Well... it sure was quite the couple of months... from start to present.
With Ronan having just scared straight the very wild and Painted Dogs. And maybe scarred the accompanying Stone Crows as well.
Which must make him to be some kind of animal abuser or a scarecrow of sorts.
Regardless, with the Stone Crows rounded up and to be dragged away without any Get-Out-of-Jail-Free cards... he could just about wrap it up.
They were supposed to be the primary objectives of this whole turn of events, anyways.
Then again, he's sort of ambitious enough to have claimed that he'll do so much more and very committed to seeing things through now... so, on to the next batch of stubborn and prideful folk it is.
After bioluminescent and psyche-stirring mushrooms... he got neat stuff like centuries of guano accumulation, snake-milking concoctions, and maybe the copper half of what made the ancestral bronze armors into the rune-worthy magic alloys that they are.
The Redsmiths were almost what he presumed they were, after all... and they also really had a copper stash to chip away from.
Which really made all of this more than worth it... aside from the incalculable gains that his Bronze Order was getting.
And Ronan could only hope that the location of the Tinmen clan that he got from the torturing of the painted dog pack leader was reliable stuff.
With these Tinmen being the tin-forging equivalent of the Redsmiths.
After bending all those fingers, fingers crossed that they hopefully still had some handed-down knowledge that he can pry off them as well.
Cause by then... he'd probably be able to do even neater stuff with authentic Royce bronze... a magical medium in the same vein as Valyrian steel that he just can't seem to reverse-engineer nilly-willy with the exhausted antiques he had back home.
Of course, with this very positive reward to expect... that didn't mean that the path ahead was all but assured.
It also didn't mean that it was going to be easy.
The remaining clans of these Moon Mountains were plotting something.
After all the shit stirring that he and the Order had done in their highlands, it'd be shocking if they didn't do something to respond in a not-so-kind fashion.
And from the intel that he's gathered with his bird drones... many of these clans were no longer satisfied with just fortifying a settlement or being ultra-paranoid, directionless nomads.
Meaning that they're already joining arms and huddling together as a very considerable force... the most annoying possibility that he wanted to avoid the most.
Picking them off by their lonesome groups was akin to easy pickings... but them grouping and grouping would just complicate things.
With their top fighters coming together as well... like those at the same level as the punny Black Panther and that offshoot Stark-esque warg with a Cerberus theme...
But, it is what it is... unfortunately...
Even more so when it's probably going to be guerrilla warfare from here on out. Especially when they're convening under the territory of one of the remaining clans with major notoriety...
The Sons of the Tree... who had tree swinging and perhaps some tree vantage-point utilization strategies...
And that naming really just screamed as some discount version of the Children of the Forest... so there's that to consider.
Of course, there's also the equally major Sons of the Mist to look out for.
And Ronan seriously needs to look out or look for them... cause they're avoiding his detection quite uncannily so.
As if they expected where he'll be looking... just like how they most likely predict when and where mist will appear.
Meaning that without a doubt, they must have some sort of greenseer in their midst of the mists as well.
Which should prove to be very interesting challenges to overcome.
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Of course, while Ronan was thinking so... many thoughts were clashing in the mind of Kassandra, daughter of Kass.
A daughter of the mist living among the Sons of the Mist.
Making her a mist witch that served as a guide for their hunts against the lowly lowlanders.
She had guided her people through fog and frost since her girlhood, and the mists answered her as readily as a loyal hound its master.
But the breeze of the wind on their mists had turned different.
Instead of hunting, they were the ones being hunted.
The low-lying clouds were now their veil of evasion... through Kassandra's visions.
Yet even she could not hide her clan forever.
For moons, she had shielded them from the sky-eyes of the Bronze Order.
Day after day she drew the fog thick, leading her folk along paths where no bird dared fly and no light broke clean.
But mist alone could not halt a man who learned too quickly. And she was getting weary.
Kassandra felt it in her bones that the Young Bronze was closing in. On the others first.
For the visions had come to her... filled with broken, frantic sights of runners who had fled the gatherings under the old trees.
The Sons of the Tree had believed themselves blessed by the forest, yet bronze would eventually cut through them all the same.
It was just a matter of time before they were felled.
Still, Kassandra saw their end... and it was the reason why she thought of the Tree's Sons invitations to be futile.
Their heart trees crying even more crimson than it should.
So... she really needed to find another solution.
Fast!
Or even faster... or it would be the way of the mist next. Fading out sooner than how she dreamed it to be.
For they were up against a runed bronze with dragon blood... a dreadful mixture unlike anything that this world and seers before her have ever seen.
Or was it something else that made that bronze youth frighteningly so?