"Thanks, Hilgya, you're a peach."

"Yeah, thanks."

"You smell a solid 80% less like beer vomit than our usual caster of touch-range spells! I should file for a transfer."

"Hee hee! He smells fine to me."

Wow, that's downright civil coming from Belkar.

"You can take it up with Nale once we've defeated Xykon."

"I assume if a dwarf was born with the nose of a halfling it would drown itself in infancy, so that's not exactly a shock."

And that's the caliber of conversational contribution Roy typically expects from Belkar. He turns his attention to Sabine instead.

"So, Nale told me a little about why you're looking for this talisman thing."

"Yeah? What'd he tell you?"

"Uh, he says that you're trying to overthrow some kind of evil vizier with an army of slavering beasts that the talisman will give you control over."

"That's about the shape of it, yeah. Fishing for more details?"

"Yeah. Mostly out of curiosity. Most of the adventurers I've worked with in the past didn't have a long-term goal beyond getting rich and leveling up."

"You could say the same about most people! Not my Nale, though… he'd get itchy."

Her voice, which turned fond for that last half, gets serious again.

"You ever been to the western continent?"

"No, is that where your evil advisor evilly advises?"

"Yup. See, the western continent is a pretty crappy place to live if you're not an elf. There's this big, craggy mountain range splitting the continent basically in half, with nice forests to the north and desert to the south. The people who aren't elves kinda hug the desert except along the west coast, and it's super politically unstable. Like, I don't think there's a single country on the continent that was founded more than three years ago."

"Sheesh. What happens to them?"

"It's basically a cycle of conquest. Hotshot wannabe dictator raises up an army with promises of luxury and status, takes over a territory, inevitably gets toppled by the next hotshot wannabe dictator, rinse and repeat."

"So why's your party going after this one guy in particular? Is he especially bad, does he have the resources to maybe stick around for longer…?"

"It's kinda both. See, this puppetmaster guy… ugh, it's getting annoying not using names and it's not like it's a secret. General Tarquin. He's a lot smarter than, like, 99% of these guys. Not as smart as he thinks he is, but he has literally any ability to plan around things like the political landscape of the area and the fact that it's very, very easy to lose control of a territory, which makes him a genius in comparison to the rest. He started out as one of the conqueror guys, about twenty years ago, and barely escaped with his life a year later. But he realized that if you're not personally sitting in the hot seat, your odds of survival when a coup happens go way up. And he's good at manipulating people. So now he basically sponsors tyrants. Does all the work, takes none of the credit, and bails as soon as his latest project hits its expiration date."

"Huh."

Sounds like a lot of political intrigue. Roy's not sure what the army of monsters is supposed to accomplish in that sphere but presumably there's more to the plan than that.

"How'd you guys find all that out? I mean, if the whole point is to avoid drawing attention, it can't have been easy to put together."

Sabine chuckles.

"You should ask Nale about that later. Some of this is kinda personal for him; I'm not gonna spill his life story behind his back."

Shrug.

"Fair enough. So, how long have you guys been working together? Durkon and I have been adventuring together since this one party that we broke off from three years ago; I hired everyone else a few weeks ago."

"Ha, were there issues with the party or what? Anyway, the Linear Guild has been together for a while. Thog and Nale have known each other longest, then I met Nale… Yikyik and Zz'dtri we met about four, five years ago, and that's when we started adventuring. Hilgya's the newest member, we hired her about…"

"Four months ago!"

"Yeah, that sounds about right."

"Sounds like you guys are pretty tight-knit," Roy says a little enviously.

"Well, Nale tries. See, he and Thog and Yikyik all grew up in that part of the western continent, so interpersonal stability is really important to them, y'know?"

"To them, huh?"

"Don't look at me! Dwarven society's got too much 'interpersonal stability,' in my opinion."

Sabine laughs.

"And Zz'dtri's got his own history. If you're asking about me, well. I'm not about to spill everything just yet. But I am from somewhere kind of like that, that's got a lot of the same problems."

She lapses into thoughtful silence. That should be enough for Greenhilt's brain to chew on, enough for him to recontextualize any roughness around the edges he encounters from her teammates. Before the silence can get too awkward, she speaks up again:

"Wow, I've totally been monologuing at you for like ten minutes! And I got, like, heavy. C'mon, tell me about you guys! Something fun!"

"Well,"

Things Belkar might consider a funny story:

• That time he bullied that random monk and threatened to kill someone to get a place in Roy's party.
• That time Durkon almost gave Elan a colon tumor.
• That time he and Haley trapped a ninja in a cardboard box (actually pretty funny).
• That time Elan thought that taking off all his clothes would turn him invisible.
• That time Roy almost got his brain eaten.
• That time Roy got poisoned seventeen times.

Roy makes the executive decision to go first.

"Well, the other day Elan ran out of food, so Belkar here let him have some of his. Which are kickass, by the way. Just for one meal he had roast duck and risotto. With chocolate cake for dessert!"

"What an odd thing for me to do. Are you sure that strip was canon?"

"It was a bonus strip, same as the ninja trap that we made a bunch of stupid Copenhagen interpretation jokes about. I'm sure if Haley was here right now she'd promote the book or something."

"Huh. Anyway, Roy here recently got poisoned seventeen times, and I can do a great impression of his girly screaming while it happened."

Sabine's obvious delight ensures that Roy's protests are insufficient to keep Belkar from performing this impression!

Soon enough they get to a section that merits those Protection from Fire spells Hilgya cast earlier. A couple of fire monsters come into view; Hilgya practically skips ahead.

"Allow me, boys!"

She deals with the monsters in a suitably hammy fashion.

"Okay, all done!"

Huh, she's a cleric of Loki. Makes sense to send her into the fire dungeon, then.

And then:

"Welcome, righteous warriors! You have defeated the sacred tests necessary to access the Fire Sigil. One of you of pure heart may now activate it."

Seems straightforward enough. Roy touches his hand to the sigil and waits.