Mature Content

“That’s him?” whispered a voice in the darkness.

Three pairs of eyes preyed on the dwarf merchant whistling a song.

“That’s him” confirmed a second voice.

“Look at that smug cursed dwarf” said a third. “Thinking he can come here, do his illegal business, smuggle slaves and only the goddess knows what else, and that he will just walk away with his ill-gotten gains. Disgusting” she said with hate groveling in her voice.

The three of them where Acolytes of Negeé, Goddess of the City State of Negeémiliel, and they were guards in this distant, backwater trade outpost near the edges of the empire of the dark elven city: a forgotten place of shame and exile.

Being a trade outpost, all sort of peoples that crawled in the vast complex of caverns that was the Underworld of Kazrrad visited the small drow settlement –only recently drow as well, after were expelled from the ruins a dangerous band of orcs and goblins that had been raiding the trade routes.

As guards, they were to keep peace and order within the trade outpost: That was when Ivoÿn saw that among the merchants, a dwarf trader of the last caravan –a slave dealer- was selling illegally his captives: while often they witnessed such shady deals, often a bribe or a fine would be enough –depending of their own mood-.

But the dwarf merchant had the nerve to sell among his wares a captive drow slave woman: Drows really don’t have at all a problem with enslaving their own kind, they found insulting for a dwarf to do it.

While their first impulse would have been to stop the transaction in the moment and arrest the illegal sale of slaves –not illegal because selling slaves was outlawed, but was instead to be handled by the Negeémi Slave Commission, which regulated slavery-, two things stopped them.

The first was the thought that if they arrested the dwarf within the market, their own commanding officer would seize for herself most of the impounded ill-gotten gains… and serving in quasi-exile in a forgotten outpost, far away of the capital wasn’t often an opportunity for profit… reason why they would be interested getting the gains –and the same reason of the depredations of their own commanding officer, trying to make the most of their humiliating service in a lost trade market-.

A second, good reason was that they recognized the client who bought the drow slave woman from the dwarf: the mate of their own commanding officer, who was on a visit from the capitol… so probably if they acted in the moment, they would involve the husband of their captain and she won’t be happy with them for dragging her mate along the dwarf to serve as witness.

Then, the higher ranking of the three acolytes of Negeé had an idea:

“We can’t take him here, in the Trade Outpost as enforcers of the law, or will be all sorts of messy… but what if instead, we laid an ambush for him outside of the Outpost? We seize him, and we keep with ourselves all what he have gotten from his sordid deals… and as a turn of poetic justice, we enslave him as well, to make even a larger cut?

It's no crime to steal from a thief… and it wouldn’t be to enslave a slaver, right?”

“Do you really think it would be so easy? I doubt he would go alone in his own”

“In fact, I think he will! The caravan he was travelling with is continuing down to Negeémiliel, but as he had already done business, he have a fat purse and no further reason to stay, and we know the Nortunk Dwarves merchants of the miners guild is preparing a caravan to dwarven lands in the outskirts…

Surely he will learn that too, and leave the outpost to join them.”

“If he is as loaded in money as we think he is… wouldn’t he go around escorted?”

“The guy is cocky. I have followed him. He always goes alone! We can easily take him!”

They nodded and agreed. They took only a crossbow and other a pair of knives for a quick fight at most, not even wearing their battle armors. One of them didn’t even brought a weapon along, but the chains she hoped to use on their victim…

It was only a dwarf merchant, they thought. What problem could give to the three of them?

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Edit 14.05.2017: Looking around my old notebooks found this, one of the first drawings of what will become one of my larger (AND AS WELL; UNIFINISHED: UGHRHHGRH) stories, the "Drow Trio": this was one of the images that would originate that story...

So I reworked a bit the inks, added a background, re-scanned and added a bit of lights and shadows.

Original description below

In Kazrrad, the Underworld that extend below Aiers, the competence for resources and space is savage:

Drows, Black Orcs, Cave Goblins, Trolls and ogres of the caves, Draak Harg, Demons, Illithid, Dwarves and Kobolds, as well other things better not to be named:

This produce a constant struggle, and combat, between the factions:

And from these combats and raids, there are always people with a commercial eye, which have talent for trade and opportunities:

For example, the lucrative business of slavery, of the prisoners of these wars, to be sold within Kazrrad (as slaves or food, depending of the owner), or as luxury items to the surface:

Meanwhile, the Drows preferred to use the slaves they captured, as they always where in the need of them, to keep running their city-states, as well for the need of sacrifices for their Pantheon of Goddesses and Gods.

Here, Three Drow Acolyte from Negeémiliel, and of the Cult of their Goddess of War, Negée, have spotted a Dwarf, that they are about to ambush, so he can become a Sacrifice for the Glory of their Goddess.

What happens next? See here

-they armors aren't really practical, because they are acolytes, and for them, the war is more a religious ritual, rather than any other thing. The Drow soldiers of the City, and rival Drow city-states, say that the motto of the Acolytes of Negeémiliel seem to be "Die Pretty"-