Minotaurs had made up the bulk of the group, with the chocolate-furred bull standing out among his peers. Though the bull was yet to reach the age of 2, his horns were already majestic and long, the longest Calf had seen in the capital. He'd recently heard about new additions to the capital ranks and two factors had garnered his interest. The lineage of the new additions, as well as their former ranks.

They were all related to Red the Fierce's line in some way, and they'd all acquired ranks in the Red Grove military contingents. From what he'd gathered, a young but highly decorated bull had been recently censured for excessive force after the subjugation of a half-being village. His methods had led to an unnecessary loss of precious stock, and thus the Red Grove council had acted, despite the bull being a prodigy of Red the Fierce's direct line.

As a consequence, they'd leave the Red Groves, and with that departure came the loss of all earned ranks and accolades. They would be expected to submit to new instructors and commanders, and only take the field when those instructors deemed them fit and adjusted to following orders. Given how Calf was familiar with all the cadets originally in the capital, there was no question that these were the former Red Grove militants.

He pushed thoughts of them aside and turned to their guide. The slimy old goat was quite large for a satyr, one of the largest he'd ever seen, and strange enough he had quite the collection of battle scars, the most notable the slash across his face. His hair was slicked back in aloe gel, though the curls were too stubborn to be tamed and a few stray licks could be spotted in the beaten bush. He had quite the left horn on him, thick, thickest at the base and twisting up like a dry pod. The right side is what gave him pause, and he resolved to keep a closer eye on this one.

Satyrs were mostly viewed as a nature-loving and conflict-averse bunch, but exceptions were inevitable. The details had been made vague over the ages, but those who brandished a single horn and exuded a warful presence were to be respected, or at the very least, provoked at the risk of one's peril. Such were the stories he'd heard at campfires among the minotaurs and this is what had sparked his initial interest in this sub-group of Satyrs.

He'd found no formal references on why so many people were wary of them in recent history, so when he'd been on an errand for the Senior Historian, he'd stolen half the day in the library to access the restricted knowledge section. He'd always had an interest in knowing what type of knowledge would need archiving in a nation averse to intellectuals, and of the few records archived, what type of knowledge would necessitate restricting access to.

Whether minuscule, whatever he could scrounge in the limited time was sure to be revealing. He'd read through all the obscure references and committed them to heart. He'd also read through the more detailed albeit conflicting records, and taken those in with a grain of salt. He'd found one accounting that came the closest to being objective, and based most of his theories on it.

"The willing were marked by filing the right horn down to a stump as a sign of subordination. They were to forever stand on the left-hand side of their betters. Thus their left horns were allowed to grow, long and menacing as a deterrence to any who'd dare threaten their masters from the left. The right horns were filed to an impotent stump in a show of deference to their handles. They were to avoid offending the worthy in any way, by a grunt or by scent, and were thence known as the monikered tribe, 'The Perfumed'."

That accounting had been unsigned and no other mentions of 'The Perfumed' were to be found in the archives. From the other propaganda-laden records he'd inferred a lot of bias by the victors, the Taurs, on what had caused the conflict and how exactly it had been resolved. Seeing the lengths they had gone to avoid a clear accounting of that history, that sub-group of Satyrs had to have been quite the threat to their society.

He'd come to one conclusion after combining and trimming all he'd read; After defeating them in combat, by a mix of fair or unjust means, the Taurs had subordinated the willing and possibly eliminated the defiant. The elimination part was never mentioned outright but inferred from the previous mention of 'the willing', and there would be no shortage of pride among the powerful so this train of thought seemed logical. That, coupled with the fact they'd now been reduced to a campfire legend and a few heresy incidents over the last century more than guaranteed some massacre had occurred.

A tap on the shoulder from the Warden brought Calf back to the present. He nodded his thanks to Green before turning to face the hall doors in front of him.