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

[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."

[characterquarry]

"The reason some people think we don't have a god is that if we do, it never talks to people. It just gives them wishes, or doesn't. Though a 'ignoring your magic immunity' does sound rather godlike."

[lurkingkobold]

"Something definitely looked at me when I touched the pool," she gives it an assessing look, "and there are certainly people who don't talk. Does your magic tell you what I mean when I say I'm a Speaker?"

[characterquarry]

"I think it means you can talk, that one of your roles in the tribe is Speaking for them. And it doesn't directly tell me but I can guess from context that at least most of the rest of your tribe doesn't talk. I've never seen people who don't talk before, but I can believe it. If they make decisions, use tools, care about things, they're people. And I'd know you're a person even if you didn't talk, because the wishing pool gave you wishes. It only does that to creatures who are properly people and not just clever beasts."

[lurkingkobold]

Nod. "That's more or less right - I'm the only one in my tribe who talks, we have more tribes than Speakers these days. But, anyway, most of the work of Speaking isn't the talking; it's understanding the person you're Speaking for well enough to know what to say... I can't help but wonder if there's a reason I ended up here in particular, when I cast a portal to take me to a random place; that sounds like something a god could do."

[characterquarry]

"It could be a coincidence. But given the evidence that there is probably a god, yes, that seems like a godlike sort of thing to do. Perhaps it wanted to help you?"

[lurkingkobold]

"Maybe. They already have, even if I don't do anything interesting with the rest of the wishes... learning how to teach language might be a good one, too... but, my teleportation magic is new, my tribe is having the best winter in memory because of it; we don't actually need help. And if they did want a Speaker... I'd rather try to find out, at least."

[characterquarry]

"Er... I should warn you, wishing to talk to the source of wishes tends to be. Well. Confusing, at best."

[lurkingkobold]

"Oh?"

[characterquarry]

"If you try to tell it something, the wish disappears. Wishes disappear without doing anything if you specify your wish badly, sometimes, so it's not clear if this actually accomplishes anything. If you wish to listen to it, you get a half-hour vision-trip that is described as a particularly vivid and memorable dream. These only sometimes contain useful advice or insight. I haven't done it myself."

[lurkingkobold]

"And that doesn't ever give the wisher magic? ...sorry to keep asking about that, it's just that... well, I would probably survive being exiled, actually, but I'm almost not sure I'd want to; I really can't take that risk."

[characterquarry]

"Not that I've ever heard of. You only get a permanent magical effect from a wish if you specifically wish for one. If you did end up exiled, I would try to make you feel welcome here, but I understand. I don't have a tribe, humans don't do tribes generally, but I would guess it would be like getting kicked out of my family. Which would feel really terrible even if it didn't actually hurt me."

[lurkingkobold]

Nod, "that's kind of you, anyway." She considers, and then asks, "is there someplace out of the way I can be, while I do the vision-trip? I can go back to my cave if there isn't, but I'm not sure that will work as well."

[characterquarry]

"We have rooms designed specifically for that, actually. As much as I find the tradition confusing, a fair number of people do it. We may see someone else along the way if I show you, as a warning."

[lurkingkobold]

The kobold looks momentarily concerned, but then nods. "Please."

[characterquarry]

Erin shows the kobold out of the pool room, into the walled garden which is much less dense and hideable than a forest (someone is watering plants on the other side), into another building, into a side hall, into a room furnished with a human-sized bed, a big comfortable chair, a lock on the far side of the door, and no windows.

"I'll wait here for you to be done. It's part of my duties at the pool."

[lurkingkobold]

"Thank you."

Once Erin is gone, she examines and engages the lock, and then settles into the chair.

Her second wish: She would like to know what she's meant to be doing here. If there's a god who means her to be doing something, she expects that the best way for that to happen is for them to tell her.

[characterquarry]

The 'dreams' that follow this wish are... Not entirely clear. In fact, they're quite unclear.

A significant theme at first is people. Kobolds, humans, tigerpeople, even a few elves. People cooking and eating, people telling stories, people using magic, people playing games, people with children. Some quality of this section of the vision labels it as a fantasy, the world as it ought to be and not as it is.

She dreams of her tribe, happy and content and everyone learning to speak and read and write. She dreams of tigerpeople eating alongside humans and kobolds. She dreams of human spellbearers (wishbearers?) and soldiers, laying down their weapons and going home. She dreams of a kobold mage teleporting to stranded humans and bringing them to safety.

She dreams of kobolds and elves in the same room, talking peaceably. There is a vague sense of resignation about this one.

Then, with startling specificity compared to the rest of the vision: A pool similar to but smaller than the one in this temple, in a cave she is familiar with. Each kobold who is kind and careful (they will be rare), receiving three wishes.

[lurkingkobold]

Well then.

She was already working on some of that, and approves of the rest - even the elves, if that means 'find a way to get the elves to stop being awful' rather than 'put up with the current level of awfulness' - and she's certainly not going to complain about the help.

She unlocks the door and peeks out.

[characterquarry]

Erin is reading something. (reading is a familiar concept, from her first wish) She glances at the kobold, then goes back to reading. Erin only addresses the kobold when she steps out of the room fully.

[lurkingkobold]

Which she does, grinning slightly.

"I'm fairly sure you do have a god, here. They want a pool put in my world, which I suspect I'll be okay with so long as I get to set up the security around it - I don't think they'll be happy with only kobolds being able to use it, but they didn't say it needs to be available to other kinds of people, and I can change things later to let more kinds of people in if that becomes safe."

[characterquarry]

She looks very curious. But doesn't ask. "If you think so, perhaps it is true. The wishes are a great benefit to people who use them well, and more people with wishes can only be good so long as they are well-chosen."