Once we join up with the dark elves, we have some dwarves who use healing magic begin to treat our captives. Most of them were severely injured, so the st thing we wanted was them potentially dying and losing us our leverage. While the dark elves captured four individuals, our side only captured our oarget.

  As our captives were treated, I started talking with the dwarven leadership and a representative of the dark elves to get a better grasp of our current situation. The dark elves said they took out thirteen other leaders in the enemy forces and captured four of the more valuable individuals who were u the time of our ambush.

  The bit of information robably the most surprising gift we could have asked to receive. tured their king. Not in the sense of a chess metaphor either. We literally captured the king of Rathnd, Besmond III. He's a retively young man, and appears to be in his te twenties or early thirties. That's basically the best bargaining chip we could ask for. Though I do question how good of a king he actually be sidering that only a handful of elite troops actually tried to protect him during our ambush.

  More importantly though, we now e for some form of iation with whatever is left of the enemy leadership. Ideally, we get them to retreat in exge for releasing some of the hostages after they leave. Though I'm not so sure we'll have an easy time with that. For today, we'll retreat high up the mountain to a few hidden locations to recuperate while we wait to hear how badly the rest of the troops who ran interference fared. Hopefully we get some information out of our captives while we have them as well.

  Later that night, I have a few dark elves and dwarfs with me while I attempt to get information from our captives. Ultimately, I don't io resort to torture because they may be bargaining chips in the near future, but they o believe that we're willing to torture them if we want to pressure them to release information to us. So I spent some time stone shaping some torture devices like a device called "The Rack" which is a table that uses leverage to slowly pull people apart, an iron maiden, and a bunch of scary looking tools.

  We brought in individuals one by one, questioned and threatehem, and then when we felt we got enough information, got the one and sed them out. The leaders that the dark elves captured provided us some degree of tactical information like troop numbers and strategies that the enemy was employing, but most of that information the dark elves had already provided us earlier in the day. Ultimately, having a rge amount of the enemy scouting force defect to our side provided us with as much, if not more information than the captured captains provided.

  Last came their King. We decided t him to a different room. Regardless of our feelings oter, evehreat of t their king might cause a lot of problems down the line. To some degree, this is a iation in and of itself. King Besmond himself could teically call off the invasion, but sidering the situation, we 't just parade him out to tell the eo retreat. They simply outnumber us too much, and could attempt something desperate. If the King died, then we wouldn't have the bargaining chip anymore.

  So although I wish this could be the only iation we would have to do, in actuality, I'll have to iate with the enemy army's active leadership at some point in the near future. Regardless of any of that, I wao actually start our versation off in a way that wouldn't harm our retions any further. Rathnd may be our enemy, but smart politics is avoiding war, not engaging in it.

  As he was situated at the table across from me, the first thing that I thought to do was actually apologize, "I am sorry about your arms and legs. I hope you have some way to heal them. War is war though, and I would have preferred if we had bee alone."

  "I suppose war is war. Rathnd has many healers capable of repairing my limbs, though I do not appreciate that I'll o ask them to do so. There is one problem with your statement though, we ot simply 'leave you alone' after you teically started the war, it would be a smear on Rathnd's pride." The King responds.

  "You say we started the war, but as far as we know, we haven't engaged in a single warlike a, unless you mean deing your offer to bee sves to your try on no real legal standing."

  The King chuckles before responding, "No, not that offer, though I would have found it amusing if you had accepted. That was simply a free political bargain. If no offer was likely to be accepted, given your existing political ties, we simply insisted on a 'deal' that was most favorable to us. If you were foolish enough to accept that, then I wouldn't even have to feel bad, since you'd be too politically o uand the sequences of your choibsp; No, the as I'm referring to are your piracy within our seas. Rathnd could holy care less about this small isnd. We have bigger political aims, and you seemed harmless. Then you started active piracy within our sn waters. What did you expect?"

  "Look, we drop the absp; Both of us know that we weren't the ones itting piracy, and you aren't going to suddenly vihe dwarves that we are actually the bad guys. Kao Ostark personally verified that we weren't the source of the demon pirates. Though I'll admit it's great cover for your side of the story. It sounds like most tries already see demons as a purely evil force, so it was easy to break any image that we were different by staging a piracy attack."

  The King's face gets serious aares at me for a few moments, then evaluates the dwarves in the room as well. "Yet only our closest allies actually took up the call of the oldest treaties reted to defense from demons. I had thought it was because the other tries sidered you too small a threat to mobilize everything. I thih might be pying to someone else's tune here."

  The King looks at me like he expects me to plete his thought. When I don't, he sighs, "Maybe you are too politically er all. Rathnd has very little to gain from this attabsp; An isnd in a non-valuable location that we only get an unknown, but likely small number of resources from, and only access in winter? Why bother wasting this much effort on g it? We're primarily a maritime nation, we're ners to the difficulty of nding operations, though I'll admit yours had some surprises for us. Likewise, what do you have to gain from piracy when it was fairly obvious before that you were managing your own affairs well enough, you likely wouldn't even be able to sell the stolen goods. We chocked it up to the irrationality of demons based on prior enters, but havi you directly now I doubt that's the case, though again you seem na?ve. No, a third party seems to be pulling the strings."

  I think on it for a while. This does make sense, if what he's saying is true. "Then you'd have no trouble with a full retreat, so both of us preserve our forces to mahis uhreat?"

  "Well, obviously I'm a captive, have been injured, and I have no evidence of the third party, and I'd have a hard time ving any other try of that notion. The public evidence is quite hard to go against. I'd need some kind of victory to take home. Running a try as a King doesn't mean I don't have to ao the public or nobility, especially after the losses we've already incurred."

  It's my turn to sigh. I 't really disagree with his assessment of his own try, but I 't back down on this either. I'm not going to give them enough to sider it any form of victory. Which means I'd have to send them back with a defeat. "I'm afraid those terms won't work for us, for simir reasons. I hope that whoever we iate with from your side is willing to back down."

  "Well, unless he's dead, you'll probably be iating with my cellor, The Baron of pfur, Darius. sidering he was my political teacher, I doubt his opinion will be much different."

  With that, our versation seemed to be over. The King was taken back to his prisoner aodations, and I went to sleep. It seems like I'll have to deal with The Baron of pfur again, I'm not looking forward to that.