Bumped into Hushmaz

Bhraz and I arrived at Raskna this afternoon after a morning's march down from Zanna.  We ran into Hushmaz who was waiting for us here.  Hushmaz is Harik's military defence commander, and is a heavy-set warrior.  I found his presence on this job to be quite unexpected and, I thought at first, unnecessary.  Of course, he's not really here for the new dig works – he's a soldier and was here trying to make it look something like a co-incidence that he's run into us.  I guessed that he needed to see me – something bad, in a military sense, was going down.

I was right.  He warned us of impending Gurgam trouble in the tunnels up and to the north.  Our friends the Gnaeblin have reported skirmishes and Harik was monitoring the situation.  It's politically difficult to just send a force to help them repel the unsociable Gurgam, we'd need an invitation or we'd need them to be trying to sneak through the Gnaeblin lands for us to just wade into the fight.  The problem we face is taht the Gnaeblin are not a numerous people, and it looks bad for us if a bunch of armed Dzarraf go wandering around their lands.  It's unlike us to be so sensitive to anyone's feelings, but in this case the Gnaeblin live between us and the horrors of the surface.  It's better for us that they're there.

If real fighting breaks out there will be no problems sending a small fighting force – Hushmaz told us that there were plenty of volunteers willing to go out and bust some Gurgam heads.  I thought at first that he might be angling for me to volunteer, but if we're fighting Gurgam I'd more than likely be involved in the planning anyway.  This, it seems, is the message that Harik wanted to send to me.

I didn't see any of that while talking to Hushmaz, of course, I only realized it as I pondered a few minutes ago.  I was too focussed on the job at hand (and how distracting is the presence of gold?)  Hushmaz wasn't going with us down to the new dig and the possible gold seams, of course, but he was hoping to be be here at Raskna waiting until we return.  Our destination was down from here, not up, so we're going to be nowhere near the troubles.  The gold is right in among the new diggings – and our people seem to be going deeper than ever these days.