"I don't think it's very organized but it's a cause that gets popular support, as I understand it. Teleporting's more expensive than stabbing and running but you get both sometimes. Though if they teleport out with an unfortunate subset of the slaves babies do get extra infanticided for lack of childcare. Or remaining slaves get killed off because feeding them is pricey when the food is not being farmed by as many people."

"Well. Dunno if suggesting they steal babies too would improve anything and I think Andoran has too many babies."

"Maybe everyone should be half elves, I think they're the only species that has the desired amount of babies."

"If somebody has a half-drow I think they usually just kill it, I've never met one. Maybe sometimes somebody escapes with one in tow."

"Adventured with some half-elves once. They couldn't relate to all the things humans do to make sure women don't have children with no one to feed them, but they didn't hate babies either."

"They get our fertility perk? Cool, I'm sold." She finds a place to write this down. "I don't hate babies, there's just a very severe limit to how much you can enjoy something that screams in the middle of the night and can't control its bodily fluids and pulls your hair and so on if you don't think it's cute!"

"I admittedly would probably like them a lot less if I had to deal with all that."

"Many drow parents do spend any time with their babies. Expose them to the right accent, notice when there's incipient personality, that kind of thing. But they don't feed them and don't hang onto them when they puke and yell."

" - so it's just that drow parents lack the motherly instinct, specifically."

"No? Kids yea high who mispronounce 'can I have more cake' are adorable and people dote on those. Pretty sure that's also a parental instinct."

"Not the parental instinct, the motherly one, in particular. It's like you all have the instincts of a father."

"You don't think babies are cute and absent vague ethical sentiment would squish one that annoyed you?"

"I wouldn't squish one, and they're cute once they've had a little time to get a normal shape. But I couldn't feed them and change them and wake up in the night for them and so on. A child who only had a father wouldn't make it."

"I think it's more complicated than that but maybe that's a fair approximation."

Fy hisses at Hagan.

"What does that mean, is it hungry?"

"No, she says that the ways drow and humans do babies sound ridiculous and she's very worried about us."

"Don't snakes, uh, lay eggs somewhere and then forget about them? ...did she really say that? Can she understand us to that level of granularity?"

" - I'm translating a tiny bit of conceptual stuff she didn't put in words? But she can understand language, yeah."

"Hi Fy! What are the advantages of your childrearing arrangement?"

Hisshisshiss.

"You don't have to spend time on them and you certainly don't need a suitable mate."

"I guess those are advantages. Do you have a lotta little snakes somewhere?"

Hisshisshiss.

"If they're not dead, which they might be, as babies are stupid."