The kobolds of @Hohenwald came after the city had already burned. They crept into the ruins through broken drains, collapsed cellars, and breaches too narrow for larger creatures to enter, drawn by the smell of carrion and the great draconic shape sleeping amid the wreckage. To them, the Grey Wyrm could be nothing less than a god. It was larger than their oldest tales of dragons, slept beneath mountains of stone, and breathed fire hot enough to turn armored men into blackened bones.
The Grey Wyrm has never spoken to the kobolds, commanded them, or shown any clear awareness of their existence. This has done nothing to weaken their devotion. Kobolds are simple creatures, quick to fear and quicker to invent explanations for what frightens them. Every snort, twitch, shed scale, and movement of the sleeping beast is treated as a sign. When the Wyrm rolls over and crushes a dozen worshipers beneath its bulk, the survivors declare that the dead angered the god. When it wakes and devours an entire tribe, neighboring kobolds insist that their offerings must have been poor.
Generations of kobolds pass quickly within the ruins, and each retelling makes their god greater and their own history more confused. Few know that Hohenwald was once a human city. They believe its walls were raised around the Grey Wyrm by ancient servants and that the castle belonged to whatever tribe first proves worthy enough to claim it.
Hohenwald contains numerous kobold tribes, each occupying a separate collection of cellars, sewers, collapsed houses, or surviving fortifications. Their territories may encompass only a few streets, but every tribe guards its boundaries with crude traps, hidden pits, sharpened stakes, falling stones, and tripwires attached to bells or broken crockery. A lone kobold is timid and easily driven away, but a tribe fights through ambush, overwhelming numbers, and the confidence gained from having many bodies between itself and danger.
The tribes compete constantly. They steal food, tools, weapons, prisoners, and nesting chambers from one another, but their fiercest conflicts concern the favor of the Grey Wyrm. Each tribe believes it must present greater offerings than its rivals. They drag slaughtered livestock through the streets, pile polished metal beside the Wyrm’s resting place, and leave captives bound among heaps of meat and treasure. Most offerings are ignored, crushed, or buried beneath rubble when the creature shifts. A carcass devoured by the waking Wyrm is celebrated as proof that the offering was accepted, even when several kobolds are eaten alongside it.
Tribal wars are vicious but poorly organized. Plans rarely extend beyond sneaking through a forgotten tunnel, setting a trap, or attacking while a rival tribe is distracted. Battles are fought in cramped passages with daggers, slings, stolen spears, and whatever pieces of masonry can be dropped from above. The losing side often scatters quickly once its strongest fighters are killed, only to return later through another tunnel and attempt the same attack again.
Every Hohenwald tribe maintains a hoard of bright or reflective objects. Coins, buckles, mirrors, colored glass, silverware, polished stones, helmets, brass candlesticks, and fragments of noble jewelry are piled together without regard for their actual worth. Kobolds measure wealth by shine, size, and how difficult an object was to steal. A cracked silver platter may be prized above a pouch of gold because more kobolds can gather around it and admire their reflections.
At the center of every hoard rests a single object regarded as the tribe’s sacred relic, believed to carry the blessing of the Grey Wyrm. These relics are rarely magical and are often ordinary remnants of Hohenwald: a ruby-studded cup, a gilded door handle, a knight’s polished helm, a piece of stained glass, or a margrave’s ceremonial chain. What matters is the story surrounding the object. One tribe may claim that its relic fell from the Wyrm’s jaws, while another insists that theirs was uncovered beneath a shed scale. Such tales change with every generation and become more absurd with each telling.
The relic is guarded day and night, though kobold guards are easily distracted and often quarrel over who may touch it. It is displayed during feasts, carried before warriors, and rubbed against offerings before they are dragged to the Grey Wyrm. Tribal leaders use possession of the relic as proof that the tribe remains favored, though most cannot clearly explain what that favor provides beyond not having been destroyed yet.
Stealing another tribe’s relic is considered the greatest possible victory. Kobolds believe the Grey Wyrm’s blessing resides within the object itself and passes immediately to whoever possesses it. Raiding parties therefore spend more effort attempting to steal rival relics than gathering food or strengthening their tunnels. They crawl through drains, disguise themselves beneath stolen skins, or create noisy distractions before snatching the sacred object and fleeing into the ruins.
A tribe that loses its relic is expected to recover it quickly. Its warriors launch reckless attacks, often sacrificing half their number in repeated attempts to reach the enemy hoard. Until the relic is reclaimed, every misfortune is blamed upon its absence. Spoiled food, collapsed tunnels, failed traps, and stillborn eggs are all taken as evidence that the Grey Wyrm has withdrawn its favor.
Should the tribe fail to recover its relic, it is absorbed by the tribe that took it. The surviving kobolds surrender their hoard, tunnels, traps, and young to the victors. Most accept this without prolonged resistance, reasoning that the stronger tribe must now possess the Wyrm’s blessing. The defeated leaders are not granted the same mercy. Chieftains, shamans, relic-keepers, and prominent warriors are executed before both hoards, usually by burning, crushing, or being bound near the Grey Wyrm as an offering. Their deaths prevent them from challenging the new leaders and provide a simple explanation for the tribe’s defeat: they must have angered the Wyrm.
Kobold chieftains rule through intimidation, possession of the tribal relic, and the support of whichever warriors currently appear strongest. Leadership changes frequently. A chieftain who loses too many raids, fails to provide food, or appears frightened during an omen may be stabbed in his sleep and replaced before dawn. Few chieftains live long enough to become old, and those who do are often half-blind, scarred, and surrounded by younger rivals waiting for weakness.
Some tribes possess a scale-reader, usually an elderly kobold who claims to understand the Grey Wyrm’s movements. Scale-readers are not learned priests or serious theologians. They are frightened storytellers who examine shed scales, piles of ash, footprints, or the direction of smoke and announce whatever explanation best preserves their position. A rumble beneath the ground may mean war, hunger, rain, or the need to polish the relic, depending upon what the scale-reader wishes the tribe to do.
Their predictions are frequently wrong, but kobold memories are short and blame is easily placed elsewhere. When a prophecy fails, the offering was insufficient, the relic was touched improperly, or a rival tribe interfered. When one succeeds by accident, the scale-reader’s authority grows until the next disaster.
The kobolds survive by scavenging what remains of Hohenwald and raiding the surrounding countryside. They gather mushrooms from damp cellars, trap rats and cave lizards, steal livestock, and strip metal from the ruins. Their nests are crowded, filthy, and filled with smoke from poorly vented fires. Broken furniture becomes barricades, noble tapestries become bedding, and human bones are shaped into tools, ornaments, and warning markers.
Sunlight is hated and avoided. Most kobolds emerge during the foggiest hours, at dusk, or after nightfall, when they can move between ruined buildings without exposing themselves beneath the open sky. They know the tunnels beneath Hohenwald better than any outsider and can vanish through cracked foundations before a pursuer realizes where they have gone.
They are not skilled builders in the manner of dwarves or trained engineers, but they possess a natural cunning for traps and cramped defenses. Their devices are crude, frequently unreliable, and just as dangerous to kobolds as to intruders, yet the ruins provide an endless supply of loose masonry, rotten floors, sharp metal, and unstable walls. A treasure hunter may survive the Grey Wyrm’s absence only to fall through a covered stairwell onto rusted spikes arranged by creatures barely tall enough to reach his waist.
The greatest ambition of every tribe is to make an offering that the Grey Wyrm visibly accepts. When the creature sleeps, kobolds creep close enough to place gifts beside its claws, nostrils, or jaws. The bravest smear blood upon its scales or wedge polished objects between them, though many are killed when the beast moves in its sleep.
When the Wyrm wakes, the tribes retreat into their deepest tunnels and wait. Should it eat an offering before leaving the city, the responsible tribe erupts in celebration. Should it crush the gift, the kobolds argue over whether this means rejection or an even greater blessing. Should it destroy the tribe that presented it, rivals quickly seize the abandoned hoard and announce that the Wyrm has judged the matter.
The Grey Wyrm remains indifferent to all of it. It sleeps, feeds, and returns to sleep without understanding the small wars fought in its shadow. The kobolds continue regardless, breeding, raiding, stealing relics, and dying beneath its careless movements. To them, the ruins of Hohenwald are not the grave of a fallen city.