Renato walked down the street. Half-Drow occasionally poked their heads out of the stone houses on either side, only to shrink back in fright as soon as they spotted Tristana.
Most of the Magic Lamps along the road were broken, left unrepaired, and only flickered occasionally.
The air smelled damp and musty. According to Tristana, a nearby Underground Lake filled the air of the Commoners' District with moisture.
To Renato, these Drow commoners' neighborhoods were no different from the outer-city slums of Fried City. Aside from Samoriel City's better sanitation compared with human cities on the surface, its urban planning was just as much of a mess.
The alleys twisted and turned without any rhyme or reason. Stone houses of uneven heights lined both sides, some leaning crookedly against one another like condemned buildings that might collapse at any moment.
As they passed through a quiet, narrow alley, several masked thugs toying with daggers spotted a priestess of the Nightwind Family from afar and scrambled over a wall to escape.
Renato relaxed the fingers of his left hand, abandoning his gesture. He had wanted to try using the Gish Cloak's Misty Step in actual combat, but since they knew better than to cause trouble, he could hardly start slaughtering them on a whim.
As Tristana led the way, she explained the "laws" of Samoriel City to Renato.
"Although the Goddess encourages us to weed out the weak and leave only the wisest and strongest, slaughter and sacrifice without any rules would only reduce our great city to ruins and scatter the Drow like wild beasts. That would displease Lolth."
"So, to preserve as much of the city's strength as possible to carry out the Goddess's decrees, all the nobles jointly established a set of rules at the Demon Queen of