"Excellent! You've got quite a clever mind in that head of yours. But here's a bit of advice, not as a teacher of wildcraft, but just an observer of...well, I would call it `dwarfness', but you probably call it `human nature'. In my experience, the cleverest people run the risk of being too clever -- their intelligence can lead them faster than their wisdom, if you see what I'm saying. I know several very smart dwarves who come up with ideas about what they can do, and act on them without considering what they should do, if you see what I mean. You didn't mean any of the dwarves I have in mind in Argunn Lode -- thanks mostly to Kinvol's careful politicking. I'm not the most popular dwarf there, as you may have picked up on, and I doubt the dwarves I'm thinking of would have taken a liking to anyone else in our party either -- well, maybe Alonzo.

"Anyway, back to business. While I suspect that the gods do not particularly favor the orcs, there isn't much we could do with that information anyway. On the other hand, it is assuredly true that the more civilized races have better things to do than clean out the darkest shadows and the most miserable caves of every last orc. I would take issue with the notion that the dwarves are not mighty enough to destroy the orcs, but in any case we do not try to. If they're not bothering us, we will brew beer and sculpt statues and raise families, until they start to bother us again.

"Your third point is well taken, but is an unfortunate effect of our natures, more than that of the orcs. So let us dispense with your first and third points as valid but not in my field. The second and fourth points are closely linked: we do not hunt down the orcs in every thorny fen and slimy cave, partly because those areas are so uninhabitable and undesirable, and that is exactly where orcs thrive and fester.

"And your fifth point, ties in with these two as well -- orcs beget orcs at such speed that even if you overlooked only a score of orcs in some swamp warren, the next season there would be two score, and next year a cave complex would be crawling with them, with a few warrens spreading further afield. I have seen some human towns, and there are humans in Argunn Lode, and I think I can say that you don't have children at anywhere near the rate orcs do. From what I have seen, it seems that orcs always have a litter, rather than a single child -- surely some of those die in infancy, but four or five grow to adulthood. That's just speculation -- maybe they have young so quickly that it only seems like they were all born at once. We should ask Grell -- if he grew up among them, he would know.

"So, we beat them back to a few crevices and holes, and there they swiftly repopulate, and come to attack us again. What does this tell us about their strengths and weaknesses?"

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