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

[calescent]

"Thing move thing?" wonders Kiri. Or does it get left behind, dramatically reducing its value as an emergency bailout...?

[lurkingkobold]

The kobold doesn't seem to know offhand whether this is possible - the more straightforward way of moving people is to make them spellbearers, which she's rejecting as an option in this case. She steps back out of range to consider the problem, which involves the same look of distant concentration as when she was casting before, and after a minute of that, she steps back into range with her conclusion: yes, she can cast in a way that allows the object to come along, though it won't be possible to include as many destination triggers on something as small as it will need to be.

[calescent]

And Kiri doesn't have "why" to ask why she can't just have a spell on herself personally... or "how many" to ask for exact figures on destination triggers...

But she could get a magic object that could teleport her and itself to several locations! That's pretty cool!

...And she doesn't have the words to ask "what kind of thing". Or "can I activate the thing myself in the various locations or do I need to talk you into coming to Chialto with me". Or "how many people can it bring" or "could someone who didn't know what it was activate it by accident". She can't even ask "is there anything you want done in exchange". Why does she have a word for demon and not want? Hmmmmm.

"Small thing, tiny thing...?"

[lurkingkobold]

Yeah, this is frustrating, they should probably back up and do some more vocabulary-building now that they've established that they have reason to talk - though this would be going a little better if Kiri was also sharing vocabulary, too; the kobold might not have mind magic, but she is pretty good at picking up words anyway. As evidenced by the fact that she can speak at all, which kobolds usually can't.

Anyway, things... clothing is going to be the most reliable, and it needs to be something sturdy so it doesn't break too easily - a belt, perhaps? A leather belt with rivets for the trigger points would be an obvious choice, but anything solid enough to hold a spell and with obvious places to touch will work.

[calescent]

...If the kobold wants to learn Welchin Kiri is only too happy to do that. She tugs on her sleeve - "clothes" - she's not wearing a belt, but the kobold's thinking about them so she gestures around her waist and says "belt".

And then she draws dots for the numbers one through ten and names the numbers.

[lurkingkobold]

The kobold follows along, mimicking the words easily. The numbers are a little surprising - she's used to a base five system - but she gets the idea anyway, and shares her own words for the first five.

[calescent]

Which Kiri writes down.

Since they're doing double vocabulary, she goes down the list of words the kobold gave her and translates them all, pairwise. "Spellbearer" and "mage" she leaves untranslated because they mean specific things with no real Welchin equivalent, but "spell" she considers sufficiently generic to render in her own tongue.

[lurkingkobold]

The kobold continues following, and then... huh. They don't have mages here? Kiri seems to pretty obviously be a spellbearer, but maybe without mages the word doesn't quite make sense. How would that even work, ending up as a spellbearer without a mage to give you the spell? How would it end up being set up sensibly, rather than being a hex? Is it a hex? The fire seems well enough under control, but... yikes, yeah, Kiri was pretty quick to warn her about the mind-reading, and has been pretty self-conscious about that range limit; that might not just be politeness. Ouch.

Well, mage-cast spells aren't hexes... except when they are; she hasn't thought about how she might cast a hex, and she's not going to now for the sake of making an example, but there's nothing actually stopping her from doing that, which is why unfamiliar mages are so dangerous. But in general, without a malicious or exceptionally thoughtless mage involved, hexes just don't happen; the casting mage gets to specify almost every aspect of how the spell works, and while it may take some thought and creativity to come up with the best approach to solving a problem, or even a decent one, it's not hard to avoid setups that aren't under a spellbearer's control in whatever ways they should be, whether that's by giving the spellbearer that control, or casting on an object instead so that the spell can at least be broken.

...vocabulary, right. The kobold has covered a lot of the relevant words, but 'hex' is missing from Kiri's list, so she supplies it, along with 'control', 'choose', 'want', 'trigger', 'activate', and 'deactivate'.

[calescent]

Ooh, good, "want". Very important word, that. Kiri translates all the words except "hex", then says, "No hex. ...Maybe mind hex." It's a little less specific than "mage" and, well, she can't control that part and it is annoying. "Control fire, choose fire - no choose mind -" well, not directly, she gestures at the space between them, steps away, steps back. "No control Ardelay," she clarifies, "no choose Ardelay, Ardelay activate Ardelay no choose."

[lurkingkobold]

So, if she's getting this right, sometimes spells just kind of happen to people? That sounds really obnoxious, actually.

...is this something she needs to be worried about happening to her? That could be a problem, especially if her tribe... nope, nope, abort that train of thought - she steps back out of range and takes a moment to collect herself.

[calescent]

"No no no - kobold no Ardelay hex," says Kiri, headshake headshake. She's not sure what the bit about the tribe was about and she's not going to speculate, but the kobold doesn't worry about coming down with a primacy. "Ummmm..." She has no family words at all and no great way to ask for them. Will the kobold even be able to notice family resemblance if she calls down Aleko and Jayce? Would she recognize a family tree if Kiri drew one out? "Kobold kobold, Kiri human. Ardelays humans."

[lurkingkobold]

She nods, "human maybe hex, kobold no hex", got it. That's not actually the problem, though. She gestures for Kiri to wait, again, and considers whether and how to explain.

Sigh. Okay. Back into range.

So, kobolds are, well, small Kiri can see; not imposing; not usually mages, either. Not warlike. Tend to get the bad end of it when they get into conflicts with other sorts of people, which does happen; their saving grace is mostly that they're very sneaky, so it's hard for other people to find them to give them trouble in the first place. Sneakiness which she is very carefully not going to go into detail about, obviously.

But, the kobold giving Kiri enough information to find her tribe? Taboo. Very taboo. She's more likely to get away with murder than not end up exiled - more or less a death sentence - if she does that and her tribe finds out, and with very good reason.

So, yes, she's going to be a little twitchy about that topic. And she's going to step back out of range now.

[calescent]

Nod, nod. Fair enough. The fact that Kiri's never seen a kobold in her life before today and suspects that this one came from inaccessibly far away doesn't enter into it, apparently.

...And the kobold didn't give her a word for "tribe" or "death" so she can't say that Ardelays are a tribe or that there's one at a time passed from person to person on death. Oh well, maybe that's not really the priority. What is?

"There," she says, pointing up at the floors above the library, "four humans." Her brothers, two servants. It is okay if the kobold knows where they are.

[lurkingkobold]

The kobold finds this somewhat confusing, apparently. "Human Ardelay hex?"

[calescent]

"Kiri hex. One Ardelay hex."

[lurkingkobold]

She nods, somewhat reassured.

Let's see - vocabulary, right. She's sufficiently focused on the current situation to get back to that, she thinks, so she steps back into range... Kiri seems to be trying to get at something with this Ardelay thing, but she doesn't have enough of an idea yet to try guessing at words, perhaps they can work on that some. Or, she is curious about what Kiri would want to do with teleportation magic if they had it.

[calescent]

Kiri was hoping to communicate the difference in the relevant magic systems, but the question about the teleportation magic is more interesting right now.

"Kiri move - Kiri go fire, not want fire, no fire." For emphasis, she snuffs out all her candleflames. (Then puts them back, because it's pretty dark in here and getting darker as the sun descends.) Do kobolds have emergency services? Do they have wooden buildings? Enh.

[lurkingkobold]

Wooden buildings, maybe not, but campfires, and fire safety, and that's not remarkable enough information for her to be alarmed at having shared it. She approves, and considers. How many places might Kiri want to go, for that, and how long would it take to visit all of them? She'd rather set the locations herself than give a relative stranger something with quite as much potential for misuse as a belt full of settable teleportation spells would be, no matter how nice that stranger seems to be.

Hmm, travel-related words - "day, night, sleep, camp, path, wilderness, river, hill, danger, food, water, carry" - not that they'd need to carry supplies, or even set up camp; she can just make portal back here every evening and then put them back where they were in the morning. Hm... oh. "Now, soon, season, summer, fall, winter, spring; rain, snow, hot, cold, sun, wind, storm, flood, mud," all of which might affect where it's sensible to go and when, after all.

[calescent]

Kiri translates all those words as they come up. "Ah -" For this she wants a map. She holds up a hand wait and sweeps off and falls on her face and gets up and continues sweeping off. She comes back with an atlas and opens up to a map of Welce. "Here," she says, pointing at the approximate location of her house. Then she points at Chialto. "Go there, one day, carry food, water. Sleep there, no danger. Put... four Chialto. One here, one here, one here -" She points at several smaller towns. "Humans there go here, speak, 'Kiri, fire, danger', Kiri go there, no fire. Spell do that?"

[lurkingkobold]

The kobold peers at the map: here to Chialto looks implausibly far for one day's walk, if she's reading it right, but the notation is strange enough that she could easily not be. Anyway, one day from here to there and then another day to each of the towns is just fine, and enspelling something to go to all four locations won't be a problem at all. Just... how sure is Kiri that the kobold is really going to be safe walking into a strange tribe's camp? Presumably Kiri will be vouching for her, and expects that to be sufficient, but how sure are they that it will be, and how dangerous might it be if they're wrong?

[calescent]

And Kiri doesn't have "hide" or "see" or "I have another house in Chialto" or "the only other people as dangerous as I am are my friends"...

Fuck it, she's resorting to drawing.

She gets some paper and draws a simple carriage and a horse - "One day," she reiterates, drawing the house -> Chialto line again, "carriage, horse," point point. "Go Chialto carriage, humans no know kobold. Human know kobold, choose be of danger, fire."

[lurkingkobold]

"Horse," she doesn't like horses much, but she recognizes them, at least. The carriage, she has no idea what it is, but the rest of the message comes through clearly enough, and seems reasonable. Not that she likes the idea of threatening people with fire, though. Hm... actually, now that she's got the idea of teleporting clothing-type things, she could just make something to bring her back here, if there's trouble. A ring, for example... hmm.

She steps out of range to cast on her loop of twine again, this time retrieving a simple silver ring, which she proceeds to cast on. Partway through the casting process, she speaks a new word; when she's done, she puts the ring on, and steps back into range.

That word - 'escape', in animalperson; she repeats the sounds carefully in her thoughts - will activate the spell on the ring, no matter who says it; if she's wearing it at the time, it will teleport her back here.

[calescent]

Kiri nods and writes down the word and translates it into Welchin. "No fire," she agrees. "Human choose be of danger, no kobold there."

[lurkingkobold]

Grin, nod.

Hmm. More safety words, while she's thinking about that - "Wait, walk, run, sneak, hide, stay, quiet, listen, watch, come, path, trap, safe, trust, believe, tribemate, friend, enemy."

[calescent]

All of which Kiri translates.

Aleko or Jayce is going to come get her for dinner eventually and she shouldn't surprise them.

"...Kiri go," she points up, "Kiri come here, friend come here? Kobold wait, trust friend? No danger."