Kobolds: An Overview

By Frank Gori

Kobolds were first created when a pair of warring dragons (traditionally told as a red dragon and an iron dragon in a deadly lover’s quarrel) dueled one another across the Fertile Lands. When dragon blood mixed with the seeds of the Nameless still in the soil, the firstblood Kobolds were born.

Kobold elders remind younglings that Kobolds dwell in the earth because it is from the Earth they came. Dragons are their mother-kin and Kindred are their brother-kin though both are flawed.

The firstblood tribes were powerful half dragons and soon began a campaign of sneaking into dragon lairs and taking their eggs. The eggs were hatched and the resulting hatchlings killed and bled into the soil making yet more kobolds of every color. The Kobolds of hatchling-blood were smaller and less dangerous then their first born kin and soon subjugated.

A generation of dragons saw their clutches stolen and united briefly to destroy the Kobold race. Dwarven clans still see it as their duty to kill any kobolds who trespass Dwarven lands. Kobolds in turn slay Dwarves above any other foe. The Great Slayer War succeeded, to a point. The firstbloods, who killed hatchlings, were destroyed, but the hatchling blooded generation proved to be more adaptable then their siblings. They bred fast and in clutches, matured rapidly, fled from battle, and learned to master stealth and traps. Those who hunted kobolds soon came to regret their chosen profession and the hostilities eventually ceased, for a time.

Knowledge is a tricky thing, though and the secret of creating Kobolds was not forgotten. Eventually an arrogant gold dragon called Midarious carelessly spent the lives of her dwarven servitors in a destructive war with a blue. She managed to capture her rival after a year-long siege. Midarious coveted her rival’s keep but had no dwarves left to defend it, thus she decided to get creative.

Midarious bled her rival carefully and flew to the Fertile lands. Another tribe of kobolds were born. Realizing she needed servants more loyal to her she bled herself, creating another tribe to rule the first. She enjoyed watching her blood rule her rivals and decided she wanted more. 

Midarious’ Kobolds went forth and gathered hatchling blood kobolds and interbred them making a hybrid race from her offspring and the hatchling kobolds. As their numbers swelled she began enslaving dwarves form other dragon clans and driving her rivals out of an ever increasingly wide swath of territory.

Weaker dragons, dissatisfied with their lot in life, soon swore in to Midarious’ banner and made more kobold firstbloods. They instructed them to mix with hatchlings until the present Kobold race was created, over the course of a score of years. Kobolds have elaborate tales about each of these dragons and their individual blood ties to them. 

A short brutal war followed that saw the Dragon elders gathering most of dragon kind against the Midarious Rebellion. The social order of dragonkind was threatened as Midarious twisted her blood and magic to make all manner of horrors from tatzlewyrms and drakes to peludas and hodogs.

Midarious was defeated and her minions slain or scattered. The Rite Of Dra-keth was her punishment which weakened and tormented her for hundreds of years. It is sometimes whispered that her vanity and arrogance pleased Maries and he sent one of his clerics for her to consume. The sacrifice bestowed his kiss and soothed her suffering behind the icy chill of indifference.

Sometimes referred to as The Revenge Rebellion, Midarious came back to her senses during the millennial hibernation which was also during the rise of the Marian Empire. She no longer had her wings; her magic and breath tormented her with Bliss and Despair, but she was still strong  and powerful. She helped the elves conquer when it pleased her, but mostly she gathered kobolds and had them scour the land for draconic keeps to assault killing dozens of sleeping dragons in thirst for vengeance.

Before the Kindred rose up, and before the dragons reawakened, she bounded north. Some say she found Maries’ icy embrace and is frozen with him, at his feet. Elves sometimes refer to her as the subjugated lover, others as Maries’ favorite pet, neither of which sits well with Kobolds.

Chieftains of Kobold tribes sometimes carry a wing scale of Midarious. Warrens often have a golden shrine to her, and a shrine to the Nameless. They are regarded as mother and father to the present race of Kobolds. Those Kobolds born with golden scales are treated as rulers and trained by the ruling caste.

Present day Kobolds are widespread but insular and rarely interact with the other races, sticking to their warrens. The social structure of most warrens is caste based, with scale coloration being a determining factor in one’s social standing and occupation. Each warrens has slightly different castes based on the oral traditions of the tribe therein, which occasionally leads to intertribal warfare.

The resulting offspring from Kobold that breed across caste lines are called Mudscales and are the lowest caste and generally only fit to clean the night-soil of their betters. Those that dare leave the tribe and warrens to strike off for the greater world are splinterscales and regarded as little better than mudscales.

Splinterscales generally head for Hub and attach themselves to Kindred neighborhoods. The transition is often difficult as the population diversity and attitudes of outsiders is extremely strange to the newly emerged splinterscale. Hiding remains an instinct and Kindred reactions are highly individual.

Reptile races like the Lash-ti-nowish and Geato Abira are given a measure of trust and respect. This is especially true of the lizard-women for whom most kobold men find attractive, though unattainable. Lizard-women for their part recognize the value of Kobold allies. Lash-ti-nowish enjoy the kobold sense of humor which is generally derogatory to mammals. The Lash also enjoy price gouging the insular tribes which won’t likely look for an alternate trading partner. 

Kristog and Kindred are tolerated. Kobolds like the song of the Krishtog and at least they aren’t mammals. Kindred and Kobolds share a father in a way, and are therefore a minor exception to the Kobold's general distrust of mammals.  Humans and Gren aren’t to be trusted. Humans try too hard to adapt, and Gren, while properly sized, try to control the Fertile Lands which the Kobolds regard as their fatherland. Dwarves and Elves are the Kobold's blood enemies. Dwarves actively try to purge the Kobold race from time to time.  As to the elves, Maries took away their mother and slew their father, his children are not friends.

The Winding Road: A Compentent Guardsman

by Frank Gori

From the moment Lazeron opened Dab’s door and an alarm filled the building, Malleck had been scrambling. He gave orders while his mind wrestled with the situation. The group needed him to give orders, to keep the illusion of control. Panic was something they could ill afford.

Mal rattled orders instinctually: “Free every prisoner on the floor and gather any weapons and uniforms you can find. Capture any guardsmen that look like officers and kill the grunts.” The prison was the kind of trap you didn’t see coming until it was too late. Extra prisoners were extra bodies. Bodies that could provide the group with more force and bodies that in all honesty were expendable.

Dab was in the lowermost basement of the five in the facility. Access to each basement was secured with an iron-barred, reinforced door with stout braces. The ground floor had a portcullis, and the whole facility had about double the expected guardsmen.

The new guards proved to be a double edged sword to Mal’s plans.  The extra bodies employed by the enemy made getting in without opposition possible. New faces weren’t suspicious, and the honeypot trap set by Bellani the night before procured the team uniforms. Now however, those new faces were going to be trouble on the way out.

The liberated prisoners proved to be both a help and a hindrance in getting out. Several of the prisoners were prominent members of other guilds, or foreign visitors. There came a point where Malleck expected a scandal in every cell.

Malleck found and freed an elderly Orc Blacksmith who had been imprisoned for over a decade, a Kristog bard who had once filled taverns and concert halls in the city, a lizardwoman cleric, and they were even insane enough to have another Mage. Malleck had found at least half a dozen possible sparks for a guild war, which told him something else as he captured level by level: this was too easy.

Even the trap on the third basement which released over a hundred zombies and skeletons in relatively tight quarters wasn’t quite deadly enough. Of the seventy souls he liberated, about two dozen fell to that trap. Without Lazeron’s magic there would have been many more dead, but it was still too easy.

The guardsmen fell back too quickly and orderly. The men must have had orders to merely delay the escape. Aside from the trap the guards only seemed to commit to stopping the prison break at a couple bottleneck choke points. Zool and Bellany made those encounters costly to the guards, the design of the prison made those choke points costly to Mal.

When they reached the portcullis at the top Mal understood.

Perfect spot to set up archers or a magic user, or they could have rigged a deadfall to bury everyone. Instead Mal found a lone guardsmen with  resolved look on his face and his hand on a lever contained in an opened lock box.

“Listen, you don’t need to die today. Just let us out and you’re free to go or you can join us, but I warn you: Try to pull that lever or act against us, and I’m going to order Laz here to immolate you,” Mal stated in a calm voice.

The guard looked at Mal and smiled a half-hearted smile, “I pulled the short straw.”

Mal calculated the situation a little differently in the moment the guard spoke. Based on his posture, the man was holding the lever up. This was a mechanical trap of some sort, already triggered. Killing the guard would set it off.

The guard was also standing inside a circle half inscribed on the floor half up the wall. A simple act of will revealed strong warding magic.

“Whatever that is, I can tell that you will die as well. That doesn’t need to happen. I can prop that lever up,” said Mal, adding a touch of magic to his words. Alas, the guard’s eyes remained clear, and he seemed to shake off Mal’s words.

“I pulled the short straw: Make peace with your favorite god. We’re all going to die soon,” the guard replied.

Mal pressed forward, “I can tell you don’t want to die.”

The guard replied, “Of course I don’t! But I believe in something… I pulled the short straw so I’m going to do it.”

Mal queried, “Then why haven’t you?”

 Another alarm went off and the guard smiled as he replied, “I was waiting for my friends to get out.” He let go of the lever as a purple fire enveloped him. The mechanical noise of shifting gears strained and plates in the floor shifted breaking the circle.

A dagger darted through the air, jamming the lever, but the dagger snapped right out almost immediately. Magical missiles of force energy slammed into the guard to seemingly no effect.

“Run,” Mal shouted as he turned away and followed his own order.

The guard screamed, as his features began to rapidly shift. Bones cracked and flesh was torn, revealing scales the color of polished iron. The man’s body contorted grossly as he gained size and mass. Within a matter of seconds, the man was twisted into a rather large dragon.

Mal had spent those few moments running, as did his immediate companions. Some of his liberated prisoners had not, and were subsequently caught in the first blast of fire. A blast of cold soon followed, and then a hammering sound.

A quick surveying glance told Mal he had lost another seven or so men, but none of the folk he had come in with.

“Laz, tell me you can do something here,” Mal said in a pleading tone.

“I can buy us time,” Laz said, and began casting.

A wall of iron, a wall of stone and a wall of force followed.

Laz made the motions of casting something else, but twice seemed to fall into a violent and confused haze. Mal knew despair when he saw it; Laz had been pushed too far.

Laz bought them time, it was going to have to be enough. They’d have to find another way out.

Roughly forty pairs of eyes were on Mal. The dragon guard’s hammer-shaped tail was smashing away at the portcullis in a steady rhythm.

“I’m open to suggestions…”

Secrets of Desylinn: The Five Gifts (the Creation of the Dwarves)

By Dominic Ford

Long ago, when Dragons walked the empty world alone, they began to struggle mightily to find their place in this vast world. With so much to explore and so little to do, the Dragons began to grow restless. As the clans grew and the younger dragons began to mature, they began to squabble with each other. This led to a variety of inter-clan struggles, often resulting in egg stealing and ritualistic dueling. The Elder Dragons watched this with fear and trepidation in their hearts, and knew they had to intervene before one Dragon forgot their divine heritage and killed another. The Elders convened at the First Forge, and discussed the various issues the clans had with each other. After days of petty squabbling, they finally concluded that they needed the assistance of Tiala, the mother of Dragons.

Each Elder brought forth a small token of their clan for their mother, and Tiala rushed quickly to help her children . She listened carefully to their concerns, and then at the end presented them with the First Gift, which became the Lost Gift. This was the Song of Dreaming, the Dragon Horn of Sleep. Simply blowing the horn played a sweet lullaby which sent the listener to a long sleep filled with vivid dreams. The council agreed to only use the horn against the worst offenders, but as time passed their resolve slowly slipped. Finally a young Dragon was sentenced to a long sleep for building a wall a few feet higher than his older neighbor desired. In a fit of rage the young Dragon seized the horn and blew it long and hard, sending the entire council of Elder Dragons into a deep sleep. When they awoke, the horn was gone, lost forever. Thus was the First Gift received, abused, and lost.

The Elder Dragons, again at a loss and now without even the basic punishment of the Horn, turned to their divine father, Bahu. Their gifts woke him from slumber, and he immediately determined that their conflict stemmed from nothing more than boredom. Bahu developed and taught each clan secret methods for creating a strong material, unique to each clan. This formed the Second Gift, which is the forgotten forge lore. This was the True Secret of Fire, purest Dragon Steel. Naturally, the clans were far from content with their own secrets and sought that of the other clans. Each clan engaged different methods, varying from the Iron hiding in forges and Gold seducing Masters to Blue scrying for secrets and Silver torturing those who opposed them. This only served to increase the inter-clan conflict, as each clan had new reasons to be angry with the other clans.

Worried and unsure of what to do next, the Elders once again went to Tiala, seeking her wisdom once again. Tiala was greatly displeased to see her children again, and flew south, across the great plain and beyond the Southern Lands, on the border between the Dragon mountains and the great birthing place, which had become the Dragon Sands. Here she diverted the winds and dried the land, and created a desert valley trapped by high mountain wells. She called for the Elders, and they came, one at a time, to answer their mother. Tiala showed them this new place, the Third Gift, the Dead Lands, and promised the Dragons this would be a place of solitude, where they could think and consider their actions. Each Elder, save the White, waited within the confines of this desolate valley until the flesh rotted from their bones and their power infused the sand, the air, the mountains with powerful and dangerous magic. The White Elders stand today, guardians of this ancient place, torn between their final respite and their sacred protective duty.

Younger Dragons knew they couldn't last long without a council of Elders to watch over them, and each clan set their own criteria for who should sit on the council. The Silver dragons chose based purely on age, the Whites based on number of offspring, the Coppers on crop yields and the Blacks on an election system. Each clan chose a different way, but eventually a new council was convened, but the strife and conflict between clans was stronger than ever. At last, the Dragons turned to Bahu a second time, pleading for something to end the worst crimes - the egg stealing and the constant shedding of blood outside formal duels. Bahu found the worst offender, a Dragon who had stolen at least twenty eggs from each other clan. With this criminal Bahu set the example and began the Rite of Dra-keth, ripping off the dragons front wing bones and cursing the Dragon to amplify pain and hunger, remind her of her crimes and feeding on her intellect. This formed the Fourth Gift, the unmentionable gift, the path to Destruction, the Dra-Keth.

After several years of performing the rite only against those who most deserved it, the young Council grew concerned again. The authorized blood duels were getting more frequent and less lenient, and the Council worried it was only a matter of time before one Dragon killed another outright. Finally they went to the first forge and spent five long months in prayer and meditation, avoiding all food, drink, or carnal vices. Thin and weary, they called upon both Tiala and Bahu for guidance. Their parents arrived to find the young councilors on the brink of starvation, and knew the Dragons needed something to keep them occupied and distracted. Tiala and Bahu exchanged a knowing look, and developed a plan. Tiala formed dozens of small creatures and Bahu breathed them to life. This was the Fifth Gift, meant to be the Great Distraction. This became the Pure Honor, as the Dragons became virtual gods to the Dwarf Children.

The Dwarves, inspired by their parents, began feuding almost immediately. The Dragons, attempting to be as excellent parents as their own, quickly began to intervene. They spoke of patience, of service, of clan loyalty above your own, of family and honor. The Dragons began to follow their own advice, and the danger of murder seemed to lessen gradually as time went on. Still, strife boiled under the surface. Bahu and Tiala knew that someday the Fifth Gift would fail their jealous and difficult children, just as the first four did. Until that time, the Dragons would be occupied with their children.