Watching Tizzy, however, Edwyrd decided that the fear in people’s faces didn’t seem to bother the small demon. In fact, the demon was periodically making faces at people along the way. Most often it was at some woman in better clothing, who would faint when he would leer at her. Maybe, you just got used to it after a while and it didn’t bother you. Tizzy had certainly been at the demon business a long time. Edwyrd didn’t know how long, but he assumed about as long as Boggy, and he knew Boggy had been a demon for several hundred years. Of course, Tizzy was also completely mad.
Edwyrd just shook his head as they exited the wharf and made their way up hill. As they entered on to what appeared to be a main boulevard, Edwyrd once again noticed something he had noted in Gizzor Del. Astlan seemed to have a disproportionate number of really short people, if he were to be politically incorrect, he might have even called them midgets. It was really rather strange. It appeared that something like five to ten percent of the population were really short. Apparently, somewhere along the line a rather severe strain of dwarfism had entered the gene pool.
Edwyrd almost stopped in his tracks at that point. Dwarfism. Why hadn’t he thought of that before? He looked more closely at the next several short people he saw. Beards, axes, these were dwarves! He didn’t know why he hadn’t figured it out in Gizzor Del. Astlan was a world with wizards and demons, why not dwarves? The place obviously operated under some sort of magical set of natural laws; didn’t dwarves always seem to exist in such worlds? For some reason this simple revelation, that should not have been unexpected, almost floored him.
The existence of dwarves just seemed to put a whole new twist into his view of the world. If dwarves existed what about elves? They probably did exist. Actually, why he hadn’t been thinking of this sooner rather surprised him. He had already fought a dragon, why not the entire range of magical beings? Edwyrd suddenly wondered if Astlan suffered from an inordinate number of subterranean caverns and excavations filled with monsters and treasure.
Edwyrd took a renewed interest in people going by. He’d decided he’d look for anorexics with pointy ears. Height would not be the thing to search for. After all, would the elves be the short, traditional Irish Sidhe, or the basketball player Tolkien type? It took him a few minutes, but eventually he spotted a number of different candidates. Willowy type individuals, most of whom had hair too long to see their ears. Eventually however, he found one with ears revealed. Sure enough, they were pointy. This individual was over six feet tall.
Just as Edwyrd was congratulating himself on having categorized Astlanian elves as being Tolkienesque, he saw an extremely skinny dwarf with pointy ears and a childlike face. Definitely not a dwarf, although of the same height. This individual, except for hair coloring, looked exactly like the tall willowy elves, only in miniature. Hmm, apparently the elves came in a wide variety of sizes. What about those other short people? Tolkien’s hobbits? Or were they copyrighted material? Halflings, Edwyrd decided, was probably the politically and copyright correct term. He didn’t really see any; would he be able to tell the difference between one of those and a dwarf? Lack of beard and really big hairy feet, perhaps?
Edwyrd was lost in thought as they wound through the city streets. As a side note, he noted that Tizzy was doing a good job of clearing the way for them. The streets they weren’t on were much more crowded. He looked back over his shoulder. Maelen was still behind him. How would he word this so he didn’t show off his ignorance. Casually he asked, “Maelen, you spent time in Gizzor Del, was there any trouble nearby with undead? Zombies and the like?”
Maelen blinked, apparently taken by surprise by the unexpected question. He increased his pace to bring himself alongside Edwyrd. “Not really, the old temple on the island to the south of the gate periodically has trouble. Also a bit of sewer infestation now and then. There were always rumors of necromancers living in the sewers, but lots of cities have those stories to keep children from playing in them. So overall, I’d say not that much worse than elsewhere. Why?”
“No real reason. Just thinking. What about other, aggressive non-humanoids?”
“Aggressive non-humanoids? You mean monsters? Mainly just the occasional demon,” he pointed to Tizzy. “Occasionally someone would kill off some form of cerebus hound up in the more mountainous regions. About ten years ago, there was a hydra causing a bunch of problems. Other than that, nothing unusual. Most of the real problems, of course, come from people, as is always the case. Most monsters are too stupid to cause too much real trouble, unless they’re something like a demon. Even then, those are mostly the result of some wizard playing games.
