Something like that, probably, but they're grumpy at Tirinquo about it, better to avoid the conflict if we can. I think they'll hold out okay for another couple days.

No, he's grumpy at Tirinquo for risking his life stealing things for thrills and also about the elf guard who lost an arm. 

...hadn't heard about the guard. Okay, we'll go now, then. I'm not sure how long I'll be gone - at least a few days, maybe a week or so, their meetup won't be close to the city.

Good skill.

Thanks.

And a few minutes later, they're gone.

They return five days later, appearing huddled together on the bed, the new kobold shaking violently while the original tries to calm them. Back, she tells Maitimo after a minute. Couldn't get close enough to talk to anybody.

I am sorry.

Yeah.

Sorry, distracted...

Tell me when you're not busy?

Certainly.

Thanks.

Tirinquo is sobbing, now, curled up on the bed in a little ball of misery. She curls up behind them, rests her snout on their shoulder, hugs them close, and waits for them to calm down, even a little.

It's going to be a while.

And a while later - I am not busy.

Hey. She sounds tired. I've been thinking about what we can do for Tirinquo, and there's really not a good solution, but there is one that seems best out of the things we can do, probably. You might find it upsetting to think about, though.

Go ahead.

Mmhmm. So one of the plants I have is a drug that makes it harder to think of things as dangerous or scary - if the person who takes it knows that something's dangerous, they still feel that, but if they just think it might be, they don't. It's useful when things are stressful but there's someplace a person can be for a while that they know is safe, to let them relax for a while. I'm hoping that if I offer it to them again they'll take it this time and it'll let them be around Quendi without panicking, but it means we'll have to be really careful about keeping them away from anything risky.

Is that what they want?

They know what the plant is; if they don't want it they won't eat it. But if I offer it at all I'm telling them I think it's safe enough for it here.

Well, keeping them within the boundaries of the camp shouldn't be too hard.

Yeah. I might put a pinning hex on them, just to be safe, kobolds can be sneaky when we want to be. I'm more worried about dangerous things in the city, though, that they won't recognize. Like, what if they get into the forges, that kind of thing.

That strong an effect, huh?

It varies some from person to person, but if they saw someone working there without getting hurt they'd assume they could too, yeah.

Then I guess you could make it a tighter pinning hex.

If we're sure we'll think of all the dangerous stuff, yeah. Not sure how they'll react to that, though.

Osanwë doesn't work to talk to kobolds who can't talk normally?

They panicked too badly when we tried it to tell; I expect it will if they take the plant, at least somewhat, but we can't ask them anything that way before then.

Okay.

Yeah. I'm not going to force them into anything if I can avoid it, but we might end up in a situation where they don't have any choices that're good enough - I will make sure that if they want to kill themselves they have a way to do that.

The other problem is... not so much that they might steal stuff exactly, if this works at all they're going to start thinking of the people here as their tribe and that's just not done, but they're going to have some trouble adjusting to the idea of personal property. I'm not sure what that might look like with them so I'm not sure what if anything we'll want to do about it.