scale mail glinting slightly as he starts to stalk forward -- but then he hesitates, and stops. "Y'know, I tell you what. Let's put the sword away," and here he sheathes the blade, "put this aside," and he pulls the quick-release and frees himself from the scabbard, tossing the blade to one side, "and use something with a bit less ... lethality." From thigh sheathes he draws a couple of short rods, perhaps a foot long -- but with a snap to the sides, they extend to more than twice their length. "You're just a working troll, Gruglug. So let's work this out." And he comes in on the troll with /intent/.

Gruglug looks most amused by Lennox changing his arsenal. Nothing on him smells of magic or fire, so the big oaf shrugs. "Suit yerself," he says casually, and steps aside to the side of the road to pick up another hefty boulder, though this a third the size of one he tossed on the bridge. Still dangerous, though. "All part o' the job," he says, drawing it up to prepare to club Lennox with it. But the Knight's Witness has much more speed and agility than the troll does.

Lennox lets the troll 'go first' -- but he's ready for rock-throwing and whatnot, and willing to bide his time, to get to know the big guy's technique and rhythm before ... well, reminding /someone/ what, exactly, a Knight Witness is about.

Gruglug doesn't seem the careful sort, or one familiar with restraint. He doesn't throw the rock so much as wields it like a weapon, bringing it down towards Lennox's head to bash it in.

Lennox watches the movement; there's a /lot/ of strength there, but the troll is using a boulder as a weapon, and even for its strength the inertia for such an amount of weight is not easily changed. A swift couple of steps moves him out of the crunch area of the boulder -- but also juuuust out of release-and-backhand range of those arms. "That's a lot of power," he compliments the troll.

The rock comes smashing down on the ground where Lennox was, cracks forming in it. Chips of rock fall away from it. "It's why trolls make good toll takers. You faster than goblin. Hrrmm. Maybe time to use fae swatter."

Lennox's laugh is sharp, hard, nasty -- and clearly pleased. "Nimble fae think they can dodge around, do some fancy work with their little swords, and cross the bridge without paying the troll his toll, do they?" Lennox knows the type, and is anticipating the troll's likely next move, his feet shifting as necessary for him to dive the hell out of the way of a big damn bowled rock -- or a swooshing tree-branch designed to clear an entire area.

"Or use their tricksy magic," Gruglug adds. "But ol' Gruglug has a cure for that," he says as he lumbers to the side of the road. There are trees about, and a few stumps. He wraps his big arms around the tree and grunts as he tries to pull it free to make a club.

The black man's head tilts over to the side as he sees the ... tree. Club. "Well. I must admit that it /has/ been a while since I've actually witnessed that. You, my friend, are /far/ underutilized here." He remains ready for the troll to use the ... tree-club, knowing full well he'll only have a moment's warning to dive out of the way of the thing, whether it's roll under or leap aside.

Gruglug grips the tree like one would grip a bat. He starts to swing it back, but halts there a moment. "Under-uti-lized?" It's a big word. It sounds like he understands it, but pronouncing it gives him trouble. The compliment is enough to give him pause, and then he laughs as if he's caught on to something. "You're just lying so you don't have to pay the toll. Clever human." He swings away!

Lennox laughs, then throws himself backwards and out of the way of the tree's root bole, /plenty/ of dirt and rocks still attached to it; he's pelted by them even as he tumbles underneath the broken-off roots, rolling back to his feet with some added distance between himself and the comparatively-wily bridge-guardian. "Means you should be doing something more than guarding a piddly little bridge in the back-end of nowhere. You've a brain on you, Gruglug," he says, using the batons to rake away the worst of the dirt as he continues to shift around the troll's area of dominance.

Gruglug has a golfer's swing pose at the end of the swing. He looks surprised by Lennox's laugh, and impressed by his fast evasion. "Harhar! Maybe a bigger bridge?" he asks as he swings back the other way in reverse.

WHAM!! The troll tree-club clips him as he's rolling, sending him plowing face-first into the dirt at the side of the road; it takes him a moment, but he shakes off the dizziness that such a wallop will cause and rolls to his feet. "All right, then, big guy," he says. "Let's get ..." He pauses, then grins; there's a bit of blood on his teeth now. "Dangerous," he finishes, and moves in.

Gruglug winces and grunts a bit at Lennox's persistent. "You could just pay da toll or go back where ya came from," he offers. Of course, he offers this as he's winding back the tree. With a loud rustling of leaves, he swings at Lennox again.

smashed right in the shoulder by the troll; oh yeah, definitely damage there, broken shoulder, broken upper arm, broken rib or three. The tumble across the ground doesn't do him any more favors, wrenching that damaged arm this way and that, and the troll will get the satisfaction of seeing Stupid Hyoo-man Who Wants To Fight Troll laying with a probably-never-going-to-be-the-same-again shoulder and arm lie unconscious in the dirt twenty to thirty feet down the road -- AWAY from the troll's bridge.
 * WHAMCRACK!!* The boneless roll of the unconscious is what Lennox does,

And it's that distance that'll keep him from seeing the arm wrench itself back into place, bones fusing themselves, ligaments re-knitting. He /might/ hear the grunt as consciousness returns a few moments later ...

Gruglug watches Lennox go flying and flop like a broken thing. He actually feels a little sorry. "'e shoulda just paid the toll," he grunts. Well. Time to clean up the body from his toll area. Or so he thinks as he starts to walk over, dragging the tree behind him like a caveman with his club. That's when he realizes Lennox is still moving. "You're gonna want to stay down for a bit. You can go home wit' your horse, but you can't cross Lord Daeneryion's bridge."

His head turns towards the troll dragging his (club) tree behind him, and laughs again. "It has been so /very/ long since I've fought a troll," he says with amusement. "I forgot how fun you can be. I should have not put down my sword, I think, but I don't know if you can regenerate." Pushing explosively to his feet, he moves away from the troll -- or, you know, dives away from the swing of that club -- and continues to eye the way the creature is moving.

Gruglug chortles. "Wouldn't be much of a troll if I couldn't heal from fae stings. You sure you not part troll, human?" he asks of Lennox's remarkable recovery as the human gets his footing again.

"Pretty sure," Lennox replies, scooting back to keep at tree's-length from the troll, moving to retrieve his weapons -- and then retrieve a /real/ weapon, i.e. his sword, now that he knows the troll can recover from it.

Gruglug turns and follows after Lennox, hefting up the tree and resting it on his shoulder as he walks over. He's not fast per se, but his large steps carry him some distance. "Fae usually stay down when you whack 'em that hard," he comments appreciatively as he swings his tree-club at Lennox again.

This time the hit isn't as full-on -- more like the original clip that sent him into the dirt. But even though the human doesn't tumble far, he's still limp, the just-picked-up steel batons dropped beside him once more.

Gruglug shoulders his tree again, and scratches the back of his head. "Now e's dead for sure. What's so important about this archives." He trundles over. "I hates how they leaves a mess." His stomach rumbles. "Maybe the horse'll come back. Them's good eatin'." His left hand reaches down to grab for Lennox to remove the body from the fae road.

Gruglug has lifted Lennox up by his waist, holding him face up to prepare to remove the corpse.

Gruglug lumbers over to the edge of the cliff to give the human a proper burial. "Bye-bye, human," he says with respect as he holds Lennox out over the edge and lets go. There's quite a drop below, ending with rocks and the small river that cut the ravine. There's also a littering of bleached bones below of past toll skippers who wouldn't head home. It's a mix of goblin, fae, and who knows what else. But no other humans.

If the fight with the troll doesn't kill them, a fifty-foot drop onto sharp rocks is pretty much guaranteed to finish the job. And yet only a couple minutes later a hand -- not bloody, thanks to the tumbling stream at the bottom -- crests the cliff, and the black human pulls himself up and out of the ravine. "Hey!! Gruglug!!" He stalks over to get his sword and draw it. "Thanks for my yearly bath, but I didn't say we're done yet!!"

If the fight with the troll doesn't kill them, a fifty-foot drop onto sharp rocks is pretty much guaranteed to finish the job. And yet only a couple minutes later a hand -- not bloody, thanks to the tumbling stream at the bottom -- crests the cliff, and the black human pulls himself up and out of the ravine. "Hey!! Gruglug!!" He stalks over to get his sword and draw it. "Thanks for my yearly bath, but I didn't say we're done yet!!"

Gruglug had already lumbered close to where he has to climb up to ambush people for tolls when Lennox calls him out. He turns around slowly, arms swinging limply at his sides. Just jaw hangs open at seeing the human is not only alive, but still able to walk and draw a sword. "'e must be suffering after that fall. Oughta put 'im out of 'is misery," he speaks to himself.

Rolling his head to one side then the other, feeling the cricks pop out of his neck as the last of the hurt is handled, the black man eyes the troll, then darts in to deliver a strong strike at the thing that's really giving him the most problems: the /tree/. A hard blow should sever the thing ...

Lennox's blade shears through much of the tree, but not quite all of it; the cut passes through, though, and now the human is well within the troll's reach. 'Well, shit,' Lennox thinks. 'This is gonna hurt.'

Gruglug looks as the sword passes through almost the whole truck. And yet it holds. "Dat's my favorite tree!" He's grown attached to it quick. "Now stand still while I puts ya out of ya misery. Ain't right for me t' let ya suffer." There's something oddly genuine in the way he says those words. This is a mercy killing at this point, which he tries to carry out with a wide horizontal swing of his tree.

The human gets smacked, practically into the ground; that's what happens when you clobber a human with a tree, right? Well, that's all well and good, and the human does indeed go into the ground ... but then he groans and shakes his head, pushing himself to his feet and scooping up the blade. "Let's try that again," he states, then springs forward once more to finish the job on the tree.

There's a certain amount of damage you can take, no matter what you are; getting deep cuts sliced through you makes for too much stress if you're being held up horizontally. Gruglug's beloved tree cracks, then splinters itself apart maybe a meter away from his beefy hand.

Gruglug frowns deeply as his tree is split apart, leaving him with barely a club worth wielding. It's just a stick now! A meter long stick...with some considerable thickness. But a stick nonetheless. He tosses it over his shoulder. "All this fuss for a horse ya don't even know how t' ride," grouses the troll as he brings his fist up high and tries to smack it down atop Lennox's head.

"Now that's just not true," counters the human, glancing up at the fist looming over his head, and taking a smooth step to one side, out of the way as it comes crashing down. "I haven't ridden one into /battle/ for a while. I haven't needed to." The sword licks out to crease the troll's skin.

The sword slices through troll hide, revealing brackish green blood.

And it seems to have been felt by the surprised bellow from Gruglug. More surprise than hurt.

The one cut done, the human side-steps around the troll, turning as he does, another cut delivered as he moves. Lennox suspects -- with respect -- that the big guy might not give up until he goes down.

Gruglug bellows again, this time from pain as his hide is split open deeply from the blade. He take a step back to try and reorient toward the recovered Lennox. "Yer fast for somethin' that's dying. And when ya do drop, the horse'll be mine anyway and then yer toll'll be paid. Why not give up da horse? Ya might even live long enough to walk 'r crawl to the next town and enjoy a House of Lady Favors b'fore ya keel over." Even though he's trying to give Lennox an out, he still tries to club his head into the ground again.

"Gotta give it to you guys, trolls is tough," says Lennox in his weirdly-accented Faerie. "Just --" And he turns back around the other way, lowering his blade to slice along the back of the troll's leg, "-- that I'm not dying. Tried it plenty of times, doesn't take."

Gruglug roars as his hamstring is partially severed, causing the troll to stumble and drop down onto all fours like an ape. He even uses his knuckles instead of his palms. The impact causes vibrations through the earth that Lennox can feel. Gruglug is looking woozy as the ground is splattered with the dark blood from his various deep cuts.

Lennox shakes his head, reversing the grip on his weapon. "I sure hope you can take this, big guy. Hate to put someone through this for no lesson at all." While he /could/ target something severely damaging -- a kidney or some such -- his next target is the troll's hip. Busted hips /hurt/.

Gruglug still had a bit of fight in him, even though the blood loss was having him woozy. He roars again in pain as his hip's sliced through, the blade cutting through muscle and even bone. And definitely some important blood vessels based on the bleeding. Gruglug tries to recover. Tries to get up to his feet. The injuries just cause him to drop on his knees again. "You's fast...and...pokey..." he groans, his speech slowing before he collapses into a bloodied heap.

Lennox takes a moment to examine the shallowest of the cuts, the one across the troll's back; he knows from plenty of experience the look of regenerating flesh. Once satisfied that the troll will indeed recover quickly -- less quickly than himself, but few indeed recover so fast -- he flicks the green blood from the shiny blade and, using a cloth from his coat, makes sure the rest is gone before stepping over to sheath his weapon, waiting for the big guy to wake up.

The flesh is definitely knitting together. At a slower rate than Lennox, but it does heal. It'd be enough time to let unfortunate adventurers to run away to safety or behead the troll to make sure it doesn't get up again. Gruglug starts snoring loudly, then suddenly snorts and wakes up as his wounds are half-healed. That loud rumbling was enough to wake himself up. "Wha?"

Lennox returns to the troll, pushing gently at him, then using the same cloth he'd used on the blade to wipe at the blood around and in the troll's hip. "Looks like it is putting itself together," he says agreeably. "You are a tough one, are you not?"

"'Course I am. Imma troll!" rumbles Gruglug as though insulted. The wounds are no longer bleeding profusely. With a grunt, he tries to push himself up into a seated position on the ground. After he tests that his legs and hip are still no good. The fight's left him for the moment.

Blade sheathed, Lennox moves to squat in front of his sizeable foe. "So. Let us talk about what I am going to pay you to cross your bridge. I believe I have established that my horse is not an acceptable toll, yes? Money has become customary." He probably doesn't need to point out that killing the troll /or/ merely crossing the bridge without payment had been an option -- and, to a certain extent, could still be, given the troll's temporary inability to stand.

Gruglug grumbles to himself and sets his legs out to stretch, since he can't fold them. The dirt getting into his hamstring is fine. 's good for the healing, ain't it? That's troll logic for ya. After a moment, Gruglug grunts to himself at making a decision. "Seein' as how ya didn't kill me or run away...." he starts, frowns, then relents. "Foin. Sparin' me means yer toll is paid. Ya can pass."

Lennox considers this, then shakes his head. "No. Sparing you is a service to those others who use your bridge on a regular basis. Your job may only be adequately done, but it /is/ being done. And a bridge without a troll to keep it up soon falls into wrack and ruin." He says this last with relish, a grin coming onto his face. "Wrack and ruin; I do not get to use that phrase often enough. Mmmm." He rises, then makes a decision of his own. "Peace?" he asks, offering the troll his hand. "In payment, I will make for you a meal, and tell you of my Order. Perhaps you can tell others who come your way, and in this small way the knowledge of my Order will not be lost."

Gruglug considers the offer and nods his giant head once. "Peace," he says. His giant hand encloses around Lennox's entirely as they shake on it. He is less begrudging as a meal is offered as well. "Alroight, then," he agrees to these terms. It's worth listening to a story.

Lennox shakes, and goes about getting his horse back (again; thank the gods for carrots), and getting out supplies, and making a fire and all that sort of thing. "The Knights Witness," he says to the troll, "were -- are -- an Order devoted to no one king or country, only to the idea of the truth of events. We have witnessed coronations of kings and weddings of princes; we have watched business deals and peasants being wed. We trained our memories to be infallable, our minds to be immutable, our will to be indominable, and our honesty to be impeachable ..." In this way he starts, and is soon describing heroes of ages past: the fae Warmaster Tilithel who, after a lifetime of service in Undermoon against the giants, retired to the Knights Witness and fought against his former countrymen when they ambushed certain giants during a pre-arranged peaceful meeting; the goblin Kugnigmaknik, who came to the Archive to train their horses and wound up becoming a Knight Witness himself, being a Witness at several notable high noble fae court ceremonies (much to the upset of several high noble fae), and others ...

"So you's like...scholars. Fightin' scholars," Gruglug estimates based on the tales, and what he's seen for himself.

Lennox mmms. "Kind of," he agrees. "One cannot properly witness what one has difficulty understanding. But fighting ... oh yes. Not all of what we witness is wanted by the doers to /be/ witnessed. Getting out alive and reporting what you have seen is a critically important element in witnessing it." He smiles. "I must confess that I was by far not the best of us. Tilithel could take on three of us at once, and win. An artist with a blade. But we all could win ... unlikely fights. I am out of practice, myself."

Gruglug thinks on that slowly. "Hmph. I c'n see why I haven't heard of them knights witnesses. Lot o' people in high places probably didn't like getting witnessed with wot they git up to."

Lennox laughs as he stirs the pot, keeping the stew being made in it at a simmer, and making sure it doesn't stick to the bottom of it. It's a good-sized pot, and almost entirely full -- enough for many hungry humans, or one hungry human and a hungry troll. "That is fairly true," he agrees. "Not as much as many people think, but more than some of them would like."

Gruglug sniffs a few times at the smells from the stew, starting to visibly salivate. His wounds are almost all healed up, just leaving new skin that still needs to toughen up into new hide. "So if this Tilithel was so mighty, how come I ain't heard o' them? Is it a secret order?"

Lennox mmms. "Well, for many of us the best part was we got to travel. See different things, life -- people -- that we would not often normally see. The life of a peasant is much different than the life of a noble, and yet new knights came to see that their lives were as worthwhile of being Witnessed." He scratches his chin, then goes back to his gear to dig through it and find a bowl and spoon for himself; the larger spoon he's using with the small cauldron will undoubtedly do just fine for the troll. Ladling out his own portion, he takes the pot off the fire and sets it in front of the troll, offering the spoon. Yes, made for a human-sized hand, but perhaps he'll show some amount of table manners and not just guzzle straight from the pot. "Not secret, no, but you have hit upon a very interesting question, my friend. We were well-known back in the day. The reason for our legends fading is something I am keen to discover, because it is not something that would simply just /happen/. I hope for clues at the Archive."

Gruglug considers the spoon carefully before taking it between thumb and forefinger, pinching it carefully. It may just work. Precariously so. "How far you travel that ya din't notice yer Order wuz missin'?" He attempts to scoop a spoonful of soup and leans over the bowl. He opens his large mouth and laps the spoon sloppily. It's no wonder the fae keep the trolls far from their main lands. Their eating habits are atrocious.

Lennox eyes Gruglug. Well, trolls don't have much of a family life, or so he's observed. But the more traffic a troll's bridge gets, the more chance they have to associate with society, and learn something about behaving around others. "Far and long," he admits, working his own spoon -- and, perhaps, demonstrating how it's supposed to be used. "Other worlds, mainly my home world, for many centuries. Some fae consider it to be rightfully theirs, as having been there before humans, but if that is what they are using as a yardstick to judge ownership, my claim beats theirs by miles." He sounds a little smug about /that/. Like with many trolls, snooty 'better-than-thou' fae stick in his craw. "As I said, I do not take to being dead."

Gruglug makes a concerted effort to mimic the use of the spoon. It's obvious he hasn't had to use it. Nor is he used to sharing a meal with company. "Hah. Da fae can't even hold the Goblin lands. Dey think dey can have yours too?" he comments with a full mouth, then swallows. "They own everythin' 'round these parts, though. Even da parts they forget."

Lennox chuckles. "Yes, well -- it only happens when certain of them come by. Fortunately, we have a saying about landlords who have been absentee for far too long -- possession is nine-tenths of the law." He nods at Gruglug's attempt at social behavior, and returns to his own food. "Indeed, that is one of the fun parts of being a Knight Witness. By tradition and law, they cannot keep one of us from going where we will -- or rather, leaving when we wish, and privacy being respected, of course. Much like our far more scholarly kin, the sages." He smiles. "We are martial scholars; they are just scholars. Ivory tower sorts. But walking out of the home of some arrogant fae is ... /fun/."

Gruglug spoons another bite toward his mouth, his lower lip jutting out to catch the bite as he pours the food into his mouth. "Harhar. That DOES sound fun," he guffaws.

Lennox grins. In many ways, the two are kindred spirits, for despite millenia of association with the fae and other cultured peoples, he's spent far more of them in more primal situations. "Knowing they couldn't stop you if they tried certainly helps," he adds, and tells another story or two -- these of himself, of being found by the fae under the direction of the sages, of fighting in the dragon wars, of killing more than one of those great creatures by ... unconventional means.