He laughs. "We can be fairly solitary here, too. I'd ask you about what lives on your planet, but I fear I would be being too much of a druid if I did."

There are lions! Gigas clams! Cat siths! Owlbears! Bunyips! Doombats! Horses! Whales! Pigs that people magically engineered to be able to smell evil!

They have lions and owlbears and horses and whales too! And Pseudodragons! Gelatinous cubes! Bears!

Also the spiders are not generally particularly sentient. Are the spiders sentient in his world?

They have pseudodragons and bears and gelatinous cubes!

"Spiders are not normally very intelligent but when I'm rescuing a bear I tend to want to check."

"I certainly appreciated it."

"Did you learn anything about the goblin situation while you were in prison?"

"Not as much as I would have liked, just bits and pieces that don't quite connect. They're working for something they call 'the Absolute,' and they're planing to march towards Moonrise Towers." How they plan to get there is another question he cannot answer. "I think the reason they are not marching now is that they want to protect their flanks from the Grove, and as long as they don't know where it is, they can't do as much as they would like."

"What's in Moonrise Towers?"

"There should be nothing. It's a cursed land."

"Evil outsiders? Wasteland after a magical war?" Master Halsin doesn't know what Ustalav is. "Country full of liches for no obvious reason?"

"Many years ago, Ketheric Thorm raised an army in the name of Shar, and lead them out of Moonrise Towers to conquer.

"I was part of the army lead to defeat him. We succeeded-- and in his final act, Ketheric Thorm cursed the land with shadows that kill and raise those that they slay. It is now truly Shar's country.

"There are places that are passable, though I would not recommend trying. Moonrise is in the heart of it. Nothing should live there. Not without something powerful intervening."

"Well, I guess I know what I'm doing once I no longer have a tadpole in my brain."

"If you ever wish for assistance with that quest, I would be happy to join you. I have been trying to find a way to lift the shadow curse myself."

"It seems bizarre to fight a war with goblins of all species."

"It's a known tactic of the drow, and one of their leaders is drow nobility."

"It just... seems hard to keep them pointed in the same direction instead of having them blow up your own artillery?"

"The drow seem to find being sufficiently threatening affective enough." It is clear he Deeply Disapproves.

"How... smart... are goblins?"

"They vary in much the same way as elves, or humans, or dwarfs do."

"Back home they're-- they're like an entire species of six-year-olds that have only ever gotten their ideas of how to behave from other six-year-olds, and also can kill people."

"...ah. I would not give them artillery."

"I... guess I feel better about killing them if they're not all children, here."

"I do worry about them being coerced in this case. I'll admit it would be convenient if the goblin army and the illithid parasites were connected, and I have little proof, but."

"It's hard to take as much joy in fighting after you really internalize that the other guy is usually some guy just like you who got given a sword and sent to die for reasons he doesn't understand."

"And has someone else's sword at the back of his neck."