Kobolds

Right now you don’t have the time to try and find the ingredients you would need to make the ointment that would let you take a centaur. If you can find the Kobolds then you can at least get started repopulating.

Heading out into the valley in search of them you try to recall everything the Old Sister had told you about them. She had said that they had come into being when the Ancient Dragons had taken Sisters of Man as breeders. They had given birth to something that was not a Man nor a Dragon, it was something in between. The creatures had been used by the dragons at first as servant and then as armies.

Among Kobolds there were rarely any sisters born, unlike Goblins the brothers had the ability to breed with sisters of other races. She told you tales of the wars they fought, of how they would sack a city, putting every Brother of Man to the sword along with any sister two young or old to be bred. Then they would use the sisters to replenish and increase the size of the three army. Going on and on until either they were driven off or every sister within the city was dead.

As numerous as they were Kobolds were not smart and the Ancient Dragons that commanded them suffered from an arrogance that led them to fall into trap after trap. Wasting hordes of Kobolds on pointless fights. The Dragon Wars, from what the Old Sister told you, where a rare time when the many races of the world united against a common foe in the Ancient Dragons and the Kobolds. Kobolds preferred Sisters of Men but would use any sister they could get there hands on, no race or nation was safe from them. Many a nation and race was wiped from the world completely, of those that survived they often found themselves so damaged by the war that they soon vanished from the world anyway.

In the end however the Ancient Dragons proved too egotistical and selfish to defeat the many enemies they faced. The Old Sister claimed that every last Ancient Dragon was killed and the Kobolds scattered to the winds. Ever since they have been hunted, now only surviving in small bands at the very edge of the world.

You thought of all this as you wandered, moving further and further to the north with every passing day. At first you wondered if you could even find anything, if this was all just a waste of time then you figure you should turn back sooner rather than later.

However as you go further you start to find signs that hint at there being something out here, you come across the smashed apart bones of a deer on the second day. Nearly every scrap of meat has been stripped from it, even the guts are gone and the bones have all been broken in half, the marrow sucked from them.

Centaurs would never do something like this and Men would have taken it with them, it might be another clan of Goblins but somehow you become sure that it is a Kobolds.

Over the next two days you find more evidence to support this view, more remains of game animals and a few places that look like they have been used to sleep. However you also find something else that is odd, the remains of a campsite that looks like it was used by Men.

This far north you have no idea why Men would be here but it makes you start to wish you had taken the time to make some kind of potion just in case you run into them.

It is not until the morning of the fifth day that you make contact with the Kobolds.

You had climbed up a tree to sleep the night before and it is the sound of twigs snapping and someone speaking that wakes you up. Slowly looking around you you can see that a group of four creature that must be Kobolds are standing around a dead rabbit.

The Kobolds look a little taller than you, the dragon half of their lineage was most obvious in the face, the elongated snouts, razor sharp teeth and long thin tongue was very dragon like. The rest of them seemed to be mostly human like, they seemed to stand at maybe a foot taller and you, although they had little more in the way of muscle you could see that what they had was strong and taunt. Their skin had a odd pallad ashy colour that put you in mind of the dregs from a campfire. Aside from the head the only other areas of obvious dragon origin where the hands and feet. They both ended in sets of vicious claws that managed to catch the light as they gestured to each other.

Looking them over could see that all three were clearly male,there oddly bulbous and pointed members swung between there legs. They seemed to be arguing over who would get to eat the rabbit, you cannot understand what they are saying, they speak in a series of throaty clicks.

Suddenly faced with jumping down among them you start to have second thoughts about this really being such a good idea.