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]

"This doesn't seem to be pointing at anything really clear, anyway. They're not obviously wrong, but most blessings would not be obviously wrong for someone who was in a good mood because they'd recently acquired new magical powers, you know? Honor I don't usually get... patience I don't usually get but it might be more apt than most days today? I don't know what resolve and resilience are doing in there, Aleko has not been clothes shopping so 'beauty' is puzzling..."

[lurkingkobold]

Nod. Hm.

Maybe it'd help to see what she gets when she draws with her antimagic off: hope, vision, innovation, power, and travel.

That does seem to describe the situation better than what she'd been drawing, yes.

[calescent]

"Okay, so your antimagic probably frustrates the blessing magic, at least partly."

[lurkingkobold]

Mmhmm. (Good.)

She is a little curious what blessings she'd get, too, hmm... Time, synthesis, triumph, synthesis, time.

...okay...

[calescent]

"...That's weird. I mean, it could be a valid draw but five extraordinary blessings in a row... not likely."

[lurkingkobold]

Yeah.

Rummage, pick: triumph.

Definitely weird.

[calescent]

"Maybe the elements don't like you for some reason."

[lurkingkobold]

Maybe.

Oh well. Neat when it does work, anyway. She returns the coins to the bowl.

Anything else before she goes home, hmmmmm. It would probably be a good idea to give Kiri a way to get in touch with her, in case something comes up before it's time for her to return - a little password-activated portal that they can put notes through, maybe.

[calescent]

"That sounds like a good idea. What would make a good surface to put a little portable portal on?"

[lurkingkobold]

Hm.

Mirrors are traditional for scrying, and one would work just as well for this, but she'd rather start a new tradition - hmmmmm. Something it wouldn't be too unusual to have or be carrying, a good size but not too big, sturdy enough to not break... well, for this world, how about a book? She can cast on just the cover, so if one of the pages rips that won't break it.

[calescent]

"All right. I'll go get a blank hardbound. Maybe I'll copy my notes on animalperson language into it."

[lurkingkobold]

Sure.

[calescent]

Kiri goes and gets a blank hardbound book.

[lurkingkobold]

And the kobold casts a portal spell on it: hold it just so and say 'kobold' to activate the portal, which goes to the cave she was experimenting in; hold it this other way and say 'kobold' a second time and it will close, or it will close on its own after ten minutes - watch your hands, but it'll close by shrinking rather than all at once, so there's some warning.

She should be able to check that spot a few times a day, though she can't guarantee it if she's busy or can't get away to read. (She's not sure yet how her tribe will react to that, but 'suspicious' is a reasonable assumption.)

[calescent]

"They sound like very suspicious people."

[lurkingkobold]

Of new things? Yeah. With pretty good reason, most of the time.

[calescent]

"I mean I suppose they literally can't take your word for it that things are all right, but it actually does seem strange to me that they don't think things you indicate are okay are okay."

[lurkingkobold]

They would probably be okay with it if it was just a note. The problem is more - the kobold does so many weird things, takes so many risks that her tribe doesn't approve of - even if those risks don't actually endanger anyone but herself, which she's very careful about - that it's important for her to be careful about what she asks of them in relation to that; it would be easy to cross a line into asking too much, and have the tribe exile her rather than keep putting up with the overall amount of risk they see her as. Reading a note where they can see it probably wouldn't take her over that line, but it would mean that she'd have that much less leeway for next time.

[calescent]

"This... doesn't seem very nice of them. I mean, I understand they can't just talk to you about it, but... I wouldn't want to be in a group that thought of me that way."

[lurkingkobold]

...Ideally, yeah? That's her tribe, though. It's important that they're okay, and more than reasonable for them to worry about being okay, and not want to take risks, and worry about her taking risks with their safety, and push her to be careful. The work that she's doing is worth it anyway, but they don't know that. They might not even agree - the tribe's priority is the tribe, and it's weird that she cares about, what, fire suppression or whatever, for people who aren't even kobolds.

[calescent]

"Kobolds don't usually care about people who aren't kobolds?"

[lurkingkobold]

People who aren't kobolds don't generally recognize kobolds as people, on her world. And caring about people who don't think you're a person? Not safe. Very not safe.

[calescent]

"I'd suggest moving some kobolds to this world, except there's at least ten things wrong with that plan."

[lurkingkobold]

Yeah.

Maybe the kobold will be able to find a world that's empty, and they can all move there.

In the meantime, though - the system works about as well as could be hoped, all things considered; it's really not surprising that she gets some flack for going against it. It's not great, but it's not unreasonable, either.

[calescent]

"Sometimes that's how I feel about human society."