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134<br />
harshly. Left unchecked, such beliefs might weaken the<br />
Sulzthul, leaving them open to conquest and enslavement<br />
once again. When the Sulzthul first contacted other drow<br />
in the years after their enslavement by the aboleth ended,<br />
an effort by priestesses of the Dark Mother to spread the<br />
faith very nearly led to war and certainly put an end to all<br />
efforts to re-establish relations for several decades. <strong>The</strong><br />
Sulzthul, to this day, will not deal directly with any agent<br />
of the Dark Mother.<br />
Slavery<br />
<strong>The</strong> Sulzthul do not tend to practice slavery. Many assume<br />
this is a result of the long millennia they spent enslaved by<br />
the aboleth, but that supposition is not true. <strong>The</strong> Sulzthul<br />
abstain from slavery for far more practical reasons.<br />
<strong>The</strong> first of these is that they do not trust anyone, not even<br />
a slave, with knowledge of where they make their homes.<br />
<strong>The</strong> second is that few intelligent races can survive in the<br />
deeps inhabited by the Sulzthul.<br />
<strong>The</strong> only exception to this is the breeding cave, a common<br />
feature of any Sulzthul settlement of any appreciable<br />
size. Comprised of both sexes, but with females more<br />
common than males, these are Sulzthul who proved unable<br />
or unwilling to contribute to society, and were given over<br />
to the breeding caves by their families. This is done as<br />
<strong>The</strong> wizard Terlessa stopped reading and looked up in surprise at Lyrgern.<br />
‘Lost Tribes and sub-races? I’ve never heard of such things among the drow.’<br />
‘Is that not why you contacted us?’ Lyrgern asked blandly. ‘To discover those things about us you do not know?’<br />
‘Well, yes,’ she admitted, momentarily taken aback. ‘But you yourselves are but a sub-race of elves, are you not?’<br />
Lyrgern studiously kept his face calm, though the anger boiling up in him at the foolish cow’s words scratched and clawed<br />
behind the mask of his features, struggling to break through and show itself. He thought for a moment of the dagger at<br />
his belt before turning his attention back to the human sitting before him, blissfully unaware of the depth of her insult.<br />
‘We do not consider ourselves thus,’ he said, his voice a bit less bland than before. ‘As you wish to know more about<br />
drow, I should inform you that we consider being referred to as a sub-race of the Betrayers a rather deadly insult.’<br />
‘I see,’ she responded, turning back to the book in her lap. ‘Thank you for the information.’<br />
punishment, obviously, but also in hopes at by providing<br />
pleasure and procreation to the rest of the Sulzthul, the<br />
family’s miscreant child may finally be contributing<br />
something worthwhile.<br />
Anger clawed again at Lyrgern’s features, but he schooled himself to calmness and ignored the thoughts of the dagger.<br />
He had his orders, he would carry them out. Such was the path of the Hidden Blade.