"You ready?" Adrian asked Rosy beside him. They were in the management district. Naturally, their discussion with the gryphon elders would be conducted on the gryphon's home turf. As a result, they were standing in front of Gryvus city hall. They hadn't been allowed inside the building during their tours, but now they were being led in without a fuss. This was a negotiation tactic that Adrian was familiar with. A completely unfamiliar space would naturally lead to the visiting party being a bit off guard, giving a leg up to the ones with the home field advantage.
The underhanded tactics really seemed to annoy Rosy. She wasn't good at dealing with politics at all. Most of the things they learned about the gryphon's culture were essentially worthless tidbits to her. "I'll follow your lead." She told him. This was something that Adrian was far better than her at.
While her body had been tempered by so much combat that even sharing all of her experience through the blood bond that they shared wouldn't make them equal in a fight, Adrian's mind had been similarly tempered. He thought in different way than she did, taking things into account that she'd never think twice about by instinct. Even if he shared all of his training with her, she'd still never be able to think that way as naturally as he did.
Entering the Gryvus city hall, they were beset on all sides by gryphon soldiers, as a show of power. Each soldier was holding a large gun in their hands and standing at attention. If Adrian and Rosy hadn't been informed of the existence of guns beforehand, they'd have been very confused at this, but as it stood, they both facepalmed inwardly. 'These gryphons are really going over the top.' Rosy thought to Adrian, silently annoyed.
'Show of force. You know how it is.' Shows of force were useful in pressuring other people into submission, but Rosy had never really put much stock into it, since her own personal power was enough to overturn any numerical disadvantages. The only way to force someone into submission was to actively show them that they were completely inferior to her in terms of strength. Numbers and weapons wouldn't normally accomplish that when she was concerned, but in this case, they needed numbers and weapons more than anything. From their personal perspectives, it should have seemed like Gryvus was capable of a lot more than it actually was, had they not known the downsides of the guns. Now, it just felt like a joke to the duo.
They were led at gunpoint to a large, ornate room, displaying the pinnacle of Gryvus craftsmanship. This room had likely been made as a way of showing off gryphon's technology in case anyone ever came to Gryvus to negotiate, but it likely hadn't ever been used for that purpose. They were probably ecstatic to be able to use it for its intended purpose, though Rosy and Adrian expected the room to be used a lot more in the future, now that entering Gryvus through the mountains wasn't a pipe dream anymore.
Inside the room was a large, rectangular table with two seats at each end, and five seats per side for a total of fourteen seats, twelve of which were currently filled. Adrian and Rosy only recognized one of the faces in the crowd, but they knew who the others were from their research.
At the head of the table, wearing an ornate outfit with a purple lining, was Maximus Chase, the current Archgryphon, and Reese's father. Reese, the only one that they recognized, was sitting beside him, wearing something far less ornate, showing that his standing in the Gryvus community had lowered due to his stance of working with the Resistance, which was incredibly radical by gryphon standards.
Honestly, it was a testament to how bad the situation in Gryvus was that he was even allowed a place at the table here, but since Rosy had now crossed the mountain range twice, his voice held a little bit of sway. Unfortunately, he was the only 'radical' here. The rest of the gryphons here, including his own father, were from old gryphon houses that hadn't changed or grown in several centuries. Their pride was keeping them from growing as a people, and it was high time that Rosy and Adrian shattered it to pieces.
On the right side of the table were influential gryphons. There was the head foreman in charge of the food supply, a large man named Rance Frian, and his wife, who was in charge of distribution. Her name was Tanya, apparently. On the third chair to the right was the lanky man in charge of the production district, as well as all scientific endeavors, Reese's own cousin, Nate, and Reese's other cousin, Bart, who was in charge of military operations. The one sitting on the right side of Adrian was the one in charge of daily operations across the city, Merle Evans. He looked really tired, like he hadn't slept in weeks. According to what Adrian and Rosy had learned, Merle was in charge of a ton of things across the entire city, and he was only rarely capable of stopping and taking a break, due to his mountain of work. Apparently, this was an old office that hadn't been updated since the city was built, and was nearly impossible to handle nowadays.
Adrian expected Merle to be the easiest to convince, since he was feeling the biggest drawbacks from the gryphon's refusal to move forward.
On Rosy's left side were the five 'Great Noble' Gryvus family heads. There was Rance's father, Asher Frian, who people suspected of 'greasing the wheels' to get Rance and Tanya into their current offices. He had a reputation as a useless old geezer, who was excessively hard on his children, and had multiple mistresses.
The other four nobles consisted of a kid even younger than Rosy and Adrian, the 'young genius,' Johnny Tyler was his name, a bored looking, sensually dressed woman named Kaylie Zion, a heavily muscled man, Hal Evans, who was actually Merle's father, and a man and woman who looked to be even older than Asher Frian, and looked like they were about to keel over on the spot. The man's name was Patrick Kale, and the woman was Margaret Geranne.
These twelve people were the only obstacle between Rosy, Adrian, and their goal of convincing Gryvus to add their power to the Resistance's cause in full.