Silver Insanity

(OOC: The deity sounded familiar but I figured Jiga never really paid much attention to Lamashtu or any other deity until Lyra came along.)

Jiga works in a request for a few grapes into her brief conversation. She's never really spoken with centaurs before so just conversing with them is interesting though she attempts to steer their talk towards the split between dwarf and orc factions and what their feelings are about the situation. "It seems like there's already division between the 4 houses. That's bad enough without squabbling within Ht'Gon itself." She pauses for a moment to gauge their reactions and expressions. "Sorry for bringing up politics. I know it's often a divisive topic in itself."

"Well, where we are from you have monsters and you have demihumans. That's mostly the division you're seeing here. Those who believe they should work with the humans and those who believe they should work against the humans." The female centaur explains. "Among us, you have us two (who will have names if they come up again) raised as demihumans, and the other, who was raised as a monster. So, we even have division within a few of the races."

Jiga nods. "Understandable. It's not easy to break old habits and ingrained beliefs. I appreciate your candor. And," she continues, popping the last grape into her mouth, "the fruit. The gardens are quite a beautiful place." She glances over at Rogers, hoping she's not boring him to death. "Ht'Gon is large and we've only begun our tour. If you two will excuse us." Jiga nods politely to both centaurs and turns to the little goblin. "Shall we continue?"

Rogers will take her arm like a gentleman (and somehow manage to do it dignified despite being half her size) and lead Jiga into the fort and into the mountain. "We haven't managed to setup a proper goblin market, and the library was... originally one of those, but one of the first vendors was an Alexandrian, and then the dwarves brought some of their stuff... it was... odd."

He will lead Jiga into a large underground cavern. (Are there any other kind in Ht'Gon?) It is criss-crossed by steel walkways and platforms, some of which have rugs on them to prevent small objects from falling through. There are shelves lining many of the walkways and about 2/3 are filled with books. The entire place is crawling with goblins, dwarves, and many others (few orcs). Some of it is set aside for a continued market, and unlike a normal library, there is a roar of conversation and noise.

Jiga looks around the cavern for a while, having a hard time taking it all in since there's so much going on. "Seems a bit noisy and distracting for a normal library. I'm assuming people can take books out to read elsewhere?" She looks quite impressed with the place, despite the chaos. She gravitates towards the market area, curious to see what sort of items might be for sale here.

Rogers will shake his head. "It's about a hundred private collections. From the market roots, you can trade or peruse in the room. I think part of that is the stress between goblins and dwarves. We don't get a lot of orcs here."

What he says does 'ring' true. The bustle is the din of bargains as rare books are traded and borrowed as people attempt to make better collections. People are arguing the merits of poetry verses prose, partially as negotiation, but... this is a library equivalent of street chess. These monsters, goblins and others know these books really well.

"It's strange seeing so many genuinely interested in books. The Orcs and Gnolls I used to deal with would have just burned them for warmth." She watches for a time, more interested in the trading and bargaining than in the books themselves.

It's about as viscious as any other market you've seen, but knowledge is the commodity traded. You may note that there are none of the shark-head style goblins in this group, but there's a lot of gnome-looking ones, and a few of the others. One of the drow has a prominent collection, and is almost avoided by the others. A few newcomers are simply reading, but more to see what the books contain than anything else.

The library market is impressive but not really her cup of tea. Jiga shakes her head at the strangeness of it all before settling her eyes on the drow and watching the figure for a few moments. "Who is the drow?" she inquires of Rogers.

"Hare. I think his last name translates to Batseer... He's a trickster-assassin... Sort of a bard-acrobat thing. Like Quin, only funny and dangerous." Rogers will explain. "He has quite a bit of cultural books, and a wealth of humor and humor-theory. He likes collecting those so that he can ply his trade in as many cultures as possible."