The Kobold King

The Rune Door

Outside the rune door, Prince Kolgan recognized one of ththe kobolds they had killed the day before. As for the door itself, he had never seen it open; his people had always taken the Dwarven runes for some kind of curse. Herald had a better theory. The riddles, the runework, the sheer age of it — this had the look of Zarmavdian, the dwarven diviner of the Roseguard, whose love of riddles Otari still celebrates every Founder's Day. Which meant one of the town's founders had built something down here and sealed it behind a puzzle. The party reasoned that anything sealed that carefully was sealed for a reason, and that the Queen should be dealt with first.

The Prince's Speech

They unburied the exit and pushed open the door. Kolgan stepped out in front of the party and announced that he had come to reclaim his throne — and that a fearsome band of surface-dwelling heroes, had come to help him do it.

The kobolds dropped their weapons at once. All but one: the trapmaster who stood on the far side of a pair of traps, between the party and the throne room, and did not budge.

Beans flew into the centre of the room and began a peace dance. The trapmaster, confused and terrified, stood still with his weapon raised and watched. Ja-ja, meanwhile, talked one of the surrendered warriors into picking his weapon back up and joining the fight against the Queen.

A short skirmish with the trapmaster followed, until Kolgan disarmed one of his traps and the party pushed into the throne room.

The Throne Room

A large pit in the centre of the room made it a tight squeeze for nine. The trapmaster and a kobold warrior held the line on either side of it while Queen Zolgran cast down barrage after barrage of magic missiles. The royal siblings fired at one another across the pit; Kolgan nearly went down several times, kept on his feet by healing from Corpi, Shiro, and Finn.

Ja-ja broke the line first and slaughtered a ranged guard in a single bite; Herald took down the other in two ravenous ones. Rygel wore the trapmaster down until he fled, leaving a trap behind him. Rather than disarm it, Vega simply walked through it like the mechanical beast he is.

The Fall of the Queen

Beans showed off his shiny new wings, flew across the pit, and dealt the Queen a fatal thunderous blast. Queen Zolgran was dead.

The trapmaster hobbled up the stairs behind the throne and raided a healing potion from the chest there. He had barely gulped it down before Ja-ja was on his heels and executed him with a final blow. After three escapes, the elusive trapmaster was finally dead.

King Kolgan

With the Queen dead, Herald had an easy time convincing the last guard to surrender. He knelt and hailed Kolgan the new king. Kolgan rallied the remaining kobolds and declared that the time of war was over — they were going to slay the dragon.

The Spoils

The party searched the Queen, the trapmaster, and the chest behind the throne, and spent some time squabbling over who got what: a spellbook, a dragon eggshell necklace, a masquerade scarf, a wand of heal, two healing potions, a silver bracelet, and a smoking sword. The scarf went to Kolgan, so he can disguise himself convincingly as a human and return to the surface without fear of discrimination.

Among the Queen's things was also a strange letter from a Dr. Zacchaeus Quagmire III to his nieces Charlotte and Theodora. It stresses the importance of checking the backs of paintings — one with a tiger on it in particular — and mentions secret passageways, ghosts, a squirmy entity, and cannibalistic librarians, along with knowledge and power hidden within a treatise of Jan Dreli Kolai the Sage. The full text is recorded in the lore.

Not Today

The thought of facing an untamed juvenile dragon was too much for the moment, so the party backpedaled toward the Dwarven runes. On the way, Finn tried to loot a chest in the kobold living quarters and was spotted, despite Ja-ja dancing on a table to draw attention away. Pazuzu, Shiro's companion, had better luck and made off with a painting of a horse.