The birth took almost as long as it was painful. Mamma's screaming was almost as bad as that time he'd knocked the shaft prop and had to eat her out of the cave-in. Eventually it stopped though, and he heard the wail of a newborn. With a broad grin, he now steps forward to meet his little brother or sister, but Mamma's not looking at all happy, oh no. "Eat it!", she commands him as she hands the little bundle over to him, her voice riddled with shame. As Mamma hunkers over on to her side, he is left holding the cutest, just the cutest little trollkin baby he's ever seen.

Ymer looked down at the pathetic shape he could easily hold in the palm of his hand. The huge brown eyes of the enlo stared back at him innocently and one tiny hand grasped his thumb with surprising strength.

The colossal uzdo licked his lips and stuffed the morsel into his maw. Mmmmmm..... crunchy!

Just then, a pair of claps announces the arrival of a visitor. Armwrench, the Priestess of Xiola Umbar approaches Ymer with a beatific smile. "Has she arrived?", she asks, referring, Ymer realizes with a sinking feeling, to the trollkin girl she had bought off his mother for a slave.

Following in the priestess' wake like a shadow, Meela wafts nonchalantly into the room and stares boldly at Ymer with a faintly quizzical expression on her face. He knows this strange uzko only slightly, and finds her mute curiosity very disturbing. What she is doing here with Armwrench he cannot imagine; she normally keeps to the company of her ancient shaman mistress, Angarants.

Ymer looks down at the beaming Armwrench. He opens his mouth and fishes out the chewed remains of the trollkin.

"Momma told me to eat it", he mumbles defensively. He ignores Meela for the moment.

A few moments after Armwrench enters the room, Groobak hurries in. For a dark troll, he’s quite large, and his prominent tusks make him look quite dangerous. He’s doing his best to look like he’s not hurrying, but he’s panting slightly. He offers Armwrench a small bundle. "Here it is," he says, deferentially.

Ymer looks confused at the sudden influx of all these people. He backs away slightly, into the comforting shadows of the corner and absentmindedly starts to chew on the dead trollkin again.

But Armwrench lives up to her name. The low rumbling, almost identical to his mother's, calms him as she firmly prises open his jaw and delicately pulls the small form out. The look of disgust she thrown Ymer's way is almost enough to fell the giant and she turns back to her companions. Handing the lifeless body over to Meela, she unwraps Groobak's bundle enough to check its contents and smiles at him. "Good stuff", she says with a beam. Looking significantly at Groobak's bent form, she lifts him by the chin. "Behold", she intones, "Enlo Queen come!"

Everyone within the birthing hollow can feel the tiny heart stuttering back into life as the priestess gestures at Groobak. "Now", she says.

Ymer snarls quietly at this sacrilege. An enlo as queen! This goes against all his instincts.

"Enlo cannot lead!" he says. "Ymer will not follow Enlo. Enlo for grub or work, not bossing. Dis be wrong!"

Groobak ignores Ymer with an intimidating look and roots through the bundle. He produces a small stone pot with liquid in it. He stretches some leather over the opening and then takes the revived enlo from Armwrench. Cradling it gently he up-ends the pot and puts it to the enlo’s mouth. After a few moments, the enlo begins sucking eagerly at the leather. Groobak looks up with a wide grin on his face. The image of this large, intimidating uzko tenderly bottle-feeding a half-dead enlo baby is a rather incongruous one. He looks at Ymer with an expression sort of like "See? I told you so!"

"What's she doing here?", said Mamma, indicating Meela. "Creepy little thing. And what's this about an enlo queen?"

Armwrench regards her dispassionately. "Surprised are you, Gerta? Expected a normal babe, perhaps? After what you did? Ha!"

"Don't know what you're talking about," the new mother mutters.

"Ha!" the priestess repeated. "Not what I heard. Hoped for something better, yes? Thought to do like you did for this big lug," she gestures at Ymer, who still looks indignant. "Only this time, you'd be clever: bring on an uzko instead of an uzdo. Not the first to try, and not the last, but uz as brave or as stupid as you are few, Great Mother be thanked."

She reaches out to pat the pathetic little enlo.

"For the babe's sake I came, and Groobak to help me. But Meela... well, if daddy comes along too, it's her we'll be needing."

The priestess stares at the young female uzko for a moment, but Meela is still engrossed in her study of Ymer.

"Ah, a strange uz this one, yes, yes. Want to know what Angarants told me? When was Meela was very small, the Dancer in Shadows comes to visit her. And what does little Meela do? Cry? Hide? No, no: she laughs. Marks a child as a future shaman, that does. And now see her..."

Meela grins broadly and produces a grisly-looking fetish from her pocket.

Armwrench shudders. "Not a shaman yet, no, no. Old Angarants has taught her well, but soon a new path Meela must walk, her own path. No interest in dealing with Subere's children has her mistress. Not like this one..."

Groobak listens to Armwrench' statements, and his grin slowly fades, replaced with one of concern and slight puzzlement, and his body stiffens. He looks at the baby cautiously, then at Armwrench. He starts to open his mouth, but thinks better of it. Better not to get in the way of two arguing females.

Ymer keeps up a low rumbling snarl. He is not happy at all. He stares at his 'sister' with disgust and fishes a small bug from the cave wall. He squishes it between his fingers and demonstratively drips the goo into his maw.

Groobak crosses over to Ymer, still cradling the infant. He tries to soothe the uzdo. “There’s no reason to be angry. Look! She can’t hurt you!”

A male Enlo covered with lots of grubs and other writhing, wriggling things comes upon the two Trolls "debating" this subject, and decides to "help" Ymer by needling him about giving in to his sister, and employing one of his Kropa Tradition Charms, one with a spirit of Bestial Conflict, to create an air of trouble between the two. If the other Trolls care to remember, this Enlo has been identified before as Oglari.

"Swems knows, mighty lord troll, that your sister, mighty trolless that she is, shouldn't be pushing you around this way, should she?" he says, stroking a particularly long cave grub that lies over his shoulder.

Groobak does his best to mollify Ymer, but the baby in his arms suckles so smugly that it seems to undermine Groobak’s appeal. Groobak eventually gives up, but turns his irritation to the newly-arrived enlo. “What do you mean, his sister shouldn’t push him around? It is the place of women to rule.” He scowls at the worm-covered enlo but withdraws to the other side of the cave, focusing his attention on the baby. He proceeds to make the troll equivalent of goo-goo noises at the infant, a series of high-pitched squeeks and occasional teeth-gnashing.