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

[lurkingkobold]

She's too busy juggling the torch and fire starting implements to notice what he's doing while she does; by the time she looks up again she's not surprised to find him looking at her.

She sizes him up for a few seconds, then seems to come to a conclusion, and sits on the floor of the cave, apparently unconcerned by his presence and not paying any particular attention to him - not dismissively, but neutrally, as if it doesn't matter to her whether he approaches her or not.

[endragoned]

Hm.

He regards her for another few moments, then picks up a small rock from the floor and holds it briefly and reaches over to put it down nearish the kobold. The small rock is now kobold-shaped, with small floppy ears and a small nose and a small tail.

[lurkingkobold]

The kobold blinks, and watches his reaction closely as she goes to pick the rock up.

[endragoned]

He doesn't seem to expect anything interesting to happen when she picks up the rock; and indeed, it remains just a little tiny statue of a kobold.

[lurkingkobold]

She examines it, obviously impressed, then puts it back down and picks another rock for her own demonstration, teleporting it from one hand to the other with a bit of concentration. "Mage," she offers.

[endragoned]

The strange person smiles delightedly.

Then he adopts a more thoughtful demeanour and starts shaping the stone of the floor, drawing a little island in it - very miniaturized and simplified: little stone beaches surrounding a few little stone trees and a single little stone cave raised up out of the floor. He picks up a rock and shapes it into a winged person like himself and bobs it along through the air - its little stone wings flap realistically - and has it glide down to the little island and curl up in the little cave. Then he looks at the kobold, and at the kobold figurine, and blinks inquisitively.

[lurkingkobold]

She watches carefully, and when he's done, she considers for a moment before taking a piece of twine out of her belt pouch and tying it into a loop. She spends a minute concentrating while touching the beach section of the diorama, then picks up the kobold figurine and puts it through the loop and onto the beach, teleporting it a few feet in the process. "Mage," she grins, as she removes her hand from the miniature portal.

[endragoned]

He smiles. "Mage," he echoes.

Hm, hm, what else would be good to know... he makes a few more little figurines like himself, although not all of them have wings, and indicates the group and says, "Endarkened." Then he makes a little group of kobold figurines and nudges them toward the kobold.

[lurkingkobold]

"Kobold," she supplies, setting the torch down carefully and taking the figurines to act out her own little skit with. Here's all the kobolds together, and then the first figurine sets out alone, through the portal again to find a winged Endarkened on the beach. The kobold figurine rejoins its group - either the portal is one way or she's just not bothering to show that part - and then the Endarkened follows. She makes the Endarkened figurine approach two of the new kobold figurines, which she then moves away, making a quiet "aaaaaa!" in demonstration. She looks back to the watching Endarkened and rolls her eyes fondly, shrugging - it's silly, but that's what would happen, so please don't.

[endragoned]

The Endarkened nods along to this explanation, and moves the Endarkened figurine away from the kobold figurines and sets it down firmly.

Then he considers what other things he might want to communicate...

Well, here's one: He raises a tiny mountain far away from the island, and puts all of the Endarkened figurines in it (it is just barely big enough to hold them all in its cutaway interior), and shows a brief scuffle between two of the winged ones (with a hesitant half-shrug that indicates this is perhaps not the entire story), and one of the winged scufflers is kicked out of the mountain and wanders around sadly for a bit before flying to the island alone and curling up in the cave.

[lurkingkobold]

Oh, dear.

...would the Endarkened like a hug? Because here is a kobold who would like to give him a hug.

[endragoned]

The Endarkened would very much like a hug, it turns out! He makes a quiet surprised sound and hugs back carefully.

[lurkingkobold]

Awww.

Well then.

How does the Endarkened feel about lap kobolds?

[endragoned]

The Endarkened feels pretty great about lap kobolds. They are so huggable, you see.

[lurkingkobold]

The Endarkened can have a lap kobold, then.

After a little while, she nudges his hand - lap kobolds are also for petting.

[endragoned]

Oh! Well, then, the lap kobold can have very gentle scritches. (He works a subtle bit of magic to make his talons dull enough to suit the task.)

[lurkingkobold]

Very nice.

Is the Endarkened feeling better now?

[endragoned]

He is! He is feeling very snuggled. What a good and effective lap kobold.

(He didn't even really mean to make it a sad story, but, now that she points it out, it is sad and he did want a hug and he appreciates his lap kobold very much.)

[lurkingkobold]

Good.

She might stay like that for a while. She doesn't have any particular place she needs to be; she even has a snack in case she gets hungry.

[endragoned]

The Endarkened seems very content to sit and pet the kobold. This is a fulfilling and pleasant activity.

[lurkingkobold]

She does eventually get a little bored. Out comes the twine again, and this time she makes a portal that shows one of the unicorn statues and holds it up for the Endarkened to see. She makes a little questioning noise - what's the story with those?

[endragoned]

...Hm. He nods thoughtfully, and nudges her out of his lap - this is going to take some pretty involved storytelling and lap kobolds, though snuggly, restrict one's movements somewhat.

First he makes a few stray rocks glow, to bring up the light levels in the cave so that the kobold will be able to see clearly, since she evidently needs light to do that. Then he goes over to the tiny mountain and shapes it into a much larger and more elaborate mountain, full of many little caves containing many little Endarkened. Most don't have wings. Some have no horns, while some have more than two.

Now, here is one Endarkened figurine who is taller than the rest, with long elaborate horns and broad wings and a particularly sharply pointed triangle on the end of his tail. As the little stone figurines go about their business, this one goes here or there and tells them to do things, and they fearfully obey. He leads a large group of them outside, and (after the rapid preparation of more figurines) they engage in a rather graphic battle with a mixed set of unicorns and non-winged non-horned non-tailed bipeds.

[lurkingkobold]

Oh dear.

[endragoned]

The Endarkened seem to be fighting a war against the unicorns and their allies, in this story. (Curiously, the only thing that ever kills an Endarkened in one of these battles is the horn of a unicorn. These unicorns' horns are all much longer and pointier than the ones on the statues, and suitable for killing Endarkened with.)

Over the course of a few battles, the Endarkened take some captives, who are dragged back to the mountain and imprisoned there. The tallest and scariest Endarkened continues bossing everyone around, and then has an encounter with another Endarkened which causes her to become pregnant and eventually produce a teeny tiny stone baby. The baby has wings and a tail and (in a few seconds after he has grown into a tiny stone toddler) curly hair and short curved horns, much like the narrator of this story.

[lurkingkobold]

This elicits a sympathetic noise from the kobold, when she figures out who the figurine is. Yeah, she's not surprised he ended up leaving, yikes.