Legions, war, comrades, revenge...
Who knew how many tangled tragedies lay hidden in the old dwarf's dry account, or how many cold-blooded slaughters had taken place?
Renato had never experienced military life himself. Beyond marveling at a dragon's terrifying power to wipe out a hundred-man legion company in an instant, and at the fragility of mortals, he found it difficult to truly share Balin's feelings.
After that brief recollection, the agitated old dwarf fell silent again. He took the enormous black javelin from his Bag of Holding and carefully wiped every inch of it with a piece of leather.
"So the giant serpent Balin mentioned was actually a true dragon?"
Klauthsura reached out and brushed his hand over a smooth stone slab beside him. Psionic light flashed, and an image was etched into the marble's surface.
Renato leaned closer to examine it.
It depicted a dragon with an unusual build. Its head and neck were smooth like a salamander's, lacking the fearsome crown of horns common to other dragons. Its body was long and slender, like a snake's, but its wings were the strangest feature. Rather than growing separately from its back, they were attached to its forelimbs and could fold against its sides, like a bat's wing membranes.
"Correct." Klauthsura pointed to the dragon's body in the image. "A deep dragon. Although its appearance differs greatly from that of other true dragons, and is even less impressive than that of some drakes, its bloodline is exceptionally pure. According to the Voice of the Elder Brain's tracing of its ancestry, it should be a cousin of the chromatic dragons."
"As for its serpentine form, apart from the innate shapeshifting ability of its true dragon bloodline, it also resulted from adaptive evolution for navigating the tunnel-riddled Underdark."
So that was it.