Foothills of the High Tooth Mountains
1st of Granite, 1151
There were at least thirty of them in sight, but the sounds and scent spoke of far more somewhere within the cave. Dog-shaped heads on tiny bodies, covered in a lizard's scales. Most looked women or children, though with their kind it was hard to tell. They were dressed in everything from crudely spun spider silks to scraps of human clothing ten sizes too big. A few drifted around the edges of the crowd and carried simple wooden bows or rocks chipped into heavy looking daggers. One or two even had leather armor that, surprisingly, did not look stolen.
Dzharius sighed and wriggled back from the edge of the hillside, the rattle of the sparse shrubs barely noticed in the strong, cool winds that came down off the High Tooth behind them. Two figures waited for her behind a stand of rocks near by. One sat, the other stood, but even accounting for that they were still on eye level with each other. Karakzon the Second held a freshly crafted crossbow in his unweathered hands and wore a worried look on his face. Their long-legged guide, Eram Lutzstein, cocked his hat to one side and gave her a patient look.
"Well? Like I told you?"
"So it seems," Dzharius answered the human, then nodded to Karakzon as well. "Kobolds, everywhere. Just like he warned us."
The other dwarf spat, his bushy eyebrows linking together upon his forehead. "Icum Kirar Aval isn't in one of her better moods."
"Maybe she will be if you start listening to me," Eram interupted, arms rested lazily across his knees. The human was a ranger, a hunter and explorer who patrolled the lands around. He was dressed in some sort of leather and had one of Cheveux's fine bone swords strapped to his waist - the price for his services, thus far. "This is the third cave you've insisted on coming to despite what I've told you. If you told me what you were looking for..."
Dzharius waved a weary hand at him, though it was with an apologectic look. The long-legs had been good to his word so far, taking them to every cave he knew about in the region. The first had been infested with wild crundles, beasts legends claim were once guardians of great evils and should manifest in endless numbers to harrow dwarvenkind. They had passed on that location.
The second played home to a giant. They had not seen the monster itself, but the bones of dead humans littered the ground around the cave and they could hear it's bellowing deep below the earth. If they had brought all their soldiers with them, it may have been worth the risk, but she and Karakzon alone were not about to confront one of the Great Beasts of legend.
They were running out of caves and their guide out of patience.
"We don't even know," Dzharius said, dropping down to put back on the boots and armor she'd removed to get closer to the cave. "That's why we have to keep looking. Urist told us there would be a sign, but at this point we'll settle for a cave that just isn't playing home to an army of things that want to kill us."
"It's not as if Urist is going to be around much longer to complain," she heard Karakzon mutter under his breath. He evidently hadn't meant it for her ears, because the glare she shot him made him bristle and blush, turning away from her.
Their guide, with a patience greater than most humans could muster, heaved a sigh. "Well, I'll take you to one more cave I know about around here, but I can't say it's much better than this. It's got a clan of trolls living in it who-"
"... who what?" Dzharius said, looking up and straight into the flat of Eram's palm. The leggy human pulled himself up quickly and drew the bone sword. Karakzon shifted, swinging his crossbow around towards the shadows of the stones. Dzharius still heard nothing, but she followed their lead, leaving her armor off to retrieve the spear leaning beside her.
Eram was creeping towards the edge of the stones when the attack came. With a barking squeal, a tiny figure flew through the air and landed upon his chest. The human let out a shout of pain and shock as a short stone knife plunged several times into his shoulder in rapid succession, the sword dropping from his hands. Blood splashed across his leathers. With a shout and a grunt he finally managed to work his arms under the kobold and heaved the tiny creature back into the stones.
The kobold bounced off the stone and landed in a heap, shaking stars from it's eyes. It recovered itself just fast enough to catch the crack of Karakzon's crossbow as it fired. Kobolds were agile things and this one no different, bouncing on all fours out of the way of the bolt. Unfortunately for it, it hadn't noticed Dzharius near by. The butt of her spear rammed into it's gut, catching it while it was still in the air, and she slapped the lizard-like creature back to the ground. A spin of her spear put it's sharpened point forward, half an inch from it's open and beady eye.
"Long legs?" she asked over her shoulder, not looking away from the tiny, panting figure at the other end of her spear.
Black eyes focused on the point of her spear, before taking the long road up the wooden length to find the rest of her at the other end. All at once, the kobold froze. Dzharius had not thought it possible, but the lizard-dog's eyes actually got wider.
"Alive," Eram hissed through clenched teeth. "The blade got through the armor enough to break skin, but not much else. Hurts like a bastard."
"We'll have Xil take a look at it. Karakzon?"
"Nothing hurt but my pride. Can't believe I missed at this range," he grunted. There was a creek of straining rope and a solid snap as his crossbow string was stretched back into place. Fixing a bolt to the weapon, he moved up beside Dzharius."But I can make up for it now."
The kobold took one look at the marksdwarf and bared it's teeth in a snarl. At least, that was what Dzharius had thought it was doing. It scrambled back from her spear and she braced to slam the point through it's chest, but the kobold then threw itself forward onto the ground, sitting on it's knees with it's arms stretched out before it and it's snout in the dirt. "Yiigg ararf yipyip!"
"Sorry, don't speak gibberish," Karakzon said, leveling his crossbow once again.
"Shedim," the kobold barked.
Slowly, stupefied, Karakzon's crossbow raised. Dzharius felt a wave of shock slap across her face and her spear lowered as well. The kobold, sensing the weapons lift, raised it's head and bared it's teeth at them again. It was only then that Dzharius realized it was smiling.
"... did it just speak?"
---
Kobold Cave in the High Tooth Mountains
1st of Granite, 1151
"Yip!"
"Yipyip!"
"Aroo!"
The air was filled with jubilant barking voices and excited growls. Tiny hands reached out to touch them as they passed, just for a touch of their clothing before darting away. The shifting mass of kobold bodies seemed to grow only thicker as they reached the entrance to the cave, high on one of the lone hillsides around the High Tooth. The scouts had gone back to get the others, taking the kobold with them. It's presence at camp had roused worry, particularly when it began to curiously dig into the contents of the wagon and chase one of the elk-birds about. Kirathason had nearly belted it across the jaw when it spoke the name of the ancient deity again. After Rain had tended to his wounds, they'd left Eram behind and gone together with the kobold to it's home.
"This is impossible," Karakzon said as they started into the cool darkness of the cave. "Kobolds can't speak. They're barely more than animals."
"It seems that this one does," Rain spoke. The elder dwarf smiled with a certain motherly patience at the tiny figures rushing around them, even lowering a hand to allow a kobold child to squeeze her finger in passing. They'd had plenty of encounters with kobolds before now, mostly when the lizard-dogs tried to raid their caravan. She could even remember them from the days of Zospu Smaxa, always skulking about the outside of the caverns, trying to find something to steal until the yeti chased them off.
It was odd to think that of all the places she had been with two nomadic tribes of dwarves, the first they'd find a warm welcome would be among the lizard-dogs.
"Shedim!" their guide yipped in agreement, as if just to prove the marksdwarf wrong. The word sparked an excited riot of garbled barking and exclamations of Shedim's name from both the crowd behind them and the darkened cave ahead.
Rain had to put a hand on Karakzon - his son she dimly remembered to remind herself - to calm him somewhat. The marksdwarf seemed more nervous about the whole affair than the human did. Dzharius, by contrast, seemed only nervous to be surrounded by so many other beings at once, relaxing her guard noticeably once the narrow confines of the cave thinned their escort out. Xil was keeping her head tilted to a stoic angle and smoothly brushing off any of the little hands that grasped at her. Kirathason ignored them completely as he gave the cave itself a look over with the practiced eye of a miner, doubtless wondering if anywhere a kobold lived could be trusted not to crash down onto their heads.
Of the group, only Cheveux and Sognard seemed to be enjoying the attention too. The old craftsdwarf was letting the creatures hang from his arms, still more burly than most despite the years that weighed on him, laughing as they wobbled and flopped back into the crowd. He kept stopping to help them back up, which was slowly dragging him to the back of the line. For a moment, Rain actually thought Sognard had vanished completely, until she heard the plink of his banjo and caught the outline of his figure at the cave entrance behind them. He had stopped and taken a seat on a rock to play and the kobolds all yipped and jumped around him enthusiastically. For a moment she considered calling him to catch up, but Rain let it go. He could keep watch on the wagon and the animals from there.
Besides, he had finally found an audience that seemed appreciative of his music.
They were passing deeper into the earth, traveling down a gradual slope though tight stone chambers. Rain felt a slight shiver pass through her and realized it was because of how much this reminded her of Zospu Smaxa. Even after all these years, the reminder of the old cave made her spirits sink and her bones feel old.
They had all grown quiet. Even the kobolds seemed to settle into a hush as they traveled deeper. Fewer and fewer were following them, lingering behind in the upper levels. She felt the reverence from them. Not just towards the six of them, but where they were. That these creatures could be worshipful of anything was a revelation. These kobolds were both familiar and alien. They looked and sounded like every one of the scampering thieves she ever recalled, yet behaved nothing like them. Cheveux tapped her arm and pointed to the wall. As her eyes adjusted to the dark, she stared at the wall as something quiet and powerful washed over her.
There were dwarves on the walls.
The etchings were mixture of even handed cuts and crude scratchings. She could see clear in the stonework where the kobolds had finished the work of whoever had started it. As they moved deeper, the quality of the engravings began to improve and the longer she looked, the more figures she began to make out. A dwarf surrounded by dwarves. A hydra surrounded by dwarves, who fell pleadingly to their knees. Dwarves upon wagons traveling over mountains. A dark cavern. A weeping cave spider.
She did not have to study long to realize what she was looking at. It was them. Their story. The dwarves of Losiszas chiseled onto one side of the cavern, those of Kubuk Ikud on the other. Rain looked around, but only Cheveux seemed to have understood what they beheld. She could see it in his eyes. The younger dwarves had been told of the history of their people, but they had not lived through it as she and the craftsdwarf had done. Most were only children when Momuz had risen from the depths, if they had been born at all.
Then, they began to pass by engravings she didn't recognize. Dwarves surrounded by kobolds. Dwarves laboring among strange mushrooms. Great and twisted shapes rising from ground. An indistinct army marching towards a mountainhome. Kobolds and dwarves standing together upon the ramparts of a wall. There were piles of dead bodies; kobolds, dwarves, and strangers alike. Rain frowned. Was it the future or the story of what had become of the dwarves in these lands?
She stopped abruptly as the others did and heard Dzharius at the head of the line let out a strangely muted. "Huh."
The others parted way for her without her needing to ask, Cheveux following beside her. They had reached the end of the cave. The wall had been smoothed flat and the largest and most elaborate engraving Rain had ever seen was etched into it's surface. Shedim, the cave spider god of old, sat at the center of a web that stretched between the peaks of a mountain. Upon the strands below him was entangled a fortress of stone and upon it stood a host of dwarves and kobolds. The line of the thread extended beyond, under the earth to wrap about a spire of stone and then even further beyond. It left the wall and traced across the floor, straight to the dwarf sitting before it.
The dwarf was not an etching. He sat in a white silk robe, his legs folded in front of him and hands resting on his knees. A worn set of stone engraving tools sat in front of him like an offering and a white staff of bone leaned in the corner behind him. His beard was gray and his skin was dark brown.
And he was very, very dead.
He must have been there for many years, long enough that the scent of death no longer fouled the air. The his skin had preserved into a papery leather hide, but the muscle had withered until the shape of his skull was visible and his hands brittle bird feet. Cave spiders made a nest in his open mouth and empty eyes and possibly beyond. Cobwebs stretched from his elbows to the ground. From under his legs, the etching of the web continued, ending at last into the tiny depiction of a cave spider on the ground before him. A spider that grasped a spear between it's legs and drove it into the earth.
"Shedim!" their kobold guide yipped.
"Alright, Urist," Rain breathed. "If this isn't a sign, I don't know what is."
------
OOC: Kobold central!
I'm actually away from my computer for a couple of days and my old laptop would explode if I tried to run dwarf fortress on it, but I got the embark done just before I left. Two and a half pages of (so far) friendly kobolds. The embark team consists of Kirathason, Rain, Karakzon (Jr), Dzharius (the Second), Xil, Sogna, and Cheveux. For animals got a breeding pair of elk-birds, three female and two male crundles, and four each of fancy rats and jumping spiders. Should have enough food and booze to last us long enough to hit the caverns (the kobold cave BARELY extends into the ground) and enough raw materials to work with to get everyone suited up as best we can.
Apologies to Dbuhos for not making it in just yet. I wanted to get most of the original community in first, but you'll be early in line for an immigrant dwarf once they start showing up.
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Topic: Clan of the Cave Spider - Community Cavern Fortress (Read 9609 times)