Tucker's Kobolds

Note: The term "Tucker's Kobolds" has become part of D&D lore. It comes from an article in Dragon Magazine #127 (1987) where, in a game run by a DM named Tucker, an ordinary tribe of kobolds used traps, ambushes and local knowledge to significantly challenge a high-level party, going against the stereotype of kobolds posing no threat. With that in mind ...

Down in the lower level of the tomb was a pool of water. Light Touch happened to be sloshing through this water and he noticed his foot didn't actually get wet. So we had a closer look and sure enough, the water was illusionary. It covered a trap door. Down below was a small room with a bier and a corpse of a gnome on it. Light Touch was lowered in on a rope. As soon as he passed into the room, the whole place turned into a palatial room, with gold trappings and beautiful furnishings. The gnome of the beir was still a corpse, but was robed in splendour. Light Touch touched the floor and ... **BANG**.

We pulled the charred smoking piece of meat back up. I emptied my curing power into him, and got him healthy again. It takes me eight hours of solid sleep to recharge my power. During this time, John Wayne risked going down himself. Luckily, there were no further traps. After the fire, there was not much left of the gnome corpse. But it did have a golden gnome g-string, totally untouched by the flames; obviously magic. John risked putting it on. He is a stout gnome fellow, with a bulging ale-gut and glutes like there is no tomorrow, but when he wore the g-string, and despite all this, and despite it vanishing into the pasty folds of his gnome butt-crevass, it actually made him look better! Ironically, the magic of the G-string increased his charisma; it only worked when he wore nothing but the G-string from the waist down.

Further on in was another secret door, followed by a long thin passage that terminated in another small door. Whizz gave it a mighty shove and it sprung open - into a cavern. A large cavern with stream and natural caves. However, there were kobolds here, ten, maybe twenty. They all started to shriek in their little raspy kobold voices and rushed at us. We managed to fire a few desultory cross-bow quarrels and battle was joined. It was about now we realized we were totally unmatched for kobold melee, so we bid a brave and hasty retreat. Two kobolds wiggled past the door before Whizz managed to jam it closed, and these two wretches dropped John Wayne and Peg Groups before we killed them. I cured them with Illana's power, but it drained me and we were forced to rest.

During my resting recharging time, the sneaky kobolds skulked around the to the front entrance of the tomb and attacked. They had magic support from their shaman ("sha-kobold"?). It was touch and go, but we managed to force them out again. The remaining kobolds took positions on top of the tomb tower and in the surrounding trees. Any attempt we made to leave, they would shoot. Light Touch found out the hard way; and was shot through the head with a magnificent shot, entering his eye socket, skewering the brain, and coming to rest lodged in his half-elven pineal gland. Again, I had to use all my power to restore him.

Running out of options, we decided to risk returning to the original cave. Sure enough, the kobolds were all gone, except that there were a bunch of kobold women and children. Whizz detected them as evil, so he and the boys waded in and slaughtered them all. I can safely say I don't have the blood of any innocents on my conscience, but it was a nasty brutal mess.

Leaving out through the cave entrance, we emerged in the woods, and found the remaining kobolds in their positions of ambush. It was our turn to be the ambushers, and a short while later, all kobolds were dead. The only notable thing from this battle was that Light Touch fumbled his bow shot and skewered me with an arrow through my liver. I still wonder how he did this considering  I was behind a tree and he was pointing away from me.

After resting and healing and resting, we headed back to the Lizardman mound in the centre of the swamp and summoned the lizardman shaman. He thanked us for our good work (recall, we had identified why his braves got corrupted by that evil item in the tower), and gave us an item and his best wishes.

So we headed back to the Keep.

The Feather Duster

We arrived at the lizardman trading post. A lizardman shaman (sha-lizard?) arrived, with his entourage, and after a bit of sybilant small-talk, informed us that some braves from his tribe had been corrupted by some foulness from a tower near the swamp. This has been happening for the last few months, so the lizardmen have noticed. He wished us to go and investigate it.

Half a day later, we left the swamp and entered the surrounding forest. Sure enough, there was a old stone tower here; about four storeys tall, and over a hundred years old. There was a hole smashed in the side of the tower allowing access to the bottom storey. By the vegetation on the stones, we guessed this hole was about a year old.

Inside were the dessicated corpses of three adventurers, slumped against the far wall.

Whiss did a scan with his affected head-ache stance and barked "I sense EEEEVVILLL".

Just then there was a loud bang and a bright flash of light, outside in the clearing. A wizard fellow in a velour stars & moons outfit, pointy hat, grey-beard and all, appeared.

"I am Axminster," he said in a rich and full baritone. "I have come to help you! My price will be a favour from each of you when you are more experienced."

Since he showed no sign of evil, Me, Whizz [ NPC ] and Peg Groups [ Ian ] agreed. Yeti [ Darryl ], John Wayne [ Shane ] and Light Touch [ Jeff ] refused.

We signed a demonically enforced contract, and Axminster intoned: "Don't go up. What you seek is below the tower. But search first for three indentations in the ceiling."

"And," added Axminster eerily. "Since you trusted me so, when you are back in Shadowlands Keep, you three go to the local potion merchant and ask to see his 'random stock'. You, Carla, take the green potion, you, Whizz, take the blue one, and you, Peg Groups, take the black one. Drink this, all of you, in remembrance of me."

With that, he vanished in a puff of greasy black smoke.

We sent Light Touch in and he did a brief search of the single room, and found nothing at first, though a thorough check of the corpses (three humans; on tea-leaf and two fighters) revealed that one was wearing an excessively evil gauntlet. We buried this foul thing in a hole, deep as we could dig, outside. The bodies appeared to have been killed about a year ago by some trap that they had set off by a loose brick on the walls - some kind of gas. Sure enough, there were several other similar bricks on the walls. Also in the room near the bodies was some relatively fresh lizardman blood, gleaming greenly on the floor. (Lizardmen have green blood - the haem iron in their blood is a different allotrope). We suspect that maybe the lizardmen braves who went mad, entered here and that they touched the cursed gauntlet.

The ceiling of the room was plastered, and through this could be seen three indentations. Under the plaster near these bumps was a recessed pulley. Directly below the pulley, under the plaster of the floor, was a large plug, like a bathtub plug, ring and all, made out of stone. So, we tied some adventurers' rope to the ring, passed it through the ceiling pulley, and then most of us hung from it. Sure enough, the plug lifted revealing a hole.

Down in the dark was a small passage. Light Touch spotted a trapped pit which spanned the width of the passage. It was only a small jump across, so he did ... and triggered an identical pit trap on the far side. Luckily, he was well-harnessed with rope, so ended up dangling over some spears. But beyond that trap was a sturdy floor. However, it was also trapped - darts fired from holes in the wall. After that, a blank wall.

Thorough searching ensued. On the wall of the base of the pit was a small door and through it another short passage. On the ceiling this time, there was a trap door. And exploring it lead to another passage which opened into a room.

There was a statue of a gnome here, wearing a tiara and holding a feather duster and a staff with a glowing end. His name "Hellian" was emblazoned on the stand of the statue, and sure enough, deeper into the room, in an alcove, was an obsidian beir on which was his dessicated body - also holding a staff, feather duster and tiara.

Light Touch skulked into the room, but failed to notice a trip wire on one of the steps. A fireball exploded near him, burning him a little - which I healed. John Wayne, foolishly thinking that the fireball trap was the only one, rushed over to the beir... and triggered another fireball trap. This almost killed him, but again Illana's curing magic saved him from death's dark door. The heat was so intense that it melted the tiara, burned the staff and almost destroyed the gnome corpse. The feather duster, however, was unharmed. Light Touch grabbed it and then felt the unmistakable urge to clean clean clean. And boy, did it clean! He spent the next few minutes satisfyingly dusting away all soot from the fireballs and burnt gnome meat (John Wayne and the corpse).

Now out of power, I suggested we withdraw somewhere safe for me to recharge and rest. We found a spot in the tomb.

The Free Adventurers' Guild

Further on into the wilds we met a fellow called Bent Root-sucker who had a mountain lion pet called Binky. He was a druid, and knew a lot about the surrounding area. He kept offering to"level us up", but apparently that required submitting to being bent over a tree root and taken hard from behind. Needless to say, no one volunteered.

After a bit of travel, we came to the village called Pind. It was just a collection of wattle and daub huts, and had seen better times. In fact, there were many many ruined buildings. Across the river was a large ruined temple to the god Elric. We asked Bent who Elric was, and he said Elric was "one of the nine" about two generations ago, but had somehow fallen and was not one of the nine today.

"Well, which god replaced him?"

This only got a blank stare.

"There are nine gods now, and Elric isn't one of them, right?"

"Yes, that's right."

"Fifty years ago there were nine gods and Elric was one of them, right?"

"Yes."

"But Elric is not one of the nine gods today, is he?"

"No"

"So which god replaced him?"

"Oh, what's that shiny thing over there?"

"List for me the nine gods before Elric fell." I said.

"Why of course: Vull, Illana, Grism, Norman, Loki, Hale, Fotherington, Zaahl, and Dierdra."

"But Elric isn't in that list."

"Of course he is."

"Then why isn't Elric's name in that list?"

"I don't understand the question. He is."
...

This same conversation, or similar, occurs with anyone, scholared or not, intellectual or not, priest or not. There is some global cognitive dissonance affecting everyone in the world in that they acknowledge Elric is no longer one of the nine, but have no idea which of the nine replaced him, and if you ask for the list before the Fall, his name will not be in it.

We travelled next to the river Aldure upstream for a day, and arrived at the Shadowlands Keep. From here, Lord Loofah and his Bahn mercenaries rule the surrounding lands. In fact, they claim all the land from here to the big upstream city Cleophany (one week away). Being so near to the portal through to Earth, the Keep has recently grown very rich on the wealth brought through.

The Keep is divided into two areas, the castle area (where normal folk are forbidden), and the town area, which contains a collection of inns, tavern, some shops and various useful buildings. One of which is the Free Adventurer's Guild establishment. Having no where else to stay, we went in.

We were greeted by Winstone, the hobbit proprietor and owner of the place. He explained how the Free Adventurers' Guild works: its a world-wide franchise that supplies free accommodation for adventurers, a simple equipment store, a centralized bank (allowing magical money transfers between branches), and training to allow members to "level up" (which doesn't involve anal sex). The cost of the training is a debt put onto your FAG account. You then pay the debt off by adventuring, and the FAG takes half of your gross adventure income to pay off your debt. They charge a nominal interest rate on the debt, which depends on class, but is about 12% annual. When your debt is cleared, you can still use FAG to train, but the becomes fee-simple. The contract signed is enforced demonically to stop welshers and thieves.

So we all signed up.

We also found out that you must never use your true name in this world. If someone discovers your true name, they can have power over you. This explains, to some extent, all the half-arsed names of all the people we encountered. So we adopted a common name each: I (Carmilla) became "Carla", Howie (Ian) became "Peg Groups", Sean (Shane) became "John Wayne", Martin (Darryl) became "Yeti", Nathan (Jeff) became "Light Touch". Whiss became "Whizz". These "safe" names will be used from now on, to protect the innocent.

After five weeks of extensive and zen-like training, we were all declared to be "level zero". The FAG then supplied us with our first few adventures to get us to "level one".

We were assigned a mission: Half a day's travel down the road, we were told, there was a group of bandits who were attacking supply caravans destined for the Shadowlands Keep. We were told to find them and reconnoitre: "No need to attack. Just collect information".

So we equipped up and headed out, walking up the road, following the large river (think unbraided Waimak) to our left, and forested hills to the right.

By now, we were well-used to our new "0th level" bodies. I, Carmilla/Carla was a half-elf priestess of Illana, with infravision no less, and a set of Illana "gifts" (Heal, Blessing, Comfort & Succour, Protection from Evil, Cure Disease, Cure Serious Poison, Godly Might - increases stats, Neutral - improves the attitude of attackers towards me), Howie/Peg was an elf ranger with corresponding tracking skills and a massive double-handed sword. Sean/John was a gnome wizard, Martin/Yeti was a human wizard, Nathan/Light Touch a half-elf thief. Whiss/Whizz a human paladin of Grism wielding a mighty battle-axe.

After a few hours of walking, Peg's keen tracking skills spotted scrape marks over the road that disappeared into the woods to our right. We melted into the forest and Light Touch took off to check. He soon came back and reported a group of two soldiers, one thief, and one wizard all lead by an evil priest of Fotherington.

Light Touch and Peg spied on them for a few hours. Every so often, one of the men-at-arms would walk down to the road and scan each way, obviously looking for ripe caravans to plunder.

After two hours, a caravan was indeed spotted, so the evil party began preparing an attack. Our cunning plan was to ambush them right on the moment of their ambush, but we weren't quite quiet enough, and they spotted us;  the battle was had!

To cut off a long story square, we wiped the five out in quick order. But Yeti suffered massive trauma when one of the men-at-arms skewered his gut, John Wayne was badly chopped up, Whizz almost lost his leg, and Peg Groups, in an act of extraordinary panache, tossed his double-handed sword majestically into the air and caught it with his head, point-first, carefully missing any protection from his helmet, neatly impaling his brain. Luckily, I was on hand and, by the healing power of Illana's gift, cured most of it.

The caravan arrived soon after - a merchant, homely daughter and two guards - and they were most pleased not to be robbed, raped and killed. We guarded them for the night, and then escorted them to the Keep in the morning.

The Free Adventurers' Guild was pleased with our success. We gave Winstone the FAG tokens off the evil party (all FAG members carry ID tokens), and used half of the spoils to pay down some of our debt, and got a big tick in the "1st adventure completed" box.

The next adventure was to take on some Lizardmen in the swamp. Lizardmen are tough, but normally they are peaceful and benevolent. However, some recent event is changing the way they react. Our mission is to go investigate.

to be continued