The scale difference between Hendira and her trollish bodyguards is really amazing. Those have to be great trollls – uzko aren’t that big. But they absolutely make clear just how threatening a troll army would be to human soldiers. The fact that they are also preternaturally stealthy and prefer to attack at night just makes it worse.
Well, the one notion I once had that this might all be a Esrolian con job designed to make the Lunars think that the differences between House Delaeos and Hendira were larger then they actually are so that Samastina could have her embassy on the QT while Hendira could have plausible deniability for as long as she needed to play nice with the Lunars has just died and gone to the Netherworld! 😛
But Samastina seems to have a stiff learning curve ahead. “You can raise an army big enough to impress Craigspider”??? Sheesh! Unless that army can occupy more then 3 hexes on the Dragon Pass map I doubt that it would be anything one good Column of Fire couldn’t take out even if Craigspider was too bored to send out the Black Dragon. “You have come with too many for an embassy and too few for an army!” as it were. If she doesn’t develop more common sense then that then I would say that her retainers may as well wear whatever the Gloranthan equivalent of Red Shirts would and be she had better start wearing one herself. ^_^;
I guess Esrolians never heard of just asking nicely? o_O
This still fits your con job theory; why didn’t Hendira have her trollish bodyguards deliver the insolent child to her trollish torturers then to the trollish kitchens, if she was so publicly insulted, except that it was all a shadowplay for outsiders’ benefit?
OTOH, anyone ever talking about Esrolian military might, except with a chuckle, always strikes me as semi-delusional (like a young priestess who actually believes the Queens’ own propaganda).
She wouldn’t have Samastina killed right there because that is not an action befitting a queen, and because she doesn’t want to provoke a blood feud with the Delaeos. Having her quietly done away with later, in a deniable manner, is a completely different thing.
The scale difference between Hendira and her trollish bodyguards is really amazing. Those have to be great trollls – uzko aren’t that big. But they absolutely make clear just how threatening a troll army would be to human soldiers. The fact that they are also preternaturally stealthy and prefer to attack at night just makes it worse.
Well, the one notion I once had that this might all be a Esrolian con job designed to make the Lunars think that the differences between House Delaeos and Hendira were larger then they actually are so that Samastina could have her embassy on the QT while Hendira could have plausible deniability for as long as she needed to play nice with the Lunars has just died and gone to the Netherworld! 😛
But Samastina seems to have a stiff learning curve ahead. “You can raise an army big enough to impress Craigspider”??? Sheesh! Unless that army can occupy more then 3 hexes on the Dragon Pass map I doubt that it would be anything one good Column of Fire couldn’t take out even if Craigspider was too bored to send out the Black Dragon. “You have come with too many for an embassy and too few for an army!” as it were. If she doesn’t develop more common sense then that then I would say that her retainers may as well wear whatever the Gloranthan equivalent of Red Shirts would and be she had better start wearing one herself. ^_^;
I guess Esrolians never heard of just asking nicely? o_O
“and be” = “and maybe”. *^_^*
This still fits your con job theory; why didn’t Hendira have her trollish bodyguards deliver the insolent child to her trollish torturers then to the trollish kitchens, if she was so publicly insulted, except that it was all a shadowplay for outsiders’ benefit?
OTOH, anyone ever talking about Esrolian military might, except with a chuckle, always strikes me as semi-delusional (like a young priestess who actually believes the Queens’ own propaganda).
She wouldn’t have Samastina killed right there because that is not an action befitting a queen, and because she doesn’t want to provoke a blood feud with the Delaeos. Having her quietly done away with later, in a deniable manner, is a completely different thing.