4/11/13

Little Larry the Kobold (an NPC's story)

Source: www.requiemlarp.com
Introduction
The Montporte Dungeon adventurers first met Larramore during Session 3. They found him hiding in a potty room. He was the sole survivor of a battle between kobolds and jinomes (undead gnomes). The adventurers decided to spare his life, for some odd reason. They healed his wounds, gave him some food and invited him to join their happy throng. They dubbed him “Little Larry.” This is his story.



Little Larry's Story
I am the youngest of my batch-hatch (the collection of offspring born to the same mother and father). My grandfather was chief of our clan and my father, the eldest of his batch-hatch, was the chief-son. My father was in line to be chief. In most kobold families, treachery runs rampant. Had my father followed the customary course, he would have already become chief. But my parents choose to live by the honorable ways of the very ancient draconic ones. It was their honor that was their undoing.

My Uncle Degmar, the second eldest son of my grandfather, chafed at the thought that he would someday live under the rule of his elder brother, my father. In true kobold fashion, he conspired against my father and mother. He is a clever kobold and succeeded in killing my parents in a way that placed suspicions elsewhere, away from him. The clan suspected nothing, but my batch-mates knew otherwise. Despite our wariness, they were killed in their turn.

When my grandfather died, I was the only one left in my immediately family who had a claim to the throne, but I was too young. Degmar seized control of the clan, craftily killed off his naysayers—as is the way of kobolds—and then decided that our clan needed to move north.

Degmar had come upon some secret information—information about an ancient kobold place of power. My grandfather and his fathers before him had dismissed this as an old orc’s tale. Degmar, however, was a believer. Perhaps finding a place of power appealed to his oversized sense of destiny.

He consulted wizards, mediums, spirits, my dead ancestors and determined that the place of power was located underground, north of the human settlement of Montporte. Being sparsely settled and with the humans otherwise occupied by wars to the west, we had the wilderness to ourselves. Sure, we skirmished with orcs, but that is just good clean fun. We could invest the rest of our time and energy into finding this place for my uncle.

After much searching, we found a sinkhole that allowed us egress into an ancient underground complex. From what we could gather, neither the humans nor the orcs knew of this place. We had it all to ourselves and could explore this complex to our hearts content.

I never lost sight of the fact that my uncle Degmar viewed me as a threat. I was careful and gave him no chance to kill me. Furthermore, I proved myself an able warrior against the orcs. Degmar sent me on numerous missions against the orcs, purposefully sending too few of us in the hopes that I would get killed. But our small parties were stealthy and we killed many orcs. I gained fame as an orc slayer, making me even more of a threat to my uncle.

The orcs also felt threatened and decided to raid our complex. They failed to find us hidden down in our sinkhole but they uncovered another entrance into the underground complex and sent a significant force to take up residence. I personally was excited by this because…well…because I love killing orcs. Now I could eat breakfast at home, go take down some orcs, and be back for lunch.

However, the orcs changed their tactics. We found them to be under the control of some more intelligent being. They were no longer careless. They left us alone and started raiding human settlements, bringing back a handful of them as prisoners. In the meantime, my uncle’s quest to find our place of power became more urgent. We went on exploration forays underground but the orcs blocked us in.

I was finally able to pass by them by myself and came to an underground lake. My uncle was encouraged by this and sent me back, leading a party of eight. We had three boats. We made it through the Dwarven mines but were jumped by some jinomes (gnome undead). I was grievously wounded and the rest of my party was killed. I managed to hide out in a small potty room and spiked the door shut.

I was faint with blood lose and expected to die, sitting on a stone chair with a hole in the seat. I heard a noise outside and nocked an arrow. A voice yelled out in kobold, offering safety. It was not a kobold voice. I recall that I was thinking it was one of my uncle’s gnoll bodyguards, coming to rescue me, or more likely, kill me. Perhaps the gnolls would take me back so that my uncle could use my defeat to have me executed. It is a sin for a kobold commander to return alone after leading his troops into battle.

Instead, it was a half-orc, Adzeer Mattiu, and a small party of humans and gnomes. They healed me, fed me, and offered the unexpected invitation to join them. Knowing that I had nothing but my death waiting for me with the kobolds, I decided to join this little group.