Describe Kobolds in Your World

[Morrow]

Kobolds and gnomes have been involved in a genocidal conflict for generations. The gnomes are losing. Most gnomish settlements have been destroyed or occupied by kobold forces. Most major cities house small groups of gnomish refugees.

Kobold spiritual life is built around the belief kobolds are decended from semi divine beings (dragons) who will reward faithful service with sorcerous power and victory in battle.

That's the sum total of kobold culture, toadying for the dragons or murdering gnomes.

Morrow

 

[Boojum]

Cut and pasted from the primer to my Shattered Skies campaign.

Kobold: Approximately 800 years before the Sundering, a large confederation of kobold tribes was afflicted by a horrific disease known as scale rot, which threatened to wipe them out. In desperation, their chieftain turned to a nearby human kingdom for medical aid. The humans agreed, but only on the condition that the kobolds agree to serve them. The chieftain, with no other option, agreed to the terms, selling his people into slavery to save their lives. Since then, kobolds have spread rapidly and become all but ubiquitous throughout human society. A few lands have abolished the practice of slavery, but most still practice it, and everywhere kobolds occupy the bottom rung of society, performing all the tasks that are beneath the other races. Although there are some kobolds that agitate for a mass uprising to “throw off the yoke of tyranny”, most are fairly content with their station. They are safer, better housed, and better fed in most lands than they were in their tribal days, and although they do not occupy public positions of leadership, some kobolds can wield quite a bit of behind-the-scenes influence. Enslaved kobolds are generally a bit less scrawny and paranoid than their wild cousins, and their scale color varies from dark green to tan, with rare albino kobolds considered touched by the spirits and accorded great respect.

 

[psyekl]

I've always liked the big-eyed, stumpy bodied Kobolds from the AD&D 2e "Monsterous Compendium". The scrawny, lizard-kobolds just don't have the same misleading appearance of harmlessness. As for their lairs, I always thought of something like the "Viet Cong Tunnels" idea, but among subterranean areas more than the surface realms.

 

[hiryuu]

I hesitate to say how the things moved. I tell myself that they somehow hopped or skipped in the shadows of the flickering light as a seperate entity from the cave itself. They crouched as they moved, their crude implements providing another impedement to their lanky form. I think they were covered in a uniform color of rusty red-brown that glinted in the firelight, with scales like a reptile or serpent and the whipping, unrestful tail of a rat. In a moment, I felt their warm, tiny hands upon my face and arms, and through it all a chattering, irritable series of calls and echoes in the cavern reached my ears, and in my fear I swore it sounded as though they were laughing like children.

 

[mythusmage]

That's a different way of describing something.

Can I pull it off.

They gathered around us, mothers with their restless young. Juveniles who flitted in and out of the convocation like butterflies in a field of flowers. The adult males who ringed us about, their spears and daggers near at hand; in case.

They were a small people, just reaching our belts in height. Slim too, with wiry muscles on a slender frame. A hardy people.

They wore no clothes, being drapped in a short napped fur. The females a uniform brown, the young ranging in coloration from the blonde of the new born infant, to the light brown of the adolescent. The males were nigh black in color, with a ruff of white about their necks, with the leader having a crest of the same hue surmounting his head and continuing on down his spine.

What equipment they carried was borne in a harness. Most often a belt, though some also wore some sort of bandolier, and a few had packs and bags. Those two with very young babes carried their children in a sling that kept the infant near a breast. For easier feeding I assume.

They most closely resembled a monkey given some aspects of the human. The closest in apppearance I can think of would be the temple monkeys of the Hindic lands. But possessed of a greater intellect. And most intrigued by us.

The reason why became clear when one female asked of us, "It's been 6 months since we've been in town, are they still doing a Galactica series on the Sci Fi Channel?"