Ch. 56: Gryphon Culture

After Rosy realized how guns wouldn't be very useful in the near future, she didn't want to stay at the blacksmith for much longer. As far as it went, guns were an incredibly dangerous idea. Letting the greater population of the planet learn of the sheer destructive capabilities of guns would eventually end up with the black powder that the guns required in order to work, eventually being reproduced and used for war on a massive scale. If they stayed in use here at Gryvus, and only Gryvus, then that would be perfectly fine.

But guns would allow for a normal person to kill without training at all. Only skill like Rosy's would allow an individual to dodge a tiny ball flying toward them at the speed of sound, after all. The scale of warfare would instantly increase tenfold. Adrian didn't want these things to ever be used outside Gryvus, and once Rosy understood his thinking, she agreed, dropping the issue of guns in its entirety with a white face at the implications of the destruction that the delicate, powerful weapons could cause. 

The only good point of using guns, would be that they'd increase the chances of the Resistance's forces being capable of winning, but only if Noctus didn't have any mages strong enough to disable them, or warriors fast enough to dodge them.

But after the bloody war was over, the secret to producing these weapons would eventually get out. If they kept these weapons in Gryvus, it would take the rest of the world literal centuries to catch up enough to have their own guns. In the end, that would end up for the best, the duo agreed.

After leaving the blacksmith, the two spent the next few hours wandering around the marketplace, looking at everything that caught their eye. Just as they said they would, they found their envoy when they were finished looking around. He'd spent the entire time frantically searching the marketplace in vain for the couple's presences, alternating between his human and bird forms for better coverage.

As a result of that, they needed to rest another hour or so before his stamina had recovered enough to show them anywhere else. After the envoy could walk again (and had gotten over his little panic attack), they had lunch.

"Just fruits and vegetables?" Rosy asked, looking at the food in front of her. The envoy had taken them to the 'diner' district of Gryvus. They were currently seated in the back room of a small restaurant titled "High Dining."

"Yes. Gryvus grows all of its food on the mountain ranges nearby. We have a pulley system attached to the support beam that you climbed to enter the city. It allows us to transport a large amount of natural-grown fruits and vegetables to the warehouse district in the western part of the city. From there, it's distributed to the diner and market districts as necessary." The envoy explained.

"So every bit of your food is grown on the mountains at the foot of the city?" Adrian wondered aloud.

"Yes, sir. Is there a problem with that?"

"What's your consumption intake?" Adrian asked.

"Roughly half of the food in each warehouse every day goes to the dining district. Every single gryphon eats there for at least two of every meals unless otherwise occupied. Half of the remaining goes to the marketplace, where gryphons can exchange money for them. Generally, they're taken home for snacks and the like." The envoy explained, not really answering the thought behind Adrian's question, which was an answer unto itself.

Gryvus didn't keep much of a stockpile when it came to food. Based on its geography, Gryvus was in an interesting place, capable of growing food all year round. The problem with that was, they didn't need to bother keeping a stockpile for winter. It was an entirely unnecessary concept for them.

If the armies at Noctus managed to occupy the 14th mountain ring, the gryphons would be incapable of supplying their city with its own food, and since quite a few gryphons weren't capable of flying long distances, they wouldn't be capable of fully evacuating. They'd be sitting ducks, even if nobody destroyed the support that held half of their city up.

"How much food do the griffin creatures at the 13th mountain range consume?" Adrian asked the envoy. 

"You remember those things? In order to ensure that they keep their feral instincts, we keep a fairly hands-off approach when it comes to their growth."

"You don't help them at all?" Rosy asked, curious.

"Not quite that hands-off. We have a group of people called 'tamers,' who spend time with griffins in their bird forms. Their job is to ensure that the beasts can remember the scent of us gryphons. Even if we were in our human forms when we went over there, the beasts will never attack a true gryphon, because they relate our demi-scent with the comforts of a parent." The envoy explained, "In fact, there was a group of tamers in the area when you passed the griffin nests this time around. One of them got slightly injured when the griffin beasts went wild, in fact."

"Sorry." Rosy apologized.

"Not a big deal. Taming is known as a pretty dangerous profession, anyway." The envoy placated her.

"So... these tamers feed the griffin beasts?" Adrian asked. He mentioned that the tamers only interacted with the beasts in bird form normally. That didn't add up.

"No. The younger griffin beasts are fed by our tamers in order to form a bond between them and us, so that they recognize our scents when they grow up. Meanwhile, we breed dangerous pantherions on the plateau above the griffin beasts for their consumption. Since the pantherions are incredibly difficult to subdue, the griffin beasts grow rather ruthless as they get older, and get a lot of combat experience in the process." The envoy explained. Rosy went silent at that, remembering her last journey there. She'd killed so many pantherions back then, it'd definitely had an impact on the griffin beasts' food supply.