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]

The kobold takes a minute to work these words out; she gets most of them, eventually, and nods. "Tribe is happy, usually - if trouble, no, other time yes."

[calescent]

"Material variety and abundance is - having lots of choices of different stuff, and lots of stuff. Inequality is some people having more stuff than other people. Specialization is getting good at one thing and not knowing as much about how to do any other things."

[lurkingkobold]

She considers this (kobolds have plenty of variety and abundance, she thinks, but compared to humans, yeah, less; inequality: ...um? the only thing in kobold culture that's even close to that is when someone pisses off their tribe enough that people start hassling them when they go to take things from the tribe's supplies, which is a mid-level to fairly severe punishment... presumably there's some kind of system to keep that from getting out of hand, here; she wants to check on that later) and nods. "Kobolds do many different of humans," she tells Aleko and Jayce.

[liakoura]

"Yeah, I'm getting that."

[calescent]

"...Inequality is very complicated," Kiri says. She doesn't have to explain it right now but she doesn't want the kobold to start making faces before she's finished explaining it later.

[lurkingkobold]

Well, the kobold can make a face now if Kiri prefers, given what 'complicated' meant last time. But she lets it go for the moment.

[spinnaker]

"I don't think it's that complic-" Jayce pauses. "Okay, it would be really complicated if you didn't even have 'property' as a concept."

[liakoura]

"Speaking of not having property as a concept..."

[calescent]

"The kobold is not going to steal your stuff."

[lurkingkobold]

Nod.

[liakoura]

"Okay, good, my twin in my head is one thing but some of my stuff is private. Or hard to replace. ...Do kobolds do 'privacy'."

[calescent]

"Privacy is when you don't want anyone, or only want some people, to know or see a thing. Most people consider their thoughts very private, which is why I'm careful about standing near people."

[lurkingkobold]

Ah.

Yeah, kobolds do privacy, nod.

(Less than humans, though, probably, if personal bedrooms are a normal human thing.)

[calescent]

"Personal bedrooms are a normal human thing. Sometimes people who are very close share rooms. Mostly - couples." Is that clear enough? Does she have to explain pairbonding?

[lurkingkobold]

She's missing the 'two' part, but yeah, kobolds do that.

"Kobolds do less privacy," she updates the other siblings, "sleep all together, safer."

[liakoura]

"From what?"

[lurkingkobold]

"Danger," she shrugs. "Animals, tigerfolk, fire," monsters, apparently her world has monsters, "...big things like animals. Few kobolds watch, other kobolds sleep; if trouble, watching kobold do noise, other kobolds do awake."

[calescent]

"The big animal-like things I'd probably just call 'monsters' or something... Yes, Aleko, some of these things eat kobolds - the tigerfolk are -"

A bell rings. "Ko -"

[liakoura]

Aleko gets up and bolts for the bells, then hollers, "Third from the left!"

[calescent]

Kiri disappears.

[lurkingkobold]

The kobold takes a piece of twine and starts working on a viewing-portal. After several minutes, she manages it, passes the result to Jayce, and starts working on a second one for Aleko.

[spinnaker]

"What is this f- oh," says Jayce, peering through the portal. "Yeah, there's smoke - doesn't look like it's spread all that far. I don't see Ki- no, there she is, she must've commandeered somebody's horse. I can't see the actual flames..."

[liakoura]

"She might've put it out already, she could sense a fire that size from a few blocks at least and the smoke wouldn't stop right away. Where do you see h- oh, going up Wicker Street, okay, I bet she's going to go in and make sure she didn't miss any little smoldering bits and see if anyone's inside. She'd better not try to climb half-burned-out stairs...!"

[lurkingkobold]

The kobold, meanwhile, keeps an eye on the scene with a third viewing-portal in between casting mini-portals successively closer to house in question - if something does happen, she wants to be able to get herself and Kiri's siblings as close as possible. (If she finds a better viewpoint, she'll give them updated viewing-portals, too.)

[calescent]

When the kobold gets the view close to the house, Kiri has put out the fire, which affected two adjoining houses and produced quite a lot of smoke, now slowly tapering off. She is sitting on her borrowed horse outside the house rather than entering; a wind is whipping up, and she's addressing someone who has a ladder, pointing. The someone with the ladder puts it up against the window and some people come out, coughing.