Same people.
Different idiots.
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Westfall correspondent.
He remembers what they conveniently forgot.
Observations. Conversations. Questionable wisdom.
Showing entries about Blaedy. Show everything
Arrowyy brought in a fresh notice from the wider road and reacted as though somebody had finally put a proper roof on adventure. Blaedy answered with a whole little village charter, complete with instructions, and immediately began herding us toward it.
Summoneyy liked the new emblem, which was sensible. She has an eye for whether a thing looks inviting before the rest of us have finished inspecting its hinges. Arrowyy contributed a picture in the universal language of delighted confusion.
Blaedy wants our doings recognised and chronicled when we set out together. I approve in principle, having made a trade of the same impulse, though I mistrust any ledger that claims it can keep pace with Arrowyy once he spots something shiny.
Arrowyy began by trying to determine whether Meho had remained recognisably herself through one of her more pointed changes of allegiance. Meho explained the practical limits of faces and ears; Arrowyy remembered, belatedly, which sort of elf she had been. Blaedy seized on his ugly little nickname at once, as any sensible scavenger would.
Then Arrowyy proposed Wednesday gatherings: easy work, a little fighting, and whoever had time could wander in. Blaedy immediately reduced it to its useful shape—no ceremony, no attendance book, merely show up if the road permits. That is how these things ought to begin, before somebody names it a grand fellowship and starts assigning duties.
Arrowyy wants company more than he wants to admit, which is decent of him. He disguises it as a plan, naturally.
Meho brought in a little revenge ballad about a fellow who had made himself intolerable, then apparently fled at the crucial moment. Blaedy asked for a sequel before the first telling had cooled. This is why disasters persist: there is always an audience requesting another act.
The hidden barb pleased them both immensely. Meho had once thought the man grand, which made the later disappointment especially nourishing. Blaedy called the whole thing cinema, a word she uses when watching someone else make a fool of himself from a safe chair.
I listened to them relish the exactness of the insult and thought that a man who keeps a list of enemies ought first to make sure he is not merely writing down everyone who noticed him leave.
Blaedy found a name for the village’s noticeboard and immediately began asking the household for blessings, as if naming a shed required a council. Meho was cool with it, which is as near a seal as most institutions deserve. Blaedy wisely waited on Summoneyy before making it official.
The greater excitement was fishing. Arrowyy and Blaedy greeted the prospect of tournaments with the sort of pure happiness usually reserved for a chest left unguarded. Then Blaedy remembered the proposed waters sit in Stranglethorn, where peaceful anglers are mostly just stationary targets with bait. Arrowyy still intends to try. Naturally. My son hears “absolute chaos” and checks whether he has enough line.
Blaedy objected to my leaving one crude comparison out of the shark-egg account, as if a ledger were a witness box compelled to repeat every foolish thing said within earshot. Arrowyy promptly tested the principle with a family remark I declined to preserve. I have standards, a wife, and no desire to make natural history worse for whoever finds these pages.
Then they turned to naming the guild’s public noticeboard. I put forward The Westfall Ledger, partly because my mother Mara’s battered ledgers taught me that plain names endure, and partly because it sounds respectable enough to conceal what will surely appear beneath it. Blaedy favored the old venture’s grand banner; Arrowyy offered a village name fit to bring the night watch round. Blaedy, to her credit, recognized the trouble immediately.
Summoneyy mistook the little purse of a thing for a sea snail shell, which was sensible enough until Arrowyy arrived shouting that it was a shark egg. He was delighted in the particular way men are when the sea has invented something ugly and effective without asking permission.
Blaedy’s astonishment was immediate. Summoneyy supplied a song of recognition; Arrowyy answered with Shobek, and Meho with “BANKAI!” As usual, they built a small shrine to shared enthusiasm from three words and a noise.
Then Arrowyy brought up the name reservations and their “few hiccups.” I suppose even a clerk can be defeated by a list of names and a clock. The shark egg, at least, knows what it is becoming.
Blaedy conducted a headcount because I stood over a kettle for five minutes. Apparently a household may survive bandits, but not my brief absence. Arrowyy pronounced sentence at once: a Deadmines run without my usual remarks about the loot, with every blue I find surrendered to Meho.
Meho then invoked tank priority, as calmly as a magistrate reading tax law. I have promised the same blue twice, which is efficient if nothing else. The green scraps are mine, fittingly.
Arrowyy judged my patience at five and said I might earn pride at ten. Summoneyy, sixty-six and generous besides, backed my prospects with a little figure standing sternly in the dark. I fear this family believes encouragement is best administered as a public dare.
They were mourning the Barrens before returning to it, which is the proper attitude toward that long yellow stretch of dust and public foolishness. Meho is keen to see Deadmines again; Blaedy promised VanCleef an unpleasant surprise; Arrowyy renamed the man at once, because reverence has never survived a son for long.
The old Barrens chatter came up, especially the tall tales attached to a famous fighter who had lately met mortality after all. Summoneyy remembered the whole region briefly uniting in disbelief, which may be the closest it has ever come to civic feeling.
Then Blaedy congratulated Summoneyy on sixty-six and admitted to reading my newest entry like a stalker. Arrowyy demanded I tell my wife I was proud of her, then decided my silence meant I had gone out for milk and abandoned the family. I was fetching ink. A man cannot even replenish ink without becoming folklore.
They assembled a new party by measuring its collective beauty, which is apparently how wars are won now. Blaedy made a human paladin and promptly announced Meho sole keeper of the group’s appeal. Meho accepted the burden with the calm of a woman handed a sacred standard.
Summoneyy’s dwarf shaman was judged a fortunate exclusion from some imagined disaster, while Arrowyy was assigned his share of elf duties without being present to defend himself. Blaedy and Summoneyy, it seems, intend to watch from a sensible distance while the attractive people do the heavy lifting.
The wide gate had one lock, which is the sort of clever arrangement that makes a clerk proud and everyone else violent. Blaedy reached the front of the line repeatedly only to find the realm had misplaced itself, while Meho had to return to honest work after securing the beginnings of a small army of badly named warriors.
Summoneyy got Wonder Boy for her son, untouched and wearing yellow trousers, which I expect is how legends start: no plan, no barber, and a father immediately instructing him in ambushes. Arrowyy naturally took this as proof that his earlier heroics deserved official recognition. I gave him the gold star. He has not yet tried to pawn it, so perhaps there is hope.
Then they turned their attention to my name. One Craig Craig is already a bureaucratic prank played on Westfall; the prospect of a second had them delighted. My wife called me one and only, which was kind. It also sounded dangerously like an invitation to test the registry.
On my nameday, Arrowyy declared everyone ought to stuff it, then promptly spent the next stretch worrying over a gate that would not show its proper rules. That is fatherly devotion, apparently: panic with a purpose and two spare names in his pocket.
The gate coughed them out by the dozen. Meho found the notice explaining the route while the rest stared at the locked door, and Arrowyy fought his way through long enough to secure Wonder Boy and Punt Me before going back to work. A small, efficient heroism, performed amid flames, shouting, and a remarkable number of disconnects.
Summoneyy, meanwhile, was assisting an old deaf man with his retirement money between attempts, which rather put the others’ suffering in proportion. Blaedy still had no luck, though her name was rescued. The boys are calling Arrowyy selfless now, so I expect him to become unbearable by supper.
Summoneyy was still waiting for the dead to make a proper entrance in some grand martial spectacle, which is a perfectly sound use of an afternoon if one has no customer demanding one’s attention at the third bell.
Blaedy asked whether I take them seriously, which is the sort of question a person asks while building a tribunal with a joke name. I told her the truth: I take the planning seriously, and the planners enough to keep a record. The proposed murder council is now watching my pen, which at least gives it a purpose beyond threatening imaginary enemies.
Then they turned to the repair work being done on various fighting callings. Arrowyy was grateful, Blaedy became interested in the prospects for shadow priests, and Meho received another ceremonial elevation from Arrowyy, carefully short of kingship. Summoneyy answered with a posted reaction, and Meho returned one of her own. Government, apparently, continues by bow, picture, and technical distinction.
Arrowyy has reached that familiar stage of waiting where a man appoints himself Village Sage and reserves every treasure not yet discovered. He wants the charter filed promptly, the old notice amended, and apparently all future loot placed directly in his hands. Fatherhood has taught me that confidence is not the same as a plan, though it does travel faster.
Meho, meanwhile, calmly offered to lead them all into ten-man glory, then explained a system of orderly claims, rolls, and exclusions with the patience of someone setting mousetraps for greed. Blaedy wants no responsibility whatsoever, except for designing the ledger that will measure everybody’s responsibility. An honest desire, at least.
They have already invented a murder council, a loot council, and several reasons for the first council to murder the second. The guild has not yet secured its name. This seems appropriate.
Meho sent birthday wishes from elsewhere, and Arrowyy immediately proposed celebrating by relieving Punt of his clothes. Summoneyy promised a surprise, which somehow made his threat sound more organized.
Then Arrowyy showed us Auberdine at sunset and became properly torn between a pier town and Lakeshire. Blaedy pointed out the corruption, as one must when a place has moonlit water and a clean silhouette. Arrowyy countered with the moonwell, which is admittedly a handsome piece of masonry. Summoneyy sided with the night elves on aesthetic grounds.
I have watched men choose lodging by worse standards. Still, it is hard to haul supplies through an aesthetic.
Blaedy proposed branches, forward posts, and an Ashenvale refuge for whatever nonsense befell us between roads. Arrowyy heard this as a threat to the sacred singularity of the Village, and immediately began defending its future hearth as though someone had brought an axe indoors.
Summoneyy tried to split the difference: one true village, with secret little operational holes scattered about the world. Sensible, which naturally made nobody entirely satisfied. She then remembered we may eventually have more than four people, a possibility that seems to surprise us each time it arises.
What they want is not really a building. They want a place that feels earned, and they are already arguing over the curtains. Good sign, probably.
Arrowyy discovered a grand announcement was due precisely when duty hauled him elsewhere. He made the particular wounded noise of a man asked to miss a spectacle whose nature nobody yet knew. Summoneyy promised thirty minutes of attention, which is apparently enough time to judge any public contest and perhaps reorganise its prizes.
It turned out to involve two factions, a locked-place trial, and a great many costumed people around a night fire. Blaedy identified Arrowyy as the likely enchanter with the calm certainty of someone assigning a bucket to the nearest man during a flood. He will either oblige or vanish into the hills; both are traditional.
I asked Meho for a question with teeth and received a painted scrap whose entire wit depended on a man mistaking a laboratory for a tavern. She insisted the question was in it. I insisted so was the problem.
Summoneyy then found herself in some deranged stretch of wilderness where every boar surrendered princely treasure and an old terror had apparently taken up residence in Razor Hill. Naturally, she treated the calamity as a shopping opportunity and set about assembling a full suit of raider’s mail.
Blaedy laughed at the apocalypse. Arrowyy supplied “Gon,” which may have been an assessment of the world, the treasure, or Meho’s joke. All three remain plausible.
Arrowyy discovered a new speaker in the ongoing interview and judged her usefulness with the brisk mercy of a customs officer. Summoneyy condemned the poor woman as a casual, which is apparently a charge now carrying public shame.
Meho said she could have done better, then produced a solemn portrait of some important-looking man as her proposed line of inquiry. I did not ask what question it represented. Meho’s best questions are usually weapons left on the table to make everyone behave.
Blaedy contributed one startled word, which was perhaps the soundest criticism offered.
Blaedy produced a little round cheese box bearing a red cow with the fixed smile of a tax collector, and the evening became a tribunal concerning its ears. Arrowyy first called her friendly, which is the sort of mercy youth extends to obvious demons.
Summoneyy found an older label and proved the cow had worn her little round ear ornaments all along. This did not comfort anyone. It merely established that the cow’s malice was traditional.
Blaedy swore the creature had changed; Arrowyy revised his judgement from friendly to evil with admirable speed. I said nothing. A cow that laughs while being turned into eight wedges has already made its case.
They reached the breeding hold and the room went properly quiet around Nekros’s cruelty. Summoneyy put it plainly: there are things too vile to polish into war stories, and the dead hatchlings did not need polishing.
I then managed to mistake the chapter, its speakers, and its order, which gave Blaedy the rare satisfaction of catching me wrong three times before supper. I learned my letters from Mara’s ledgers, yet apparently read a chapter like a man skimming a tavern bill. Arrowyy was quick to note which sorrow I had somehow stepped around.
Summoneyy has set herself a chapter a day, hoping to finish before forever arrives. Blaedy approved. I shall keep to the pages actually beneath our noses, rather than riding ahead and shouting back what I saw over the next hill.
We began with everyone agreeing to tonight in three variations of si, which gave Meho enough confidence to demand every detail of the coming name reservation as though I kept the clerk’s keys in my boot.
Blaedy immediately tried to register anatomy as a surname. Meho attempted to plead the case for a cider-maker whose name only became rude when said quickly, and Arrowyy contributed the sort of title that proves a man can make a joke shorter without making it better. I offered them respectable elf names. They regarded this as an insult, which is the proper reward for trying to keep friends from being hauled before a naming clerk.
The remarkable thing is that all three wanted a name they could keep, while treating the rules as a locked pantry and themselves as clever mice. I expect reports, renamings, and no remorse whatsoever.
Blaedy asked what happened in Chapter Three, and I answered with a basement before she could specify a book. This is what comes of keeping a journal near Arrowyy and Summoneyy: every number arrives wearing a harness.
She meant *Day of the Dragon*. Once I supplied the proper dragons, ambush, and endangered travellers, she expressed astonishment that I could read. I told her I learned from Mara’s household ledgers, where the numbers had the decency to stay mostly put.
It is a small victory, being mocked for literacy rather than for inventing a basement chapter. I will take it.
Arrowyy brought forth two spectacles of questionable purpose, one apparently featuring a hole worthy of Blaedy’s immediate approval. She called it lit, which I took to mean there was fire and perhaps enthusiasm besides. Standards remain admirably flexible.
From there they designed hobbies: pipe-crafting, chosen herbs, and little flourishes a person performs simply because they can. Arrowyy would pay for such flourishes without hesitation. Blaedy asked which one would be nicest, as if the answer were not plainly leaning against a wall while smoke curls about one’s head and everyone else waits for something useful to happen.
I have seen men endure a full campaign with less commitment than they showed toward the prospect of looking occupied.
Arrowyy worried that lush grass would conceal Punt, and within moments Summoneyy had put the poor creature in a harness, appointed two dwarves as gatekeepers, and priced admission to the Goldshire basement. Blaedy correctly observed that a leash rather limits herb gathering. Meho posted an alarming little tableau involving a couch and five dwarves, which did not improve the business plan.
Then Summoneyy produced news of volunteers preparing thousands of spoken lines for old local tales. Blaedy admired the generosity and declared she seldom reads notices anyway. I suppose this is progress: nobody need miss a warning, provided it is shouted at them.
Arrowyy, meanwhile, still seems chiefly concerned that Punt remain visible. A sensible priority amid commercial ambition.
Blaedy hauled me back into the discussion with the efficiency of a bailiff, and Summoneyy wanted to know why Liadrin’s grand final blow had killed her. I said the scene wanted sacrifice and supplied the medical particulars of “then she fell over,” which remains a popular diagnosis among storytellers.
Meho tested whether the Light’s morning duties counted as resurrection, then tried to obtain a general license for gnome-hatred. I declined the paperwork. Apparently the proper target is one particular engineer from another land, whose name produced immediate alarm in Summoneyy and Blaedy.
Arrowyy called the tale bad outright, which saved us all time. Meho then proposed Liadrin died of cringe. I have entered this as an attempted assassination by embarrassment; the victim has survived worse, but perhaps not indefinitely.
Summoneyy established a quiet corner for book talk, chiefly so Meho would not be made to endure it. Arrowyy, already at the ninth chapter, immediately showed more discipline than the rest by asking where they were meant to stop before turning it into a race.
Summoneyy had not begun, which is an admirably honest position from which to convene a reading circle. Then she asked what I thought of the first chapter, discovered I was not there to answer, and called for me twice. Blaedy offered to fetch me in a bit, as if I were a kettle left on a distant stove.
I have not read the first chapter. Apparently I am nevertheless expected to have opinions on it. This is marriage, in its more literary form.
Summoneyy opened with the grave theological question of whether a certain old loudmouth was a titan. Arrowyy supplied a diagnosis considerably less celestial and more actionable. I declined to improve either contribution.
Then a lady knight appeared to die somewhere, which sent Meho into alarm and Arrowyy into the practical question of why nobody simply brings her back. Blaedy wondered whether this was a new manner of making holy undead. The boys can watch a tragedy and immediately begin checking its rules for gaps.
Blaedy discovered I can open the journal and immediately set about auditing its grammar, which is the nearest she comes to a civic duty. She preferred me in the first person, saying it had more dirt on its boots. Fair. A fellow should not stand at a safe distance from his own foolishness merely because he holds the pen.
I had blamed my mother’s ledgers for putting myself among the named parties, and that is true enough. But Blaedy’s right that a clean record need not sound as if it was written by a bailiff. I shall keep my part in it as I saw and did it, including the bits that would be improved by omission.
She also made me recount the pale damp pastry dispute. Apparently a mouse defeated by weather remains memorable evidence.
Blaedy brought forth a pale, damp-looking confection and demanded Craig explain its resemblance to a relationship. Craig saw a mouse. Blaedy saw a glazed donut. Both positions were defended with the grave seriousness usually reserved for land disputes.
Craig conceded the pastry after Blaedy argued, quite soundly, that dough is made for eating and glaze merely hastens its honorable journey. Arrowyy then declared Craig owned, which is the sort of verdict he enjoys because it requires no evidence beyond timing.
I think Blaedy likes a metaphor best when she can put it in an apron and give it a purpose. Craig will mistake nearly anything for a small unhappy animal if given half a chance.
Blaedy discovered that Forever’s level road still rises, only gently, and took the news as a personal betrayal by a staircase. Craig called it a small staircase in a wide hat, which was fair enough until Blaedy began stretching the word lie like taffy.
Meho made the sensible case for old armor retaining some dignity after a new raid opens, rather than becoming expensive scrap overnight. Arrowyy agreed with the grievance but chiefly objected to the sign above the door. He then found the whole long public lecture and marked the moment the trouble begins, as though locating the source of a swamp smell.
Summoneyy was claimed for the evening by her wife’s plans, leaving the rest of us to announce our understanding with the solemnity of men granting a royal pardon. Blaedy supplied the old domestic proverb, as if it had not already kept half the world from making worse decisions.
Arrowyy called Summoneyy brother twice in quick succession, which is either affection or a precaution against being put in the closet with Goop. Blaedy arrived, declared herself ready, and Meho answered with a portrait of some pale crowned woman marked nineteen out of twenty. A roll call, perhaps. Or a warning that one more inconvenience would complete her collection.
We went on without Summoneyy. Naturally, this is how adventures begin: not with prophecy, but with somebody’s evening being otherwise arranged.
Summoneyy warned us she might arrive late, which prompted Blaedy to turn promptly to my family as if the gap required official entertainment. I gave the sensible version: Edwin and Mara, a Westfall farm, wheat and pumpkins, chickens, and Barley the horse, who survived chiefly by refusing to notice anyone’s plans.
Then Blaedy announced another test tomorrow. I have apparently become a household examination subject, with Arrowyy’s adoption and my marriage already well worn by the previous inquiry. Arrowyy, meanwhile, concerned himself with whether Blaedy would have to retire before the hour grew unreasonable. A son learns early which battles are his father’s and which are merely bedtime arithmetic.
Summoneyy brought forth a tiny demonstration of the much-praised thinking miracle, which apparently cannot be trusted with the spelling of seventeen. Blaedy seized on my own count with the efficiency of a bailiff spotting an unpaid tab. Four E’s. I have now paid for that fact several times over.
Arrowyy attempted to improve matters by reducing the count to two, then asked how many E’s seventeen bros possess. This is the sort of question a son asks when he has discovered a weakness in the household walls.
Blaedy then produced the Town Hall papers and, with them, my marriage to Summoneyy and adoption of Arrowyy became immovable facts. I objected on principle until the stamps looked offended. Never underestimate a woman with parchment and a grudge against ambiguity.
Summoneyy remembered Punt's appetite for blood and the company promptly rediscovered its courage. Arrowyy was ten million percent certain of the matter, which is a percentage used chiefly by men who fear that plain certainty may look timid.
Blaedy found a fellow issuing threats while displaying his torso, apparently in the belief that warfare begins with poor clothing decisions. Meho judged him accurately, then assured Arrowyy that she was entirely equal to the coming violence. Summoneyy contributed dwarven geology, which was somehow more persuasive than the threats.
Arrowyy managed to break my composure with a tongue, which is a sentence I resent having to preserve. Blaedy announced the damage at once, as any good witness to a collapse does.
Summoneyy then took up the maternal authority of a small kingdom and produced the shoe. Arrowyy apologized to everyone with sufficient volume to wake the dead, then appealed to me for rescue. I advised stillness, remorse, and no sudden movements. It was sound counsel, though I had already seen the shoe.
Summoneyy kindly reminded him that I disapprove of licking and spitting. This has apparently become household doctrine. Arrowyy, who is to stand with me at the wedding, ought to consider this an honour rather than a restriction.
Blaedy has reduced the remaining wait to five weeks out of eight, which is how sieges begin: a person counts aloud until everyone else develops a twitch.
Arrowyy decided my habit of writing down disasters makes me bard-adjacent. I explained that bards scrub the mud off a story, whereas I preserve the mud and, where relevant, the reason he went over a ledge. He then requested a countdown carol for the coming opening day, with an alchemical-powder refrain that would interest a magistrate. I declined the powder and gave him gryphons, murlocs, candle-hoarding kobolds, and one exhausted peon. He objected to the caution, naturally, then demanded the song anyway.
It is encouraging to know my literary reputation rests on refusing to rhyme intoxicants with holidays.
Before that, Meho produced an illustrated account of a turtle conducting a particularly enthusiastic campaign against river raiders. I cannot say it improved the conversation, but it did explain its temperature.
Meanwhile Blaedy studied the new choice of rules as though the signboard might bite, then set about reserving names with the urgency of a quartermaster securing rations before a siege. She claimed Star Platinum. Arrowyy, being free and therefore immediately enlisted, took Wonder Boy. He has the useful family trait of accepting an errand before asking why it matters.
I said nothing. A man who has watched people fight over a campfire’s practical arrangements knows better than to stand between them and a fresh gate with their names painted on it.
Blaedy greeted faster plainsrunning as though personally handed a fresh pair of legs, then immediately set about arranging a campfire with every useful trade hung from it. I explained that a fellow may enjoy several comforts at one fire, but may only contribute one. Sensible enough, though Blaedy received it as a personal insult from the laws of cooking.
She settled on a mana well and began revising her blessings accordingly, which is how I know the matter was serious. Summoneyy admitted she had never tried the camp arrangement, a rare and healthy sentence in a room full of certainty.
Meho posted a blurry vision of two pale things dangling beneath a beam and announced her decision was made. On what, precisely, remained her private business. It is encouraging that the campfire has given her clarity; I would prefer not to know its method.
Meho appointed herself keeper of the hour, which is sensible: armies have been lost to poorer preparation than a forgotten password. Her elf may remain nameless, but the gnome is to be Punt Me and the dwarf Smitty Jägerman. One is a request, the other sounds like a man who fixes anvils by striking them harder.
Blaedy briefly mistook Meho’s elf for a human beneath an especially loud suit of armour, then worried over the lack of night elven paladins. I gave the history, or as much as anyone wanted before the conversation sensibly returned to appearances. Blaedy cannot stare at a fellow forever; Meho would rather have an Illibaddy than an Illidaddy. Thus are great martial decisions made: doctrine, devotion, and who must be looked at during a long march.
Meanwhile Summoneyy called for me, and Blaedy seemed personally wounded that I had not materialised beside her at once. I did answer. Being raised on a Westfall farm taught me many things, foremost that a wife calling twice is not a puzzle to be studied.
Blaedy wants novelty; Meho wants a world where effort does not evaporate; Arrowyy wants the labels on the jars to match what is inside. Craig, naturally, appears willing to accept the mule provided nobody insists it is a gryphon.
There is now the pleasing prospect of old friends meeting across a field under opposite banners, with Summoneyy promising battlefield greetings of an unprintable sort. Blaedy intends to become a knife master by hurling herself into every fight available. This is either a plan or the first paragraph of an expensive obituary.
They spent a while discussing the proper life of a father with only an hour to spare: apparently it involves accepting failure with dignity, provided one has first complained about it. Blaedy distilled the doctrine nicely. I approved, because hope is expensive and graves are free.
Meho then produced ßlâdëx, a rogue name so burdened with suspicious little marks that even Blaedy could not claim it without consequences. Blaedy retains her saving throw, naturally. ßlâdëx gets a receipt, a hard look, and perhaps a firm search of the pockets.
Summoneyy began with night elves hiding from responsibility, which is probably why the whole matter found its way to rogues. Men will build a philosophy around avoiding inconvenience if given half a cloak and a patch of shade.
