[She doesn't wanna go deeper into it than that, but it's immediately what Henry focuses on. He puts himself in the shoes of one expected to torture "captives" and finding it counterproductive to befriend them. He crosses his arms and puzzles over this matter, trying to envision how it might go to be a victim with a benevolent and friendly person in charge of the ministrations.]
If you knew you had to hurt 'em, why pursue the niceties if that made it harder? Chatting up a customer makes sense, but I doubt these people signed up for their daily dose of torture. Nobody in charge of torture's ever said so much as a peep to me, so what made you decide to ask how their day was going?
[Trust Henry to focus on what Nott wants to avoid talking about. She doesn't even know if Yeza survived Exandria's destruction. The storm, or whatever. She didn't see him in the weird pod people room. Not that she could have searched the thing top to bottom, anyway, it was so... big.
Anyway, there's one thing she wants to make clear.]
It wasn't my job to torture anyone. I just told you, I'd be bad at it. No one wants to put the useless goblin on torture duty.
[She takes another swig. Funny, her flask doesn't seem to get any less full even with the heavy drinks she's taking from it.]
Anyway, we talked to them. You have to talk to a captive to interrogate them, after all. I just... talked in secret, too, sometimes. Most of them didn't want anything to do with me, either, even if they knew I was the village idiot. Good goblins don't exist.
Ohhh. So this was the real deal, not just torture for funsies. Guess it makes sense that they'd have you doing that instead of something you were bad at.
[For as much as his speech makes light of the situation, Henry's chewing on Nott's experience to the best of his ability, trying to envision what it might have been like for her.]
I dunno. Torture's kind of awful and painful, so I can see why you wouldn't want to be like those other goblins who like to torture others. But why say good goblins don't exist? You didn't wanna torture those people. That has to count, right?
I don't know. I think I was born as the wrong person.
[She feels distinctly uncomfortable talking about this, especially to a weird stranger, but she's drunk enough it comes spilling out anyway.
She's told the Mighty Nein how she feels, and sober at that. She just, you know... knew them a little longer. Started to trust them.
Most of them are now sleeping on a space station, essentially dead to the world, and her clan is long gone, and she doesn't know if Yeza was saved, and maybe she's getting a little emotional about it.]
Anyway, I've never met a goblin that wasn't just... the worst. So.
[He glances back to The Sport; it's gone on without him and his betting, and the drunkards at the nearby table have become invested in the happenings on TV rather than Henry and Nott, at least for the time being. The King Of Oversharing over here doesn't mind brutal honesty and, in fact, dishes out some of his own in hopes of consoling her.]
Y'know, I used to think humans weren't so great. I've always wished I could be an animal, or even PART beast! Anything. Still do, if I'm being honest. I grew up neglected by my parents, and so I befriended animals nearby to keep me company. This wolf took care instead of my parents, and she came to the village I lived in to visit me when I was little. But the villagers shot her. She had more arrows stuck in her than a well-stocked quiver! That... I made sure they ALL felt her pain. Intimately.
[His tone remains even and cheery as he traces the pad of his fingertip over the grain of the wooden table. It remains difficult for him to vocalize the feelings he had in that moment, though, so he skips over it with a smile pulling at his lips.]
So I thought people were just like that, see? But I met some people that changed my mind about humans. Sometimes the things they do don't make a lick of sense to me, but they're nothing like the people I grew up around. [He stalls for a moment.] I gueeeeess I'm saying that maybe you just haven't met the kind goblins yet. You're not like the ones clawing for carnage, so there has got to be other goblins like you out there, right?
[Goblins are not humans, but Henry's impression of Nott is clearly a positive one – positive enough that he thinks that a group of people like her wouldn't be so bad at all!]
[Nott thumbs her flask, listening to his story. It's true that humans can sometimes be cruel. And so can those with elven blood, and halflings, and dwarves, and gnomes, and everyone. She's definitely seen what cruelties humanity can bring about on its fellows.
It's just different, for some reason, when it comes to goblins. She hasn't seen any sign of "the kind goblins". She's seen Yeza, a halfling with a gentle soul who didn't deserve the pain her fellow goblins brought him. She's seen Caleb, the smartest person she's ever known, a human without a care for her heritage and surprising kindness beneath his sharp edges. She's seen Mollymauk, a complete dick at times, but who wants to make the world a little nicer for people living in it.
She has good examples of the kindness other types of people have to offer. But the only goblins she's seen outside of her clan are the ones that ambushed the Mighty Nein in the night with those ogres and tried to kill Caleb and the rest for no good reason. She has no frame of reference for what a kind goblin looks like, even if she herself is a goblin with little capacity for cruelty.]
Well, if they exist, they're probably all dead by now, [she mumbles amid the bar's general excitement over the game on the screens. Even if she agreed with Henry, it wouldn't really matter now, right? Exandria is gone.]
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no subject
[She doesn't wanna go deeper into it than that, but it's immediately what Henry focuses on. He puts himself in the shoes of one expected to torture "captives" and finding it counterproductive to befriend them. He crosses his arms and puzzles over this matter, trying to envision how it might go to be a victim with a benevolent and friendly person in charge of the ministrations.]
If you knew you had to hurt 'em, why pursue the niceties if that made it harder? Chatting up a customer makes sense, but I doubt these people signed up for their daily dose of torture. Nobody in charge of torture's ever said so much as a peep to me, so what made you decide to ask how their day was going?
no subject
Anyway, there's one thing she wants to make clear.]
It wasn't my job to torture anyone. I just told you, I'd be bad at it. No one wants to put the useless goblin on torture duty.
[She takes another swig. Funny, her flask doesn't seem to get any less full even with the heavy drinks she's taking from it.]
Anyway, we talked to them. You have to talk to a captive to interrogate them, after all. I just... talked in secret, too, sometimes. Most of them didn't want anything to do with me, either, even if they knew I was the village idiot. Good goblins don't exist.
no subject
[For as much as his speech makes light of the situation, Henry's chewing on Nott's experience to the best of his ability, trying to envision what it might have been like for her.]
I dunno. Torture's kind of awful and painful, so I can see why you wouldn't want to be like those other goblins who like to torture others. But why say good goblins don't exist? You didn't wanna torture those people. That has to count, right?
no subject
[She feels distinctly uncomfortable talking about this, especially to a weird stranger, but she's drunk enough it comes spilling out anyway.
She's told the Mighty Nein how she feels, and sober at that. She just, you know... knew them a little longer. Started to trust them.
Most of them are now sleeping on a space station, essentially dead to the world, and her clan is long gone, and she doesn't know if Yeza was saved, and maybe she's getting a little emotional about it.]
Anyway, I've never met a goblin that wasn't just... the worst. So.
no subject
Y'know, I used to think humans weren't so great. I've always wished I could be an animal, or even PART beast! Anything. Still do, if I'm being honest. I grew up neglected by my parents, and so I befriended animals nearby to keep me company. This wolf took care instead of my parents, and she came to the village I lived in to visit me when I was little. But the villagers shot her. She had more arrows stuck in her than a well-stocked quiver! That... I made sure they ALL felt her pain. Intimately.
[His tone remains even and cheery as he traces the pad of his fingertip over the grain of the wooden table. It remains difficult for him to vocalize the feelings he had in that moment, though, so he skips over it with a smile pulling at his lips.]
So I thought people were just like that, see? But I met some people that changed my mind about humans. Sometimes the things they do don't make a lick of sense to me, but they're nothing like the people I grew up around. [He stalls for a moment.] I gueeeeess I'm saying that maybe you just haven't met the kind goblins yet. You're not like the ones clawing for carnage, so there has got to be other goblins like you out there, right?
[Goblins are not humans, but Henry's impression of Nott is clearly a positive one – positive enough that he thinks that a group of people like her wouldn't be so bad at all!]
no subject
It's just different, for some reason, when it comes to goblins. She hasn't seen any sign of "the kind goblins". She's seen Yeza, a halfling with a gentle soul who didn't deserve the pain her fellow goblins brought him. She's seen Caleb, the smartest person she's ever known, a human without a care for her heritage and surprising kindness beneath his sharp edges. She's seen Mollymauk, a complete dick at times, but who wants to make the world a little nicer for people living in it.
She has good examples of the kindness other types of people have to offer. But the only goblins she's seen outside of her clan are the ones that ambushed the Mighty Nein in the night with those ogres and tried to kill Caleb and the rest for no good reason. She has no frame of reference for what a kind goblin looks like, even if she herself is a goblin with little capacity for cruelty.]
Well, if they exist, they're probably all dead by now, [she mumbles amid the bar's general excitement over the game on the screens. Even if she agreed with Henry, it wouldn't really matter now, right? Exandria is gone.]