The kobolds known to the Origin System are a witchwarped species. Following the Gap, kobolds seemed notably absent from the Origin System and surrounding systems, and many assumed their departure tied to some massive catastrophe during the lost time in some way. However, first-century witchwarping rituals designed to access alternate reality technologies didn't just conjure obscure devices (most of which couldn't function in this multiverse they also gated in hundreds of reptilian beings who, by all appearances and self-identification, appear to be kobolds. The creatures confidently dispersed throughout the Origin System, taking up residence in empty and previously unknown apartments, clocking into work with unregistered keycards that noted the kobolds' longtime (yet previously unnoticed) employment at various agencies, and otherwise just fitting into niches that mysteriously manifested seamlessly in response to the kobolds' need. Although newer generations of kobolds seem more bound by conventional logic, this first wave's uncanny integration into this reality has stumped historians, scientists, and magical researchers.
To this day, kobolds have an innate affinity for witchwarping, calling upon magic and matter that presumably originates from their alternate home world. This transformative, aspirational magic also lends itself to the kobolds' unabashed self-confidence and beliefs that they're heritors of draconic majesty, with the most powerful witchwarpers sometimes spontaneously transforming into extraplanar wyrms, as if unlocking some hidden aspect of their cosmic genealogy.
Physical Description
Resembling an anthropomorphic lizard, a typical kobold stands about 2 and a half feet tall, measuring about 3 and a half feet long from snout to the tip of their tail. Kobolds display a wide range of scale colors that often reflect draconic palettes, with red, blue, green, black, white, and various metals and gemstones being especially common. Most kobolds develop natural countershading with a lighter underbelly. However, scale color can change over time. As a kobold ages, their scales often accumulate a patina-like outline, develop a natural gradation in their color, become faintly iridescent, or are augmented in some other way that seems roughly analogous to a human's hair turning gray. Whatever their coloration, a kobold's scales are thickest along their head and upper arms, providing some protection. Their draconic features don't stop at scales. Each kobold has a set of horns that vary slightly in size, shape, and number. Most common is a pair of short, backward-pointing horns, though kobolds might have as many as eight smaller horns or none at all. However, adult kobolds almost never have nose horns; each kobold hatches with the help of an “egg horn” that grows from their snout, which they shed within a few months of birth.
Kobold horns crown a head that's massive compared to the their body, each sporting an armory of tough teeth designed for chewing and shredding in support of their omnivorous diet. In fact, kobolds can consume an impressive array of foods and other materials, with some priding themselves on consuming precious metals and gems. Due to their head's size, a kobold would be at risk of tipping over were it not for their slender tail, whose primary role is serving as a counterbalance. For all their fierce armaments— heavy nails, teeth, horns, and tails—none of a kobold's anatomy is especially suited for lethal self-defense. Due to their unintimidating physiques, kobolds frequently develop and deploy traps and other technological means of evening the odds against larger foes.
Due to kobolds' otherworldly origins, their anatomy experiences subtle idiosyncrasies in this reality. A kobold's flesh generates negligible magical background radiation that seems to anchor them to this reality's physics, reflexively intervening to course correct when one multiverse's math doesn't quite click with the other's; this sometimes shorts out pathogens like a magical immune system, transforming cells' receptors to evade these invaders. Other times, it's less to a kobold's benefit, triggering bouts of vertigo, food poisoning, or cramps even when performing familiar tasks or eating favorite foods. When stressed, a kobold's magical nature can lash out, triggering bursts of unpredictable and uncontrolled arcana. Innocuous events might briefly cause lights to flicker, chill a room, or create bursts of color. Serious incidents, though, can trigger explosions, cause the kobold to become briefly incorporeal, open extraplanar gateways, or worse. The latter rarely occur more than a few times in a kobold's lifetime, and many kobolds use some combination of meditation and magical pharmaceuticals to manage potential outbursts. Others embrace their innate magical spark, which with training can fuel intense witchwarping spells.
Reproduction
Kobolds are oviparous, laying a single large egg at a time. Parents alternate between personally incubating the eggs (or having close family do so), leaving them uncovered, and burying them in specific materials like snow, smoldering charcoal, or acidic peat. If done properly, this exposure doesn't hurt the developing embryo but instead steers its development, making it more likely the child will have a specific scale color or elemental resistances.
If desired, kobold parents might delay incubating one or more eggs so several of their children hatch at once. However, newborn kobolds exhibit instinctive territoriality and food anxiety for their first few weeks, and the young might traumatize, kill, or even eat each other if not carefully monitored. Hatching at different times also staggers adolescents' puberty, when their magic is at its most unstable. After all, when one youngster's uncontrolled eldritch outburst could set off a stress-based chain reaction in their siblings, it pays to have staggered their birthdays.
Kobolds reach maturity at about 10 years old. They commonly live to ages of 80 or older, and a sizable fraction can reach 140 years. A rare few, most of whom have achieved some level of draconic awakening, are older still with a handful of kobolds who first appeared a few centuries ago seemingly ageless and immortal.
Draconic Legacy
Whether it's passed down through stories or just a nagging, wordless certainty, kobolds know that they should be dragons— that they are dragons. In their origin reality, kobolds supposedly soared the skies as titanic dragons, and the ritual that brought them here crammed them into meager bodies a fraction of their true size. Witchwarping magic might just be a kobold's essence straining to pull them back to their home dimension, but if so, this reality doesn't know how to process the instinctive arcana. There's little disagreement that all of this is an injustice. However, kobolds vary widely in what they feel should be done about it. Three primary approaches have emerged.
Those termed Aspirers believe that it's possible for a kobold to transform into a dragon (a process called apodrakosis) but that the process requires intense focus and patience. Some of these transformations might take generations. Others might be possible through extraordinary magic. Others still realize apodrakosis through mystical awakening at a kobold monastery. However, Aspirers deduce that the original draconic form might not be possible in this reality, thus an acceptable final form might not mirror their lost draconic ideal.
Reclaimers agree that draconic transformation is possible, but the similarities end there. To a Reclaimer, kobolds' rightful forms—and by extension, their ancestral wealth and influence— were stolen by the ritual, and it's their imperative to regain what was lost. These claims often accompany aggression if not violence, for Reclaimers seldom settle for victories by analogy; it's rarely enough to gain wings, for example, but instead those wings must be like those kobolds had in their home reality. While many Reclaimers work through fully legal means, the philosophy has inspired numerous kobold criminal groups.
Finally, Exodists either believe that the ancient ritual is a convenient legend that misleads other kobolds or that it's better to adapt to this new reality rather than fret over lost causes.
Names
Kobolds typically receive a short name at birth. As they age, achieve great deeds, and earn respect, a kobold adds syllables to their name to commemorate their accomplishments, mimicking a widespread tradition in draconic nomenclature. Having a name that exceeds six syllables conveys arrogance that only the most self-important kobolds care to invite. Most instead begin replacing rather than adding syllables for longer names, typically preserving their birth syllables over time.
Rather than model name growth off accomplishments, Aspirers typically receive a full draconic name at birth but are only allowed to use a small part of it. The further the kobold progresses in their personal quest for draconic transformation, the more of these syllables they reintroduce into their name.
Sample Names
Some sample kobold names include Akmaz, Aulteen, Brehak, Framhat, Galq, Iji, Jozol, Pultok, Tibb, Uitul, Ypol, Zgaz.
Comments