Ch. 57: Gryvus Tours

They spent the rest of the day checking out different parts of Gryvus. The city was split into districts based on what comprised them. Since the city didn't have much space, they made full use of the space that they did have. There was the marketplace, which turned into the production district once you got further into it, the warehouse district near the city entrance, the restaurant district, the resident district, and the management district. 

Even though they weren't allowed inside the management district, the tour still took all day, and they learned quite a bit about how Gryvus culture works. Once the sun began to set, they decided to go back to their mansion for the night, touring the fields and going further in depth with their interrogations of various jobs in the morning.

They spent the next morning down beneath Gryvus, walking the fields where the gryphons grew their crops. Depending on what they grew, each field was set in a different spot throughout the mountains, each spot with its own foreman in charge of the workers. 10 foremen in all. They ended up not going back to the restaurant district thar day, instead eating down in one of the 'field homes' that the gryphons had built down below as a failsafe in case people couldn't or didn't want to go back up to the city proper once their jobs in the fields were done.

These 'field homes' had a variety of uses beyond their original design as a failsafe nowadays. They essentially seemed like employee dorms, holding dozens of cots and the sort inside, but they also held a large kitchen, dining room, and one percent of whatever was harvested in the fields was placed in the local 'field house's' storehouse, where the workers would consume it, saving the time that it would take to fly up to the restaurant district inside the city and back. Each and every worker was responsible for helping out in the kitchen on assigned days, and the 'tamers' who worked in the griffin holes also ate there, and shared responsibility for the cooking on their assigned days. The system fostered mutual understanding and cooperation between the workers and the tamers.

The field that Adrian and Rosy had ended up eating at had been dedicated to wheat, so it actually had two foremen, one for the field, and one for the mill where the wheat was transformed into flour before it was packed into the flour sacks and transported to the restaurant district for processing into bread and the like. Adrian had half-expected for the wheat to go through the production district for processing, but it made sense that they'd do it down here instead, so that the flour could be turned into bread for the workers to eat.

Due to the boring and unbalanced nature of just eating one type of crop, some crops were traded between field houses in small quantities on the sly. Plus, the workers had gotten really good at cooking the bread, since they did it every day. Adrian and Rosy ended up eating fluffy white bread with strawberry jam filling. It was delicious, and Adrian found it interesting how the gryphons worked together for the betterment of the people around them, in spite of their pride. It seemed that gryphons by nature actually were more noble than vampires, since vampire pride seemed to get in the way of their ability to relate to others. 'Is that related to the void magic that vampires produce?' Adrian wondered to himself. 

Rosy just looked at him as she ate her bread, having heard only a small fragment of the thought. Shrugging, she just went back to her food, deciding to forget about it. If Adrian's musings were important, she'd eventually hear about them, she figured.

...

After they finished touring the fields in the afternoon, Adrian and Rosy decided that they'd seen everything that mattered as far as Gryvus was concerned, and spent the evening in their mansion, bouncing their thoughts off of each other concerning their meeting with the gryphon elders the next day.

Honestly, all that really ended up being was a revision of everything that they'd already learned. Since their thoughts tended to get conferred to the other easily due to their blood bond, they'd already had 'conversations' during their tours, and their thoughts had been mostly traded already. 

They expected the gryphon elders to take the position of 'we don't need any help, we're doing fine on our own.' The gryphons strong points were their organization and their ability to gather information. Forming as many gryphons as possible into an army wouldn't be difficult for them, but their overall weaknesses almost balanced this out.

They were small in number, and their abilities didn't increase their physical strength the same as other races like vampires or wulfics. Honestly, all they were good for was running away and watching from a distance.

Now, the elders would likely insist that their trump card, guns, would be enough to subvert that weakness. Guns were incredibly powerful, at close range. But gryphons weren't. By the time that a gryphon got close enough to someone to actually use their gun with any accuracy, it'd honestly be simpler to use a blade. On top of that, guns needed a powerful explosive material known as 'gunpowder' to work. Their supply of this 'gunpowder' was limited due to their limited supply chain. If these guns were small enough that the gryphons could carry them in their bird forms, or had enough range to be used from afar, they'd be devastatingly powerful on the battlefield, but as is, they weren't worth much to the gryphons. They'd increase their survivability at close range, but not by much, especially if they were overwhelmed in terms of numbers.

"I think that we've already gone through everything that we should need for tomorrow. For now, we should get some sleep. I suspect that one of us is going to end up fighting during the meeting tomorrow." Rosy told Adrian pessimistically. Adrian agreed. Gryphons were prideful creatures that hated Rosy with a passion (just like everyone else.) It was entirely possible that they were planning something during the meeting tomorrow. The duo would just have to walk right into whatever trap those wild old birds had planned with their heads held high.