by Joel Babbitt
He had run blindly into the entrance of the ancient dwarven stronghold, letting his feet take him down the broad central passageway until the dragonfear passed and he was able to gather his wits about him, somewhat anyway. He’d found himself standing in a small common chamber, dominated by a crude statue of a five-headed dragon. Morigar had found the statue strangely inviting, almost comforting, despite its fierce appearance. He’d sat and rested there for quite some time in the darkness, until the first hint of dragonfear had begun to creep into his consciousness yet again.
At the first hint of the massive beast’s return, Morigar had fled into the nearest doorway, a blasted hole that had led him into a warren of rooms and smaller doorways, where he’d hidden for hours after the dragon had passed by, and was still hidden there when the dragon came back up from below hours later.
But the big beast had been gone for a little while now, and much more pressing and urgent was the scratching he heard down the hall from his little hideout. He didn’t think that rats would live down this far underground. After all, rats couldn’t see in complete darkness. Whatever it was, he didn’t want to stick around to find out. If it lived in a dragon’s lair, it was obviously not something he wanted to meet.
Stepping carefully over his broken bow and discarded quiver of arrows, Morigar padded as silently as he could back down the hallway toward the exit. Sweat poured down his face, despite the coolness of the stone, and his breath came in short, strangled gasps. Suddenly, not far behind him, he heard something padding along on the stone floor.
Turning around quickly with his sword in front of himself for protection, Morigar’s heat vision showed what had to be a rat, but this rat was huge! Morigar stared in disbelief at the animal. It had to be almost his size!
In a moment, the fierce-eyed giant rat sat up on its haunches with its front paws clawing the air as it sniffed about. In a moment it noticed Morigar and leaned forward onto its front paws as if to run at him.
Morigar didn’t wait another moment. Turning toward the open doorway, he ran for all he was worth out into the small common chamber, past the statue of the five-headed dragon, and further down the broad passage that led into the depths of the dragon’s lair.
Not long after he turned the next corner, Morigar was sure he’d heard the giant rat squeal in pain. Though he no longer heard anything pursuing him, his fear was up, and he kept running.
Arren pulled his arrow out of the large rat and wiped the head of it off on the rat’s still trembling fur. Looking up from his recent kill, he focused on the statue that sat squarely in the center of the small common chamber.
“What is that?” Krebbekar asked, seated on his riding dog at the entrance to the common chamber.
“That, Krebbekar, is a statue to the god of the chromatic dragons,” Arren answered.
“A five headed dragon? Why would they worship that?”
Arren pointed at the heads. “Do you see how each of the heads is different, as if each one was from a different dragon? Look, those are the distinctive forward-curving horns of a black dragon on that head, and there’s the same nose on that one as this red dragon has.”
“Alright, I see it. So what’s that got to do with anything?” Krebbekar asked.
“Nothing much, just that their god is a dragon with the head of each of the five colored races of dragons; red, green, blue, black, and white,” Arren answered. “The thing that matters is that something built this statue for these dragons. And you can bet that that something wasn’t the dragons themselves.”
Krebbekar grunted his acknowledgement, and prodded his riding dog forward past the rough-hewn statue of the dragon’s evil god.
“Krebbekar,” Arren called out softly. “Do you hear that?”
Krebbekar stopped and listened carefully. He heard nothing.
“Something is running further down the passageway,” Arren said as he listened intently. Finally, after several more moments, he turned to Krebbekar. “It could be a kobold.”
The pair of warriors took off at a run almost at the exact same moment.
Morigar ran blindly in his fear for some distance down several ramps, each separated from the other by landings packed with ancient, ruined dwarven shops, businesses, and guard posts. A couple of times along the way Morigar was sure he’d seen glowing, beady eyes peering out of the darkness toward him. Once he’d thought he’d seen a large rat, clearly kobold size, standing on two feet and carrying something in… hands? He’d only caught a glimpse of it in a large, cluttered room as he ran past an open doorway, but that had been enough.
Finally, after running for all he was worth, the broad passage spilled into a vast common chamber, ringed by many doorways and smaller passageways that shone dark in the cool underground air. Not daring to venture out into the middle of the huge open chamber, Morigar reached out a hand and began to follow the wall to his right. Passing what had to have been an ancient guard post, then a complex of workshops full of smashed forges and woodworking materials, he arrived at a doorway that still had dwarven letters scribed above it. He’d never seriously studied dwarven runes, and he doubted they were relevant anymore anyway.
Looking across the vast common chamber again, this time he noticed a broad passageway in the next wall. By the slightly warmer air that exuded from it, he guessed it might be the dragon’s lair. Somehow in his fear-addled mind, he remembered that dragons kept large hordes, which often held enchanted items.
Suddenly, for the first time in several hours, Morigar greed overcame his fear, and he moved in an almost zombie-like fashion toward the entryway to the dragon’s lair.
Reaching the open entryway, he looked down the long, sloping passageway. At the bottom of the passageway, light from some unseen fire pierced the darkness, stripping heat vision yet revealing very little at this distance. Summoning up whatever shred of courage he had, Morigar walked down the long passageway, eventually coming out into what had to be an arena. It was a bowshot in width, and twice that in length, with braziers of dancing, magical red flame spaced evenly on the lowest tier of the many rings of stone benches that rose up almost to the ceiling in concentric rectangles starting not five steps in height off the floor.
What the rings of stone benches contained, however, had a much more stunning impact on the young, aspiring princeling than the fine dwarven architecture or even the magical firepots. Spread out in full array on the benches ringing the entire arena were a multitude of containers, piles, and collections of precious items. Gold coins in huge, meticulously counted stacks sat next to small wooden frames whereon were draped tens of necklaces of precious stones, each one meticulously spaced from those around it and categorized according to some method. Weapon racks stood with their swords and axes arranged by size, while armor sat in neat piles or on armor dummies in neat rows by type. Boxes of silver ingots, each one shined to perfection, occupied almost the entire length of one row. All throughout the benches small boxes of precious stones were dispersed between and among the various precious items, all in a very precise pattern, while almost every square inch of wall was taken up by tapestries, most of which were obviously not of dwarven origin and had to have been brought in from somewhere else. On their faces faeries danced, human warriors prepared to ride off to battle, great castles dominated their surrounding lands, and noble kings sat in judgment on their thrones. But most noticeably of all, the myriad of tapestries was arranged according to size, starting with the smallest ones on both sides of one end of the hall, and growing larger until the largest tapestry of all covered what appeared to be an opening in the far wall of the arena.
Morigar was stunned at the amazing amount of wealth that sat here, right before his eyes. For several very long moments he stood there just taking it in. Finally, he began wandering around the arena, not yet venturing up into the stands that surrounded the arena floor.
Suddenly, he stopped and looked at the five stone pedestals that sat at the very edge of the arena just in front of him. Each pedestal w
as labeled with the name of one of the original five kobold gens, in the writing of The Sorcerer. Sitting on a pillow on the pedestal labeled ‘Krech’ for a gen which lay some weeks away toward the coast of the great sea, lay a fist-sized translucent stone with bronze flecks in it.
Morigar stood and gawked at the stone for a few moments, questioning whether he was really seeing what he thought he was seeing. Finally, he climbed up the wall to the edge of the benches and took the stone in hand. The look of greed in his eyes changed to one of absolute, utter ambition and greed.
“With this, I can leave these valleys and my father’s gen and I can go and establish myself as the true ruler of the Krech Gen! Who needs the Krall Gen when I can have the Krech Gen!”
At that exact moment, a light appeared at the top of the slope and Morigar heard feet approaching down the long ramp that led down to this, the dragon’s lair.
Carefully placing the Krech Stone in his belt pouch, Morigar unsheathed his sword and ran over next to the entryway, prepared to ambush whoever might be coming down the passageway.
In a few moments Krebbekar came into the chamber, riding his dog, followed by a rather tall humanoid with a glowing bow.
Chapter 3 – The Forces of Evil
Drakebane the Mighty, Chieftain of the Bloodhand Orc Tribe, stood scowling in front of the groveling handful of orc warriors that served as a sorry excuse for scouts. ‘Come back by sun-high-in-sky’ he had told them. Had they not understood? They were as stupid as stones. Because of these miserable scouts his horde had been blind for the whole day.
Twice he had decided to move on the Kale kobolds, but both times his hobgoblin advisors had told him to be patient. He did not like it, but they were smart. They understood war like this, war of many numbers.
Looking at the leader of the scouts with disdain, Drakebane hefted his axe and moved suddenly up to the fool. The scout leader had the good sense to try to run away when he heard his leader coming. He wasn’t fast enough, however, and Drakebane’s axe came down hard on his back, breaking his ribs and cleaving deep into his spine.
This war Drakebane understood, war of one on one.
“Get up, fools!” Drakebane screamed in pent-up anger. “Your slow make horde lose whole day! Now night comes, so we must stay here! Now all of valley know we here, and all of valley have time to come together!”
Behind Drakebane, the hobgoblin Ahn-Ki, who served as Voice of Chieftain, stood patiently waiting for the orc chieftain to get the rest of his anger out. It didn’t take long, but another orc had to die before his anger was spent. Fortunately, one of the orcs volunteered for the honor. He’d dared to speak up; something about wanting to report what he saw…
Ahn-Ki smiled, but did not laugh out loud. Orcs were such a brutal bunch, but exhilarating in their simplicity and predictability.
After a few more moments, as Drakebane finished venting his anger, the well-scarred hobgoblin mercenary cleared his throat. Drakebane looked back at the hobgoblin.
“What?!”
“Mighty chieftain, I would think that this is a good thing,” Ahn-Ki said as he crossed his arms over his armored chest.
Drakebane’s brow furrowed as he thought quickly. What was he missing? He had no idea. “Um, maybe. Why you think I think is good?”
“Mighty chief, because you wanted to catch kobolds all in one place. If we catch them by surprise, they will run. Now they will probably not run. It was wise of you to have your scouts alert the kobolds to gather, mighty chieftain.”
Drakebane thought for a moment, then he thought for another moment. Ahn-Ki used so many words to say things, some of his words Drakebane didn’t know either. Looking at the groveling scouts that Ahn-Ki had advised him to send out, he spat at them.
“That for making me kill scout leader!” Turning, he walked back toward his tent, which was the only tent in the orc and ogre part of the camp.
“Very good, mighty chief, I will debrief the scouts, then,” Ahn-Ki bowed slightly as Drakebane the Mighty passed by, never taking his eyes off of the brutish half-beast. Drakebane looked at him as he passed by, as if questioning whether or not he had just been insulted. Not being able to resolve his question definitively, Drakebane kept walking.
As the chieftain entered his tent, Ahn-Ki turned to the remaining scouts.
Jominai of the Kobold Gen stood with his key advisors around the broad, flat rock that served as something of a table for his leadership team. This rock was the precise reason he had chosen to have his tent put here, and from here the rest of their hasty fortress had been arranged.
Starting from this rock, out to two hundred paces in all directions, the area had been cleared of all trees and sleeping areas for the various levy groups had been designated. To surround them, and to make good use of the trees they felled, under Marbo’s watchful eye the entire camp’s warriors had spent the better part of one entire watch digging a ditch, two kobolds deep by three kobolds wide, piling the dirt on the inside in a mound of equal height. On top of that mound they had stuck the trees they had felled, though they were cut into lengths of no more than a kobold’s height and sharpened at the end. Finally, Marbo had agreed with Krulak’s chief elite warrior to have the one hundred wolf-riding cavalry from their home gen build the gates, one facing east and one facing west, as the levies simply couldn’t be counted on to do a respectable job of it. The same went for guarding those gates. The Kobold Gen leaders would depend on their own for that, not leaving such a key task to some half-trained mongrel from one of the degenerate gens.
As Jominai sat thinking about the arrangement of the camp, which was a marvel of engineering compared to what the degenerate gens normally did while on the march, he looked about the circle of leaders at the leaders of the four degenerate gen contingents.
The Nipjik had sent a competent enough leader. He was a fiery individual whose bad temper probably got him this assignment.
The Kijik leader, Kipja if he remembered correctly, was docile enough. He seemed most interested in just getting this thing done and going home.
The Picor gen leader was a bore, and lazy to boot. He always had a story to tell, but it never pertained to anything that was going on at the moment. Jominai wondered if the old, fat Picor leader had ever actually wielded a sword, or if he just talked his enemies to death.
Last of them all, the leader the Five Gens had sent was the leader of one of their five gens. Somehow, they had worked out some system among themselves to take turns whenever the time came to raise a levy. This time, it fell to the gen with the unpronounceable name. He’d wished it were different, but one didn’t have to be able to pronounce a gen’s name, as long as their warriors showed up and obeyed their leaders… And as long as the leaders themselves obeyed Jominai and Marbo in turn.
Standing around the map spread on the rock with Jominai and the four gen leaders, Marbo and the four elite warriors from his contingent that were assigned to the four leaders looked well worn, but satisfied with the day’s results. For a day of such moderate heat, the salt stains evident on their leather jerkins was tale enough of the efforts they had spent drilling the levies and preparing them for the possible fight ahead.
Off to one side of the tent the blessed Oracle Demo and the covenant mage, Gaenthik by name, sat conversing. It had been a boring enough day for them, with Gaenthik spending his time pouring over a tome on fire manipulation using red dragon dialectics in the draconic language while Demo spent his time providing medical care for minor health issues and magical healing for two injuries that had occurred during the day’s training.
“I don’t think we can know how the Kales will react,” Marbo was saying. “You’re asking me to guess whether they will decide to stand and fight, or just let the orcs have what they want. It has been a long time since I’ve interacted with any of the Kale Gen’s leaders, but the one I do know—Kazar of the chainmail fist or some such name like that—I don’t see him rolling over for the orcs.”
The other Kobold Gen elit
e warriors all looked uncomfortable with the conversation as well. Finally, one of them spoke up. “I’ve got to admit that they probably have the best trained warriors in the two valleys, next to ours that is. That may embolden them to fight.”
Marbo nodded as he looked at the four leaders from the four degenerate gens. “Yes, very true. So, if it comes down to it, we may just have to fight them, Kipja.”
The Kijik Gen leader grimaced. He’d been volunteered for this duty, but that didn’t mean he had to like it. “Is just… Is just that after orcs go, Kale Gen and us still be here. If we fight them, they no will like us never ever any more. Not for long many times.” Kipja’s command of The Sorcerer’s Tongue was better than most of the degenerate gen kobolds, but it still left much to be desired. Nonetheless, he certainly was getting his message across.
Jominai nodded his head while Marbo looked cautiously over at his untried, young leader. “I think it’s been on all of our minds,” Jominai stated. “I see no use in denying it. None of us want to go to war with the Kale Gen, despite what the orcs want.”
Marbo nodded unwillingly, yet in obedient support of his young leader, “Yes, but what are we to do about it? We have our orders, and I don’t think we can do much about it.”
Jominai looked about the circle. None of the Kobold Gen elite warriors were going to say anything, not with Marbo standing against further discussion of the matter. None of the degenerate gen leaders looked particularly willing to speak up. So, looking over at the Oracle and covenant mage, he called out to them.
“Demo! In your role as Oracle of the Ancestors, do you have any advice for us? What say the books of our heritage? Have any ever been in this situation before?”
