The way people thought depended on the kind of people they were.
Someone with a dark heart naturally tended toward darker thoughts, while someone with a sunny disposition would not assume ill intent when judging others.
When something happened, a dark-hearted person might suspect the other party had some ulterior motive, while an optimistic person would never think that way.
Rex was certainly no optimist. There was darkness in his heart, and when he encountered things, his thoughts tended to take a somewhat cynical turn.
He assumed the worst of these gnomes. Lately, after all, they had been demanding resources at every turn. Resources were all they ever talked about, as though they had become obsessed. Under the circumstances, Rex could not help entertaining such suspicions. The recent developments in the Blade's Edge Mountains might well have had a great deal to do with the gnomes. To him, their desire for resources seemed far too urgent-urgent enough that they might do anything.
These were merely Rex's private, malicious suspicions. Naturally, he would not voice them, but verifying the situation was perfectly reasonable. He spoke first, asking Tirion Fordring, "Have you sent anyone to investigate what's happening in the Blade's Edge Mountains?"
"Have the ogres been making any unusual moves?"
"And what about the gronn? What exactly have they been doing there?" Rex's tone grew heavier as he spoke. To him, even if every ogre clan in the Blade's Edge Mountains united, they would still pose less of a threat than the gronn.
The ogres in the Blade's Edge Mountains were different from those elsewhere. Every one of them was a slave to the gronn. Yes, a slave.
All the ogres in the Blade's Edge Mountains had been conquered by the gronn and reduced to slavery.
The gronn were monstrous beasts