Journey to the Gnaeblin

It's taken four days travel, but we reached Banneghenn's city, Sanvell, which is close to the surface.  I can smell the cold, thin air from here.  I journeyed up with a bodyguard made up of four of Bekzham's own guards – the Dzarraf fighting force is well behind us, and he was a little concerned for my safety.  He needn't have been, but at least I arrived with some pageantry.

We were met at the outskirts of the city by  one of Banneghenn's senior guards, a large (for a Gnaeblin) warrior who goes by the name Llayn.  He seems to be the reception committee tonight, and will be our host for the evening.  There are a few more Gnaeblin guards posted outside this inn, and they're not just the shiny breastplate “ceremonial” guards – these are the real deal.  Bekzham's guards are returning to the Dzarraf delves tomorrow, and I think they're looking forward to taking the night off.  I don't expect them to leave particularly early in the morning...

For tonight we have been booked into some extremely comfortable accommodation, I've been given a suite – in all my years in the service I've never stayed in an inn where my accommodation had more rooms than guests.  And the beer is free.  And they'll bring it to my room.  This is going to be quite a test of my personal willpower.

Over dinner Llayn and I talked through some of the planned discussions.  We need to re-organise the defences of the outlying towns and villages, the objective is to free up some of the warriors to form a bigger attack force, without leaving the defences too weak.  These people have fewer natural warriors than us and such resources need to be used wisely.  Llayn has given me a few insights into how things are currently organised, and what he thinks needs to be changed.  Banneghenn wants to meet tomorrow morning – he's keen to get cracking and he has plenty of enthusiasm for the job – from what Llayn says he wants to hit the Gurgam as hard and quickly as possible to bring this to a swift conclusion.