every road leads to rome | Glowfic Constellation

The senator nods along with the explanation, though he's a bit confused by the description of offerings.

"Hmm. Yes, the city has systems already in place for emergency response and suchlike, though I don't speak for the Watch. Are you thinking of selling these services on a specific basis to individual travelers, with payment at the point of sale, or as a more... generalized arrangement, where your assistance isn't granularly metered, and travelers pay a toll of 'offerings' on entry to your roads?"

"At home it's a generalized arrangement and purely voluntary; everyone is welcome to travel on my roads and I won't refuse to help someone just because they didn't have the foresight or the resources to help me first. They'll remember that I did; that's good enough for me. There is a practical consideration, though: the amount of attention I get determines the distance I can protect; if I'm mostly ignored that won't be very much."

"Similar to a lending library," he says, satisfied. "That simplifies logistics, though I concur with, well, the standard funding issue of all similar endeavors. Do you have a minimum requirement of attention required to sustain your... existence? Or is it merely a mattter of degree for your corresponding strength? If the latter, then the issue is considerably less urgent to clarify."

"It's effectively the latter for your purposes; my arrangement at home is plenty to sustain me. There is another practical consideration but last time I tried to discuss it something strange happened, and I'd like to try approaching the topic obliquely to see if that helps, if you don't mind."

"Do please."

"If you were to go to a new place, and when you got there you learned that there had been gnolls there in the past, but they were all dead now, I imagine you'd want to know a few more things about that before you decided to stay, right?"

"It depends, I suppose? Most places had people living there in the past who all died off."

"Mmhmm, it could be that, but it could also have been a recent plague, or a war that some people still had a grudge about, or something dangerous like that, and it'd be smart of you to find out first."

"Yes, that makes sense."

"Your gods being dead is a similar situation for me."

The senator takes a few moments. The secretary exchanges a look with the guards.

"Thaaat's reasonable?" he says finally. "I don't know what you can do about it, though. They're dead—they've always been dead, as far as we know, that is."

"Do you have records about that? Not right now, I mean, it's just such a big risk. I want to find out what I can before I do very much here."

"No?" This is a little confusing, but it's probably a cultural gap. How does he clarify this. "It's always been known that the gods are dead. It's just a fact. There's not much about it."

There's definitely something weird still going on, here.

"If you have records of them being dead going back a few hundred years, that's probably safe enough to start with."

There's definitely something weird going on here, the senator thinks.

"Drake records go back tens of thousands of years," the secretary offers.

"I'd like to see your records myself, I think, which means I'll want to go into the city - I'll make part of myself look like a gnoll for that. Will that be all right?"

He's got no idea what Kiraavi is even looking for, but sure.

"If you agree to obey the laws of the city, you can enter like any other person. Your manner of speaking may startle people, though. Do you want to defer the details of interfacing with the city until you are better oriented? I must admit it's unclear to me what you want from our side."

"Not necessarily anything, if you don't consider yourselves responsible for the roads and don't mind me taking them on. It did seem polite to make sure you didn't have any objections before I made a claim right on your doorstep - roads I'm monitoring are part of myself; I can give them up but I generally prefer not to."

"Oh, yes, that's—I hadn't given the particulars of that much thought. Roads in the territory of a city are claimed by that city, and inter-city roads in the greater territory of a Walled City or other major city-state are claimed by the city-state. For example Pallass considers ourselves to have the unique right of military passage, access control, and tollage of the major highways west and south of the High Passes, and north of the Rakul River."

And actually those borders are disputed as well, but Kiraavi will likely not be impressed by the standard spiel, especially as the the senator is rusty at it.

"I was imagining you to be... well, similar to a service contractor, though as discussed that's not precisely the right model. But if you're expecting a more comprehensive claim on the roads you service, especially in ways resembling territory rights, the Assembly might have more to say about it."

"I should probably speak to them, then. I can make a gnoll avatar for that, too, but I can't do it here right now; if you can authorize me to make a small claim right here, which I'll give up later if either of us conclude that I should, I can make an avatar from that - an avatar is a part of me that looks like a person or animal and can move around independently."

"I don't think there's any specific law against you claiming a small patch by the road, so there's not actually a formal authorization I can extend—the claims issue is a diplomatic problem, not a legal problem, we could say. But for the purposes of clarification, you have my permission as a Head Speaker of the Assembly to make a claim no more than ten feet in radius, where we're standing, on the understanding that you'll give it up in the future if requested."

"That's good enough for me, thank you. Vyrll, turn me out please?"

Dump!

The ground under their feet changes to neat blue-grey cobbles, starting where the vial was dumped out and extending into a circle with a diameter of about fifteen feet. As it stops, a spry but elderly gnoll in simple travel gear appears in front of them. "Much better, thank you." The words sync imperfectly with the way he's moving his mouth.