In the bosom of the Earth - An underdark civilization quest
- Pronouns
- She/Her
How has Kobold society coped with the Obssesed Teams needing assisted living just to make sure they remember to do thigns like eat and bathe?
- Location
- Known
- Pronouns
- She/He/They
So glad you haven't given up on this! Here are some questions I'd be interested to see answered:
-What is the Kobold diet/cuisine like? They're evidently omnivorous from our hunting and foraging options, but what sort of food do they prefer, how do they prepare it, and what do they eat on special occasions?
-How do the Kobold fight? Do they wear much armour or shields? What weapons do they use - a mix, or do they generally stick to one as their bread and butter? Do they generally engage in loose-order skirmishing and just run when things turn against them, to avoid casualties? How does magic factor into their warfare?
-How does property ownership, inheritance, and linearity work in Kobold society? Do individuals own much in the way of property, and who gets it when they die? Do Kobolds even care much about who you're descended from?
-What is the Kobold diet/cuisine like? They're evidently omnivorous from our hunting and foraging options, but what sort of food do they prefer, how do they prepare it, and what do they eat on special occasions?
-How do the Kobold fight? Do they wear much armour or shields? What weapons do they use - a mix, or do they generally stick to one as their bread and butter? Do they generally engage in loose-order skirmishing and just run when things turn against them, to avoid casualties? How does magic factor into their warfare?
-How does property ownership, inheritance, and linearity work in Kobold society? Do individuals own much in the way of property, and who gets it when they die? Do Kobolds even care much about who you're descended from?
When a kobold team becomes obsessed or fascinated, does the entire team always go for the same thing? If they always follow the team, I would guess the Dragons engineered some sort of link between Kobolds of the same team to allow for greater cohesion in their servants.
Does our tribe know of other kobold tribes, or do they think they are the only ones left?
Does our tribe know of other kobold tribes, or do they think they are the only ones left?
Question Round 1
- Location
- France
- Pronouns
- She/They
- Raising the young:
In normal times, teams raise enough youth to meeting demographic replacement needs. Green teams will naturally have more availability for this than fascinated/obsessed teams, of course. Young kobolds are expected to hang around their parent team until they reach adulthood. At the end of the cyclical assembly, after doing their stint as governing body, young adult kobolds leave their team to join a new one in a pairing ritual, which ensure diversity. This also ensure fascinated/obsessed teams get a bit of new blood to take care of the older and more focused kobolds. Kobold growth cycles are fairly short and growing kobolds can contribute to background tasks so this isn't a huge imposition on teams.
Things are necessarily a bit different if the tribe seeks to increase its number of teams. When the assembly feel the need for this and consider resources are plentiful enough for it, teams will dedicate themselves full time to the care of a new group of youth brought in from all the other teams, which will form a fully fledged green team when they reach adulthood together.
- Team Care
While teams can broadly be assessed to be fascinated or obsessed, they still have a fraction of less focused kobolds thanks to the demographic renewal, as well as kids who participate in domestic tasks. This provide enough koboldpower for daily tasks, while other teams provide the material resources to see to the needs of teams on a mission taking them away from collection of necessities like food. This participation also has the side effect of kids learning care tasks as they grow and taking that training into their new team, where the young adults can in turn teach the next generation as they assist older members.
- Team Fascination
Fascinated teams naturally gravitate to the same subject, in an almost contagious manner, though that could also just be a factor of fascinated kobolds in a team pulling in as of yet unfocused ones into their projects, which only give one target for their passion. Fascinated kobolds aren't just focused on their work, they're also passionate about taking it up when they're brought to interact with others.
- Diet and cuisine
Kobolds are of course omnivorous. Their metabolisms aren't very good at storing up energy and they're generally not very happy on a diet of starches. As they live underground and were always designed to do so, they've never had to adapt to seasonal variation in diet. They favour animal proteins as their meal base along with fruits for quick acting sugars, veggies or mushrooms to complete nutrient needs and a smattering of seeds or roots to complete it. Kobolds also eat insects as a supplementary protein source.
Common travel food the tribe uses widely when on missions would be an assortment of dried meats, fruits, insects and seeds. When moving in bigger groups with a cook, teams rely on a stew of dried ingredients heated and rehydrated. If times are lean, foraged starches will be thrown in the stew with fruits and meats merely seasoning it. Feast food is a departure from the mixed together ingredients of daily fare, taking advantage of freshness to offer a palette of roasted meats and raw fruits.
- Fighting
The main kobold weapons are the spears and javelins. Kobolds are flimsy and like to keep at least a little distance when fighting if possible. With your tribe having access to magic, the core tactic in any larger engagement is to harry the enemy in a fighting retreat while the mages prepare something big enough to scatter them, then turn around and pursue their divided elements. If the tribe itself isn't at stake, kobold scouts will generally disengage before the enemy gets too close and set traps to deter following them towards the main body.
- Property
Who's that, never heard of her. Kobolds have practically no concept of private property. Teams will have their own stores of tools and resources as well as shelter they can assemble, while individuals retain a few trinkets. Fascinated kobolds also often borrow favoured tools for themselves and cling to them through their lives. There's no real concept of individual lineage, but kobolds care strongly about team lineage, with all adult kobolds honoring their birth team. When a young kobold mature and join their new team, they receive trinkets from the team that raised them as keepsakes. As they age, they'll gather a small collection of new trinkets from friends, admirers, partners or even their whole team as distinction for their work. Teams similarly receive prestige items from the whole tribe to honor their contribution and carefully curate those among them, exhibiting them during feasts.
- Other tribes
You know there are other kobolds around, mostly in the underdark but also in surface caves and burrows. A lot of them are in small team sized groups, without the more elaborate structures of the tribe. Others have retained larger organization, but they're further away from the land you roamed in the past. You haven't absorbed all teams you met because of the limitations your nomadic lifestyle put on supplies, but now that you're settled, it's possible you could convince them to join if you can show your ability to provide for them. Kobolds have a natural tendency to network across teams which has been kept down by their dispersion, so cultural factors will incentivize others to come together once they realize the resources for it are available. Your tribe is currently roughly the size a young adult dragon would have attending to them, leaving a lot of room to grow back to the population an elder one would have had as a following.
Feel free to throw more questions at me, this was fun to write.
In normal times, teams raise enough youth to meeting demographic replacement needs. Green teams will naturally have more availability for this than fascinated/obsessed teams, of course. Young kobolds are expected to hang around their parent team until they reach adulthood. At the end of the cyclical assembly, after doing their stint as governing body, young adult kobolds leave their team to join a new one in a pairing ritual, which ensure diversity. This also ensure fascinated/obsessed teams get a bit of new blood to take care of the older and more focused kobolds. Kobold growth cycles are fairly short and growing kobolds can contribute to background tasks so this isn't a huge imposition on teams.
Things are necessarily a bit different if the tribe seeks to increase its number of teams. When the assembly feel the need for this and consider resources are plentiful enough for it, teams will dedicate themselves full time to the care of a new group of youth brought in from all the other teams, which will form a fully fledged green team when they reach adulthood together.
- Team Care
While teams can broadly be assessed to be fascinated or obsessed, they still have a fraction of less focused kobolds thanks to the demographic renewal, as well as kids who participate in domestic tasks. This provide enough koboldpower for daily tasks, while other teams provide the material resources to see to the needs of teams on a mission taking them away from collection of necessities like food. This participation also has the side effect of kids learning care tasks as they grow and taking that training into their new team, where the young adults can in turn teach the next generation as they assist older members.
- Team Fascination
Fascinated teams naturally gravitate to the same subject, in an almost contagious manner, though that could also just be a factor of fascinated kobolds in a team pulling in as of yet unfocused ones into their projects, which only give one target for their passion. Fascinated kobolds aren't just focused on their work, they're also passionate about taking it up when they're brought to interact with others.
- Diet and cuisine
Kobolds are of course omnivorous. Their metabolisms aren't very good at storing up energy and they're generally not very happy on a diet of starches. As they live underground and were always designed to do so, they've never had to adapt to seasonal variation in diet. They favour animal proteins as their meal base along with fruits for quick acting sugars, veggies or mushrooms to complete nutrient needs and a smattering of seeds or roots to complete it. Kobolds also eat insects as a supplementary protein source.
Common travel food the tribe uses widely when on missions would be an assortment of dried meats, fruits, insects and seeds. When moving in bigger groups with a cook, teams rely on a stew of dried ingredients heated and rehydrated. If times are lean, foraged starches will be thrown in the stew with fruits and meats merely seasoning it. Feast food is a departure from the mixed together ingredients of daily fare, taking advantage of freshness to offer a palette of roasted meats and raw fruits.
- Fighting
The main kobold weapons are the spears and javelins. Kobolds are flimsy and like to keep at least a little distance when fighting if possible. With your tribe having access to magic, the core tactic in any larger engagement is to harry the enemy in a fighting retreat while the mages prepare something big enough to scatter them, then turn around and pursue their divided elements. If the tribe itself isn't at stake, kobold scouts will generally disengage before the enemy gets too close and set traps to deter following them towards the main body.
- Property
Who's that, never heard of her. Kobolds have practically no concept of private property. Teams will have their own stores of tools and resources as well as shelter they can assemble, while individuals retain a few trinkets. Fascinated kobolds also often borrow favoured tools for themselves and cling to them through their lives. There's no real concept of individual lineage, but kobolds care strongly about team lineage, with all adult kobolds honoring their birth team. When a young kobold mature and join their new team, they receive trinkets from the team that raised them as keepsakes. As they age, they'll gather a small collection of new trinkets from friends, admirers, partners or even their whole team as distinction for their work. Teams similarly receive prestige items from the whole tribe to honor their contribution and carefully curate those among them, exhibiting them during feasts.
- Other tribes
You know there are other kobolds around, mostly in the underdark but also in surface caves and burrows. A lot of them are in small team sized groups, without the more elaborate structures of the tribe. Others have retained larger organization, but they're further away from the land you roamed in the past. You haven't absorbed all teams you met because of the limitations your nomadic lifestyle put on supplies, but now that you're settled, it's possible you could convince them to join if you can show your ability to provide for them. Kobolds have a natural tendency to network across teams which has been kept down by their dispersion, so cultural factors will incentivize others to come together once they realize the resources for it are available. Your tribe is currently roughly the size a young adult dragon would have attending to them, leaving a lot of room to grow back to the population an elder one would have had as a following.
Feel free to throw more questions at me, this was fun to write.
What sort of relations have the Kobolds had with non-Kobold wandering tribes? We obviously took in the Obsidian Dwarves, and I am a bit curious how that came about, but what about others?
I imagine that there were issues on the surface that pushed most of the Kobolds to retreat from it. It was probably more complex than, the dragons are gone, let's dig. What were they?
I imagine that there were issues on the surface that pushed most of the Kobolds to retreat from it. It was probably more complex than, the dragons are gone, let's dig. What were they?
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- Location
- Known
- Pronouns
- She/He/They
Interesting! What form do these trinkets take? If they show them off during feasts, are they clothes? On a related note: What kind of clothes do the kobolds wear? How do they make their clothes?
Happerry
Bat out of Hell
- Location
- Kanto
If Kobolds don't really do the 'property' thing, what's their opinion on money? Even if they don't use it other people do.
Actually for that matter, how to the dwarves that have joined up consider the idea of property, and how does that clash with the kobold version?
Actually for that matter, how to the dwarves that have joined up consider the idea of property, and how does that clash with the kobold version?
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Proto-Communist Kobolds :3
always_confused
Perpetually unwanted
- Location
- SEA
Are Ice-Mages called Coldbolds? :3
How did our tribe of Kobolds meet the Obsidian Dwarves? Did we meet them around the time the tribe decided to settle down? You mentioned that our tribe has met other Kobolds, but didn't absorb them due to limits on how many people a nomadic lifestyle can support in one area. Why did they absorb the Obsidian Dwarves? I imagine that contact with other Obsidian Dwarves would be much rarer.
For that matter, how did the political arrangement between the Obsidian Dwarves and Kobolds come about? They tend towards gerontocracy, where Kobolds tend towards a pedocracy.
I imagine it took a fair amount of adjustment for the two species to come together, during the war there would have been the dragons to sooth things over. I would guess that the two had to test it to see how the Council of the New worked best?
For that matter, how did the political arrangement between the Obsidian Dwarves and Kobolds come about? They tend towards gerontocracy, where Kobolds tend towards a pedocracy.
I imagine it took a fair amount of adjustment for the two species to come together, during the war there would have been the dragons to sooth things over. I would guess that the two had to test it to see how the Council of the New worked best?