Coldeven 5: Kobolds and Other Things that Should Not Exist (Day 3, Rest Break)

I forgot to heed Spike's Guide to Threat Assessment today, and have thus gotten myself well and truly caught in the grip of the very rule I was mocking clerics for when I wrote in my journal last night. Perhaps I should add a fifth possibility to yesterday's list, that the gods are capricious and cruel.

It seems clear that our being trapped here is beginning to fray everyone's nerves. Lo-Kag and I have had some words because of the decision to stop early yesterday. His point is that this place is dangerous, and we need to be fresh and at our best for each new challenge. My point is that if we run out of food before we find our way out, other dangers won't matter. B.B. glares at us everytime we raise our voices, too, which makes it really hard to have a decent argument about the subject. We clearly need a leader in this pit, and both Lo-Kag and I seem to be nominating ourselves.

So we're exploring. Climbing through rubble-choked rooms (there appears to have been an earthquake), and peeking our heads in each door as cautiously as possible. Eventually, we found some kobolds behind a rude barricade on the far side of another rubble-strewn room. They offered a self-serving proposal about peaceful coexistance. I asked them if they had any food. They said no, but they were pretty clearly lying. My friends and I had a quick whispered discussion, but the lure of increasing our food stores was pretty compelling, and after all, they were only kobolds. We began moving into the room, without much more plan than to cross it, kill the little creeps, and take whatever food they had.

Spike's Guide to Threat Assessment: Don't Underestimate Orcs.

The conventional wisdom is that orcs are not a true threat to much. They're stupid, disorganized, reckless, and prone to infighting. But simply saying this does not eliminate possibility of a smart, skilled, or lucky orc, other than in people's perceptions. When I was little, a neighboring town asked our village to send some warriors to help fight a local orc chieftan and his clan. After some debate, my village sent four of our young untried men to be blooded in real combat. The town in question no longer exists, and my village had to pay taxes to the Orc chieftan, and his half-brother the necromancer, for the next four years.

The kobolds had four things we didn't: reasonable cover, a decent plan, a more powerful wizard, and an unnatural, horrible beast to serve them.

Eaora leapt into the room and immediately began casting a spell. As she completed her arcane gestures, B.B. darted into the room, taking cover behind some of the rubble that lay there. I could tell by the high-pitched barks of dismay that Eaora's spell had had some effect, and I, Lo-kag and K began to make our charge.

The next thing I knew, Asilky was kicking me awake. Apparently the kobold wizard had cast a spell that caused me and Lo-Kag to fall immediately into a deep slumber. At that point, any semblance of coordinated action we might have had was completely lost. I charged into the room, determined to down the kobolds as quickly as possible, Lo-Kag at my side. A full charge was made impossible by the rubble strewn around the room, so I was half-running, half-climbing. The torch was somewhere by the entrance, my back was to it and my shadow was cast wildly before me, obscuring almost everything.

I'm not sure I can convey here quite how chaotic the situation had become. I couldn't really see my opponents, other than the gleam of eyes ahead of me. I could hear K's war-cry somewhere ahead of me, but I couldn't really see him either. Arrows went whistling past me in the darkness, and I couldn't tell if they were fired by friend or foe. Half the time, I couldn't look around anyway because of the need to watch my footing. Suddenly a large beast loomed up out of nowhere. I thought at first it was a dog, which proved to be a serious misjudgement.

The creature leapt foward toward me and Lo-Kag, and as it did so, it let forth an unearthly shriek as all of the flesh just sort of melted off of its head. I didn't know what kind of horrible sorcery was at hand, but I was sure, in that moment, that I was going to die. Apparently Lo-Kag felt the same, for he backpedaled away from the creature and ran for the entrance. I, for my part, began to lash at the creature with my chain. I put a bold face on it afterwards, but here in my journal, I'll confide that I was just as panicked as Lo-Kag, madly lashing out at the creature in a vain hope that it would turn its unnatural visage elsewhere.

The creature went down, but I'm still not sure if it was I that delivered the fatal blow. I could hear K's grunts of pain, and the continued chanting of the kobold wizard, so I wasted no time, rushing forward. When I reached the battle, I found K, hard pressed by kobolds, who were stabbing at him from behind their barricade with spears. I savaged one with my chain, and continued my advance. Suddenly I could see the kobold wizard. He had an arrow standing out of his shoulder, but when I looked at him, it was like there were three of him, standing shoulder to shoulder behind the kobold warriors. An arrow flashed out of the darkness, and one of the images of the wizard vanished.

That was good enough for me. I figured that even if I didn't manage to do real harm, getting rid of the extra wizards was worth something, so I whipped the end of my chain around the neck of the nearest kobold wizard and pulled hard, breaking his neck with a satisfying snap. It must have been the real one, for as the wizard fell limply to the floor, his double vanished. The remaining kobolds put up a bit of fight, concentrating their attacks on K, who, with his 7 foot height, must have seemed very fearsome to them. I disarmed the last one and demanded its surrender, and the creature threw itself on the floor. But K had apparently had enough, for his greatsword flashed down and cut the thing nearly in two. Small loss really, I doubt it knew much.

In the end, we got off relatively unscathed, except for K, who looks like he jumped into a pit full of wild dogs. While Asilky was doing what he could for him, we searched the room, and found three things of interest. The wizard was wearing a cloak and some bracers which Eaora said were magical. Since they fit no-one but B.B., we've given them to her. The third item was more interesting. It appeared to be a small square of folded dark fabric, but as Eaora unfolded it, it revealed itself to be something even more unnatural than the horrible beast.

Apparently, wherever you unfold this thing, it creates a hole about six feet across and 10 feet deep. Eaora says it's a "portable hole", which while an apt description, fails to convey how odd the thing is. If you put something into it, fold it up, and then unfold it elsewhere, everything that you put in the hole is still there. While it is unfolded, the floor beneath it seems gone, but when you fold it up, it's intact, as if nothing had ever happened. The kobold wizard apparently used it as a portable study, for it has a desk, some spellbooks, and a chair within it.



Anyway, aside from the obvious questions the existence of such a thing raises, (What happens to the stuff inside when it's folded up? What if there's a person in there? What if you unfold it on a floor that's only a few inches thick, does it still create a 10-foot deep hole? If you unfold it against a wall, does the stuff inside fall to the side that's now "down"?) it puts us, as I said, firmly into the grip of Spike's Tool Paradox.

Spike's Tool Paradox: A Good Tool is a Trap.

There was a land that labored under a horrible curse. The gods, in their wisdom, created a magical ring that could be used to lift the curse if it was taken to the dark castle at the heart of the kingdom and smashed. In order to allow the prince of the realm to reach the dark castle, the ring granted its wearer several powers. The power of command, the power of flight, and the power of invulnerability. By the time the prince of the kingdom was nearing the castle, he was really beginning to doubt the wisdom of destroying the ring. That was many years ago. The kingdom still labors under its curse, but the magical ring of the royal family is the envy of other rulers everywhere.

This portable hole thing is, simply put, too useful not to use. I've already put most of my food into it, as well as some of the heavier gear I was carrying "just in case." That's all well and good, but when everyone in the group does that, it will rapidly become clear that we're totally dependent on it. If someone steals it, we'll have to get it back, because it will quickly become so important to us that we can't afford to give it up. The more use we get out of it, the more dependent on it we'll be. I can smell trouble coming a mile away, and this thing will bring it eventually, mark my words.

We're resting now. The food situation still worries me, especially since the kobold's "food" turned out to be a pile of decomposing orcs. I'm not sure if others want to explore further today or not, but I'm going to try and convince them to press on.