One Curious Kobold

[lurkingkobold]

It's winter, and all is well with the tribe. Their new magic, an ability to make portals from one place to another, which was found by one of their members during the early-summer trip to meet with the other tribes in the area, let them both build up a decadent food stockpile and move to a much deeper part of the cave system without the worry of being unable to find their way back out. No-one has had to go hungry, and even the fiercest ice storm doesn't reach them; they are as content as kobolds can be.

Well, aside from their new mage, that is. She's bored, and curious. Making portals to known places is straightforward enough, with the magic she found, but that's far from the limit of what it can do... so one day, she slips away, portals off to a different cave system - one can't be too careful, after all - and experiments.

Temperature roughly the same... gravity roughly the same... air the same, not into stone or underwater or in a volcano or on top of a mountain... but, instead of patterning it after a place she knows, what happens if she only specifies those things, and lets the innate patterns of the spot she's casting on do the rest? Particularly this one part, which seems to specify the world...

She finishes the spell, and hesitates for just a moment before activating it.

Comments

[alicornucopia]

And here is an aisle of high wooden structures, each laden with rows of tall rectangular objects in ever color, in leather and paper.

[lurkingkobold]

She peers through, and, when the place on the other side seems to be deserted, touches a different part of the portal's frame - setting it to close after a minute - before stepping through and examining the leather things more closely.

[alicornucopia]

There are lots of them. If she tips one off the shelf, it opens up on three sides to show marked paper.

[lurkingkobold]

The kobold isn't familiar with paper, and spends some time examining it - she's careful not to damage it or make too much noise. After a few minutes, though, she puts the strange object back, and starts looking around the rest of the area.

[alicornucopia]

It's mostly more of the paper things. Rows and rows of shelves and shelves of paper things. And a nook with some chairs and couches around a low table, and over there some desks with oil lanterns on them.

[lurkingkobold]

Whoever lives here sure does love their paper things. They might not be too happy about the kobold lurking around among them - it might be a good idea to find out about that, before she runs into any unpleasant surprises.

She explores the nook, finds that she can comfortably hide behind one of the chairs and still see out, and settles in to wait and see who might show up.

[calescent]

Eventually, there are footsteps, which come with increased light.

[pythbox]

Here is a beach, on a warm sunny afternoon. There are small crabs scuttling over the sand, and the edge of a forest not too far away.

[lurkingkobold]

What a lot of water that is, and what a nice warm day. The kobold sets the portal to close behind her, and steps through, taking a moment to get her bearings before heading into the cover of the forest.

[pythbox]

The trees and creatures of the forest are strange, but not too strange; this is no familiar species of fruit-bearing tree, but it's recognizably a tree and those are recognizably fruit. That is no familiar species of forest-dwelling rodent, but it is small and furry and in a forest and has little rodent teeth.

Over there is a stone statue of another not-quite-familiar creature, a hoofed animal with a short bristly mane and a long lionlike tail and a single straight horn projecting from its forehead.

[lurkingkobold]

Hmm.

Well, statues mean people, certainly. But this doesn't seem like a very inhabited forest - that rodent didn't seem too worried about someone trying to eat it, and she hasn't seen anything more well-traveled than a scraggly game trail - so maybe whoever made that statue doesn't live here any more.

She'll be careful anyway. She continues into the forest, moving more slowly now.

[pythbox]

Forest forest forest. Small pond. More forest. Some caves over thataway.

No obvious signs of habitation, except for the statues of the hoofed animal that show up every so often, and many of those seem very, very old - one has been half swallowed by a tree growing next to it.

[lurkingkobold]

The kobold relaxes somewhat as the forest continues to be apparently uninhabited.

She heads toward the caves, planning to check and see if they'd be suitable for kobold occupation - if this forest is uninhabited, her tribe might want to spend their winters here.

[of_all_trades]

Here is a large white house standing on the left, there is no fence around it and a couple of yards there are some woods.

[lurkingkobold]

And here is a kobold, heading for those woods. The portal closes behind her after a minute or so.

[of_all_trades]

The house and woods make no comment. The woods are pretty nice and quiet, the kobold can't see any large animal for several minutes.

Except for that large bear over there.

[lurkingkobold]

It seems to be late spring, so this bear is probably not hungry enough to be dangerous, but better safe than sorry - she'll hide out in... well, not that bush, that's a berry bush and the bear might want to check it out, but this other bush is a suitable place to hide while she waits to see what the bear is up to, so that's what she'll do.

[of_all_trades]

The bear is slowly walking through the woods, then it shape contorts briefly and now the "bear" is another creature entirely, something two-legged, the visible skin is beige, and the short head hair is blond. It continues walking like nothing weird happened.

[lurkingkobold]

Well, that's odd and a little alarming. The kobold is glad she's already hiding; she'll keep doing that.

[characterquarry]

Here is a huge white stone room, filled mostly with a pool of perfectly flat water barely one inch deep. The bottom of the pool is floored with colorful reflective glass tiles that glint in the sunlight.

[lurkingkobold]

How strange. The kobold pokes her head through the portal and looks around, not stepping through quite yet.

[characterquarry]

If it's a cave, it's a very bright and clean and square cave. There are occasional perfectly vertical gaps in the wall between which some plantlife is visible. But there's no sign of any creatures other than herself.

[lurkingkobold]

Huh. Neat. She sets the portal to close behind her and steps through, staying alert while she goes to get a closer look at the pool.

[characterquarry]

Nothing in particular happens while she does this.

The pool's colorful tiles are fairly large, and seem to be following a particular pattern. It gets slightly deeper towards the center of the room.

[lurkingkobold]

She crouches down and carefully skims a finger along the surface of the water.