| 6 people marked this as a favorite. |
For reasons I cannot fully explain, every single ounce of my hypomania today has suddenly and without warning coalesced into a single, incoherent thought, two words solitary, blazing in my mind like an archangel's burning sword, a singularity of pure, unyielding, unbending, completely useless certainty.
| 6 people marked this as a favorite. |
Like! They're small!
And they're evil!
But they're! They're!!
*incoherent screaming*
| 5 people marked this as a favorite. |
They're important, okay??
| 4 people marked this as a favorite. |
{plonks on smol fake horns, rolls Disguise check : FAIL} How do you do, fellow kobalds? Kobalds am so best at many things.
Yes! They bought it. I am invincible!
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
Someone finally gets it! <3
| 5 people marked this as a favorite. |
You know, it's funny. I generally "roll with the punches" and try to create adaptations of the original races that blend in all the old tropes, just in new ways. But I don't really use the whole "broken Common" shtick. It just doesn't occur to me. That's a goblin thing, maybe an orc thing, but rarely a kobold or hobgoblin or drow or bugbear thing.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Most of my kobolds do the third-person referential because they're trying to translate to either Common or Undercommon from Draconic, and my mental construct is that a lot of the personal pronouns of Draconic are either royal 'we' or 'I' and reserved for dragons.
I know it's a stretch, but that's what I've got at the moment.
Ikilwa tends to be a bit more polished, but that's because they've spent most of their adult life with the Pathfinder Society, plus bardic influences.
Pa'aan is going to be less third-party referential and use personal pronouns, just because it'll be easier for a space labor organizer.
| 9 people marked this as a favorite. |
I like the idea that the kobold dialect of Draconic finds little use for differentiating yourself from the team/the crew/the clan, and so most kobolds trying to learn Common say either "we" or "this one" to refer to themselves--because among kobolds, you never really need to refer to yourself most of the time, since you're almost never alone or acting as an individual.
So, a kobold adventurer struggling with culture shock might say: "Thank you for the bran muffin. We will eat it later, when we find a napkin."
The kobold adventurer isn't exactly using the "Royal We" as we think of it today--she's implying that she and the whole group might later go looking for a napkin and eat the muffin together, because instinctively that's the word choice that makes more sense to her. If pressed, she might clarify: "No, ah, this one will eat the bran muffin. Our friends may eat whatever they like."
| 4 people marked this as a favorite. |
Kobolds are just really, really uncomfortable with the concept of being alone. Save for very special circumstances, kobolds are never alone. Being alone is how you die in the Darklands/Underdark/Underworld/Down Under, especially if you have a -2 Con . Sleeping alone is how you spend the whole night shivering, since kobolds are coldblooded and, especially on the surface, do not retain heat so well on their own. They do everything with a team. If you're going to go get lunch, you're expecting to go with a bunch of your friends. If it's time for a nap, you're probably cuddling with at least a consort or two, if not the whole team.
It's why so many exiled kobolds join adventuring parties. ;P
And they're still evil! That's why they're so great. They're evil, but they also cuddle unashamedly!
I personally prefer the idea that they've been stereotyped as being 'evil' when they're actually doing something like trying to survive and not holding back for survival.
After all, anyone who's ever encountered a kobold snarl is definitely not going to be in a charitable mindset if they survive the experience.
EDIT: And now my brain has gone to a 'polite' kobold lair, that has tons of signs in every language the local kobolds know proclaiming the territory of the particular clan, and that not only will trespassers be shot, they'll also be looted for loose change and turned into part of the defenses...
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
To me, kobolds are the flip side to duergar and hobgoblins--who are lawful, but basically loathe each other--because they, unlike duergar and hobgoblins, actually like each other. Kobolds are a little more Lawful than they are Evil, and they'll do anything to defend their clan's nursery.
The fact that they're absolutely vicious towards non-kobolds, do whatever it takes to survive, take out their frustrations on any non-kobolds weaker than themselves and sometimes stripmine whole riverfronts to nothing but mud and rubble doesn't undermine that sometimes they form adorable little cuddlepiles and kick their feet because they're dreaming about chasing svirfneblin. <3
EDIT: To me, kobolds are evil because they represent the dangers of pure us vs. them in-group mentality, pure "anything for me and mine" moral apathy, and most of all, the consequences of allowing trauma to turn you just as ugly as the thing that hurt you, just smaller and sadder.
| 6 people marked this as a favorite. |
One of my PCs I most want to get to the table is a kobold who was raised among the Mbe'ke - a concept I'd previously voiced hope for well before the Mwangi book came out - as a way to explore a kobold character from a totally different perspective. She's a 'Barbarian' who bodyguarded for diplomats, with draconic blessings and a real gift for languages. The idea of a kobold who's well-spoken and finely dressed, but still an awesome hero. I love her a lot!
| 4 people marked this as a favorite. |
The Strength of Thousands game I'm in has a Kobold Fire Oracle and he is just the sweetest little dude. Just wants to help but is scared he's gonna burn down a treehouse.
That's basically how my stripmining crews work. Sometimes surface-dwelling kobolds band together and form a "stripmining crew", which is exactly what it sounds like. These crews come into conflict with dwarves and surface-dwellers a lot more often than the clans, but ironically are somewhat more likely to abide by local laws and regulations, since it makes business easier.
| 4 people marked this as a favorite. |
Dangit, now I want to somehow make a Kobold RPG story -- where it's a bunch of kobolds huddled together for warmth playing High-rises and Human Resources...
No idea where to start, but I had to get that out of my brain.
|
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
A bronze kobold dances into the thread, strikes a pose and flourishes her rapier. "Zot is a mighty dragon who slays her enemies just as her draconic forbears intended -- with a rapier! She joined the Pathfinder Society because they provide the best minions for her missions! It's good to have minions who can do the disagreeable stuff like the thinking and the knowing stuff and the spell casting so that Zot can be the mighty dragon who protects them all!"
Then she glances to the right and left, before admitting in a whisper, "Also, Zot have gambling problem, and the Pathfinder Society pays well. But they still provide the best minions, even if the minions always try to tell Zot that they are not minions but colleagues. Zot knows better."
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I was asked to never play Kobolds again in one group in Alaska because I played them as "too clever" and according to the GM I was supposed to Hero/God Worship ALL dragons, not just Dragons of my same scale color.
>.> It didn't help I one-shotted the Blue Dragon in the Mummy Mask AP ^^; I was a very lost in the world Black Kobold Sorcerer named Knicknock
|
"No-scales are WEIRD!
In the Dragon Empires, up by the Forest of Spirits, they do not like you using the traditional kobold methods of communicating peace and harmony. Why, we almost got run out of town because it resembled 'miming' which is apparently a serious taboo!
And then, in the Land of the Linnorm DRAGON Kings, it's apparently a deathly insult to refer to the female parent as 'providing good warmth on cold winter nights' in Skald.
Anyboldy else run into this issue?"
