Kobolds & The Rusted Tower, Lore 24: March

East of Stortherhine in the Saltwater Marshes known as the Fenlands, or more simply the Fens, there is a Rusted Tower that juts out of the tidal waters. This tower is said to be the home of demons, and its exterior is rumored to be coated in blood. This is all my players have heard of this location, a vague rumor that obscures the truth of this place as much as it informs them about it.

The Rusted Tower is actually the remains of an old cargo ship. The “tower” is the superstructure of the ship, and the only part that has not sunk beneath the mud and waves. The ship is thousands of years old, from the time of the ancients, and it is coated in a thick rust, the color of dried blood, giving rise to the rumor. It owes its continued existence to the diligent care of its predominant inhabitants: kobolds.

It is powered by a still active nuclear reactor that the Kobolds have learned to maintain, and worship as a sort of deity. It only continues to function because it is cooled by the waters that the cargo ship sunk into. The warmth of the waters surrounding the Rusted Tower is one of the few hints to this.

Much of the work to maintain the reactor requires the Kobolds to go into submerged parts of the ship. Those who do the work form a sort of priesthood of Kobolds that generally have a sickly appearance and a short life, but to serve in this order is considered a high honor. Rarely these heated, and radioactive, waters have caused strange mutations in the Kobolds who do this work, while many of these mutations are harmful to the individuals that must endure them, they are viewed as a sort of divine blessing.

The Kobolds have lived in this way for hundreds of years, tending to their strange home, a relic of a forgotten world, and scavenging what they can from the waterlogged remains of the city that slowly sinks into the marsh. For the most part their cleverness and guile keeps them from much trouble. On occasion one of them is taken by surprise and may fall victim to the giant blue crabs that stalk the Fens but this is rare.

They do have two enemies who they avoid as much as possible: a group of Ogres who have made an ancient movie theater their lair and the fish-like Isag, who live in the deeper waters off the coast of the marsh. The Isag come to land rarely and tend to be passive, at times even making attempts to trade with the Kobolds of the Rusted Tower, but they are quick to anger and the Kobolds have learned to not trust them. The Ogres are ill-spirited, gluttonous, and violent and will hunt out any Kobold foolish enough to come within hunting range of their lair.

The Kobolds of the Fenlands have learned to survive through guile, creativity, and stealth. They do everything they can to be unnoticed and unseen, and this has shaped much about their culture and habits.

Their primary form of communication is their own form of sign language. This relies on a complex combination of hand gestures, body language, and facial expressions. It has the benefit of being near silent. While rarely used they are also capable of making deep resonating croaking noises that are primarily used for abbreviated long distance communication. On occasion, they may also make a rasping hiss like sound, this is normally only done when they are startled or frightened. As a result of this they never adapted more elaborate audible language and generally view creatures that use spoken language as foolish, loud, and rude.

While very industrious they are also very resourceful and because the Fenlands are littered with the detritus of a ruined ancient city they are quick to make use of what resources those ruins have to offer.

They often construct armor from a material that appears to be a strange kind of cracked and grooved black leather (the remnants of old tires). This armor is tightly fitted and lacks any additional metal components, which helps it to reduce noise and prevents it from interfering with their quiet movements through the marshes and ruins.

Most of their weapons are made from sharpened bits of scrap metal and the odd flexible ceramic like material left by the ancients (plastic & fiberglass). These weapons tend to be a bit more fragile than those made by the empire but they have the benefit of being particularly light.

Physically Kobolds of the Fens are small, averaging around three feet tall. They are bipedal but resemble caiman. The scales on their backs and the tops of their limbs tend to range from browns and greens to a yellowish grey with dark brown crossbands. Their other scales lack the crossbands and are a lighter hue. This coloration changes seasonally and during colder weather, the black pigment within their skin cells expands, making their natural coloration appear much darker.

Kobolds are cold blooded, and like many reptiles they brumate during the colder months. While not a true hibernation they metabolisms slow, and they become sluggish and enter a period of inactivity. The population tends to hunker down and lock down their tower as best they can. They typically still have patrols in the Fens, but they keep them much closer to the tower and hunting is dramatically reduced.