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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Zerith" data-source="post: 5500925" data-attributes="member: 99953">Alexander normally snappy reply was momentarily delayed as he pondered the virtues of the assignment. While having golems doing his bidding  in battle stank of ‘spoilt noble brat’ leading Gnolls to war would imply to most nobles, and commoners alike, that he had a force of will so strong that it could cause savage beats to obey his command; he liked that. “While I cannot proclaim I’ve ever dreamed of leading Gnolls into battle, I also cannot say the idea is not intriguing when proposed.” Alexander began slowly as he briefly mauled the proposal over one last time in his mind; Dellex’s attitude towards the Gnolls had spoken volumes as towards his view of the Gnolls, in short, highly expendable nuisances; so expendable and such nuisances that he was ready to dump them on the first noble brat who could issue commands to them.“So, I would say: I accept. But, I would inquire: To whom would I take my orders from, to whom would I be reporting to, would I need any documentation, what would the primary mission be, how much autonomy would be expected of my leadership, how much autonomy would I have in deploying them, what should I know of the Gnolls before going out to lead them, and will I be needing a runner when I need to contact you or do you have other means you would like me to contact you with? If the former, who should I use for a runner? From your earlier comment I doubt you would appreciate me sending in random Gnolls regardless of the situation.” Alexander ended, actually pleased with the development.Alexander did not know what Dellex expected of him, but he knew, or at least thought, the wizard was not foolish enough to just hand a young unproven noble a battalion of anything, even expendable annoyances, without any kind of over sight, and from what Fallon had said earlier, he suspected the dwarf would be his over seer. But then again, Moondancer had said he was, more or less, working under Martomum’s command: why replace a veteran with a working relationship, who Alexander could only assume could also speak Gnoll, with a young upstart who was brought to Delex's attention by a guard who, undoubtedly, claimed he was blatantly, boastfully, ignoring the chain of command.  Very odd, but he had no reason not to play along, with blind ambition, for the time being; after all, from what he could gaze at the time, he and Dellex were like minded. Alexander would have even hinted at what a ‘acceptable lose rate’ for the Gnolls was, but repetitively decimating the Gnolls would be foolish for him to do twice over: if he got the lot of them killed he could be seen as incompetent after the war and, more importantly, they could turn on him if one noticed he was taking too many risks. Every thing worked out better, for him, if the gnolls got out of the war mostly intact; that said if he found a reasonable opportunity to use them to cripple a superior force of Treylor, even at withering losses, he would not hold his hand. If all other things are equal, the army with the more ruthless commander was the one most likely to claim victory: to the Victor gos the spoils.</blockquote>

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