The Ballad of Adler Young, Canto 2.5

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>Adler: Yes there are still a few things. You need to clean yourself up. To be perfectly honest, you look like you've been living in a hole in the woods. Clean yourself and your clothes.
>Adler: You're going to need to employ showmanship with your cultists. All the lowfolk you've met so far only responded positively to you when you played along with their odd beliefs about elves

Should I tidy myself up, I wondered? I didn't feel especially dirty, and I thought that my slightly weathered state might convey a certain scruffy charm. Besides, didn't lowfolk think of us elves as wild nature spirits? The rabbit priest (priestess?) I had encountered outside the antglade was absolutely filthy, and that was a respected religious leader! Clearly, they did not place cleanliness next to godliness! Then again, mine was a cult that valued sartorial excellence .. Oak had looked neat & spiffy when I saw her. She smelled nice too .. which reminded me, hadn't one of them - Rowan, or that, that .. OTHER femme I didn't want to think about .. somebody, as I dimly recollected, had at one point called me a "smelly hobo."

That clinched it. Some grooming was in order.

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I pulled my brushes out of Elfintory and got to work, using some water from my decorative basin. I also applied a cantrip to make my green satin suit shine like a lizard's scales. After a bit of work, I thought I looked quite dashing, and my Ixies agreed (those who weren't busy restraining Angela somewhere in the bushes nearby.)

Plan out a grand entrance to really wow them. You have bottles of high quality elven shampoo
Adler: Demand your Ixies build effigies of you with amazing hair around the Dolmen.
Ixies: You have never built an effigy of your father before

"OOH," I said, suddenly getting an idea. "What if you built a large statue of me? That would give a pretty impressive effect."

"With what would we make it, Sire?" Typantronn replied. "And at what scale? We've little more than a day in which to work."

"Twould come across a bit self-aggrandizing," another Ixie pointed out.

"And what's wrong with that?" I retorted.

"Why distract from thine own greatness, Sire?"

"Good point," I conceded. Indeed, why rely on cheap props when it was I myself who was truly great? They should be focused on me, not on a bunch of slapped-together effigies! I needed to think of an impressive entrance to really wow the cultists when they arrived. Their journey through the thick forest would set a tone of anticipation .. then they would emerge to see .. what? Aside from my own majestic presence, what assets did I have to work with?

I had the circle, with its sparse decoration .. a gang of helpful Ixies .. and a bottle of elvish shampoo.

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After a brief brainstorming session, we decided it would be most impressive for me to rise from the weeds atop the central dolmen, amid a swarm of butterflies, and shout "WELCOME!" in a booming voice. I would save the shampoo to bestow upon the cultists later, after the ice was broken.

The Ixies wrangled butterflies and we did a few practice runs. We all had it down pretty good by the middle of the next afternoon.

Adler: You have your work cut out for you.

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"Quick everybody!" I hissed as I heard rustling in the woods, not far away. Suddenly I was extremely nervous. "Get to your places! They're coming!"