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]

Hm. "Mage do of teach of mage, do of teach of any of person kind. Do of learn of magic is of danger - new mage do of bad spell, no do of break of spell, mage do of die. Mage maybe is of danger of other of person - hex, trap, attack. Human tribe no is of mage; kobold do of teach of human mage, mage do of change of tribe, maybe trouble."

[characterquarry]

"Any danger, always of careful. No break of spell? Any spell, always spell no stop ever? Very very danger. No teach of person not trust very much."

"...Wish-pool give twelve wish of all person. Some person, use all wish, go of wish-pool, wish-pool give of more wishes. Wish-pool give more wishes of people who of careful, humble, kind. Erin get of more wishes... Erin no have of proof."

[lurkingkobold]

"Mage do of cast of person, spell no do of break, spell do of always. Mage do of cast of thing, thing do of break, spell do of break." But: "Mage want of cast of person, mage do of touch of person of small of time, mage do of cast of person; person no do of choose, mage do of choose. No do of trust of person, no do of teach of person."

And that's all she wants to say about that for now.

"Erin do of say of wishes? Kobold need of do of wishes, not know of do of safe of wishes."

[characterquarry]

"Wishes do of any thing. Kobold have eleven of small wish, one of medium wish. Small wish do of making of thing, or of making thing of magic, or of making person know of do thing, of other things... Medium wish do of same of small wish, but bigger. Person no think careful of all wish, person of waste wish. Wish no of danger if person no want wish of danger. Usually."

[lurkingkobold]

Hmmmmmmmm.

"If kobold do of wish of know of thing, kobold do of go of tribe, tribe mage do of look of kobold - tribe mage do of see of magic?"

[characterquarry]

"If wish is of know of do make of rope of hands, sense-wish no sense of wish. If wish is of magic make of rope of magic, sense-wish sense of wish."

[lurkingkobold]

Excellent. One last question, then, and she's probably ready to make her first wish. "If person do of wish of..." say, for example, "make of rope of hands, wish do of only of know of make of rope of hands? No do of make of rope of magic, no do of other of thing?"

[characterquarry]

"Some know of wish make of know of other thing... Wish of know of cooking, also know of gather of plants, of use knife on plants, of lighting of fire, of other cooking thing."

[lurkingkobold]

...okay, fair enough.

So, the kobold's first wish: To be properly, but non-magically, fluent in Animalperson, as if she'd spent several years living with this one especially non-awful tribe of tigerfolk.

[characterquarry]

The mote of light on her left shoulder disappears. Quite a lot of new words are available to her.

Erin startles a bit. "Oh, my speak-wish says you learned more of animalperson!"

[lurkingkobold]

This elicits a slightly mischievous grin. "Yep. I'll have to be careful how the other Speakers find out, but it was the most obvious thing to do."

[characterquarry]

"It's much easier to talk now. It sounds bad that your tribe will worry about any magic you come back with. Knowledge is good but magic is also good... Usually I would say 'think about your wishes for a long time and keep one in case you ever need it' but you can't go home until you use them all, so you don't have as much time to think about it."

[lurkingkobold]

The kobold nods. "I can stay away for a few days, anyway - here or in the cave I came from, I won't be upset if you don't want a strange mage around - and think about it. I might be able to bring a few magic things back if it's obvious enough that they aren't dangerous, even. But I knew I was going to want this wish."

[characterquarry]

"If you start using magic on things that are not yours, I will ask you to leave. I should explain wishes more... A small wish is called 'Favor.' You used one to learn animalspeak. Medium wish is called 'Gift.' I used a Gift to get my magic-sense. A large wish is called a 'Boon'. I used one for my speak-wish and know I know every language."

"Boons are very rare and very powerful, you only get them if you use all your first wishes and ask for more and are judged worthy of one. Oh, if you ask for more wishes and the pool judges you not worthy, it will hurt you. If you touch it while you still have wishes, your wishes will probably disappear."

[lurkingkobold]

"I won't use my magic on anything I didn't bring with me or get from my tribe unless you ask me to," the kobold reassures, "and maybe not even then."

She considers the rest of the information. "I might want to come back and try for more wishes someday, even if that's dangerous - there's always the chance of there being another war or famine or something. Do you mind if I make a spell for that? It might be several hands of years before I want to come back, and I'm not going to leave the portal I used to get here active that whole time - I don't think anyone would find it, but the last thing any of us needs is an elf with wishes running around."

[characterquarry]

"Usually the humans who run this place want to talk to you before you try to get wishes. What's wrong with elves?"

[lurkingkobold]

"...I won't be able to bring someone from my tribe to vouch for me," she muses. "I might be able to get someone to come, if there's a bad enough emergency, but only maybe, and you'd only have my Speaking that they were here to do that; nobody else in my tribe talks. But I can talk to some humans, if vouching for myself is enough."

"Elves, well, elves are ethically-incomprehensible and dangerous. Very easily offended, and warlike when they are, among other problems."

[characterquarry]

"We let everyone try for wishes. We just want to know who exactly is doing it, first. Some humans are also easily offended and warlike. Usually, easily offended and warlike humans do not get as many wishes, and almost always do not get more wishes if they try after using their first wishes."

[lurkingkobold]

"...if an elf fire mages wishes to know where my tribe is, we'll all be dead. You might be willing to let an elf get wishes, but I'm not."

[characterquarry]

Erin hmms. "Even if I said 'no elves are allowed here,' this is not the only wishing pool in the world. But if one person wishes to hide, and another person wishes to find them with the same size of wish, the one who wished to hide wins. Is an elf likely to find this world?"

[lurkingkobold]

"I don't think it's very likely, even if the portal is there for a long time. But it will only take me a few minutes to break that portal and cast one that only opens when it hears a password instead."

[characterquarry]

"Well, you're the one who knows how to do that so you might as well go do it now?"

[lurkingkobold]

She nods, and concentrates, and disappears - this time much more neatly, without the flash. After a few minutes Erin's magic-sense shows another, very slightly different portal, and then after another moment, the kobold returns, stepping out of thin air. "Much better."

[characterquarry]

Erin is cleaning one of the walls with a long brush and a bucket of soapy water. Any soapy water that touches the pool immediately stops being soapy.

"Welcome back. Sorry to have scared you so badly when you first showed up, by the way."

[lurkingkobold]

"That was mostly the wishes, actually. I think you probably do have a god, here - kobolds have an anti-magic spell, so other magic can't see us if we don't want it to, but there are stories in my world about gods that say that they can ignore spell effects like that. I wasn't expecting to find a god in a pool, though, the stories usually say that they look like people." She considers briefly, and grins slightly, "they're a nice god, anyway, I think."