Grelzen

While Zivlil is the political leader of the halfling clan, Grelzen is the community's spiritual leader. Like Zivlil, she realizes that the larger the band gets, the less likely they will be able to travel back to their forest homes. Her solution, however, is to leave now, before the clan gets any larger. Grelzen feels that the Crescent Forest is not large enough to conceal the band for long, and she fears recapture by the humans. More fundamentally, though, Grelzen sees the mixture of halfling from different clans as diluting the spiritual purity which in her mind makes halfling life worth living. She sees the nomadic life of the “clan” of Losthome, without a village and without a chief, as a descent into barbarism. Finally, she sees Zivlil's willingness to take up raiding as a tool for survival as a severe wound in the spiritual fabric of the halflings of the band. Grelzen's words have considerable weight in the halfling community. In their jungle homes, the shaman witch doctors are the custodians of halfling culture, the settlers of disputes, and the historians. While Zivlil is revered for his magical and psionic abilities, Grelzen represents spiritual authority. Grelzen has publicly suggested (which is as close as halflings come to demanding anything in their tribe) that the departure be made soon, and she has taken a number of steps to make that possible. She and her handful of supporters have spent their time building extra baskets and skins to carry the food and water they will need for the trek across the desert. Grelzen has also conversed at length with captured humans brought back from raids. She tries to find out as much as possible about the route back to the Ringing Mountains. She has shown amazing patience in listening to rambling human tales about their lives, their homelands, and their culture, searching for any hint of how to ease the journey home. Even the most loquacious source of information, however, eventually enters the stewpot.