The heavily armed Drolls encountered thick underbrush and many defenders of the forest, but few Drelves. A solitary tree herder named Orange Julian met them by Lovill’s Creek, and the usually pristine waters rapidly filled with the Drolls’ dark ichors. The massive tree herder hurled boulders with its large branches and flailed wildly with its lower limbs. Kiennites fired many arrows into the tree herder but their missiles barely penetrated Orange Julian’s thick bark. Drolls attempted to get at Orange Julian’s trunk with their axes but the tree herder effectively swatted them away with its lower branches. Rambling bramble bushes, orange triffids, and shrinking violets assisted the tree herder.
Shrinking violets were very mobile little bushes with the ability to dramatically reduce their size. Some Drelvish scholars thought shrinking violets were really disguised tree sprites, but little evidence supported the hypothesis. Shrinking violets minimized, sneaked into the enemies’ ranks, removed arrows from quivers, loosened scabbards and pant ties, tied shoelaces together, crawled up enemies and scratched their eyes with little branches, and irritated enemies’ noses with pungent sulfurous oils. Droll and Kiennish warriors embroiled in battle and hand to hand combat found empty quivers, fallen swords, and dropped trousers. Wolf-faced warriors tripped over their shoes, found mote in their eyes when facing an enemy’s blade, and experienced the olfactory sensation of a large mooler passing gas after eating onyums and garlic beans. Shrinking violets were too few to sway the fray.
benjamintowe 