Tag: Azak

Since I mentioned Azak and Tuud, my beloved kobold NPCs, in yesterday’s post, here’s a little short story I wrote about them. It was meant to provide my players some context after the fact. I love these two so much. Hope you enjoy them, too.

The two kobolds crept through the cave, keeping low. They turned their eyes in all directions, spotting the burnt out torches stuck in the ground, the campfire with inedible burnt meat, and the passage down.

“What do you see, Tuud?” asked the pale white kobold.

Tuud pulled the bronze rimmed goggles over his eyes. His red-scaled face scanned the cave. “Eh. Same thing I see with my regular eyes, Azak. Are you sure this is where we have to go?”

“Dorgach ordered me here. This is where our clanmembers went with the big lizardfolk.”

Tuud shook his head. “The demon. Don’t say its name.” Tuud shivered. “Saw the bodies of our clansfolk outside. Slaughtered.” 

Azak waved Tuud to come along, walking toward the side passage nearly covered with vines and roots. “Foot prints, boot prints specifically. Big people came this way.” Azak stopped, grabbing their midsection, their muzzle wrinkled with a grimace of sudden pain.

“How are you doing?” Tuud was immediately by his friend’s side, an arm around their shoulders.

Azak leaned into the hug, then shrugged it off. “I will be OK. The change will be over before we know it.”

“Change comes on dragon’s wings,” Tuud intoned. “Must be difficult. Many males have been lost–“

“Killed. Murdered.” Azak corrected him. The cave floor under their feet gave way to a black and white ceramic tile floor.

“As you say. So before the clan can grow, we need more males.” Tuud tapped his temple. “I know this, but you’re my first friend I’ve known who actually had to change, female to male.” He rested his hand on a black stone archway carved with bird shapes.

Azak scowled. “Does it make a difference?”

“No. You’re my friend.” Tuud shrugged. “Makes no difference to me. Makes no difference to the clan. Just don’t like to see you hurt.”

They had advanced down the hallway, and down some stairs, to a room with a wide stone pool in the center, filled with oddly clean and clear water. Four bronze, or maybe gold, statues of humans in feather-like armor were in each corner. A passageway led onward on the other side of the pool. 

Tuud made toward the pool to look inside; he saw some vials of bright green resting in the bottom, along with a scattering of coins. He shot a glance at his friend. Azak shook their head, though, and began searching the far doorway for signs of a trap. They poked at a slack tripwire, pointed out a scythe blade that hung, having been sprung before they’d arrived. 

“Further. It’s safe. Let’s go.”

They scampered down another set of stairs and around a corner. They entered a larger room, lined with old and broken pillars to the left and right. At the far end, a black statue, at least three kobolds tall, of a grim looking Human in feathered armor. In front of the statue was a crude platform, a slab of stone on top of piles of other stones, with several burnt-out torches around it. A pile of bodily remains were piled on top, dried blood staining the slab and foundations.

Tuud did not like the look of any of this and hesitated at the entrance. He noted more foot prints, scuffed, on the tile floor that indicated a fight. “Or a dance,” Tuud said, laughing.

Azak made a beeline toward a pile of burnt and blackened rubble against the left hand wall. They began poking around and found another body. A lizardfolk, dressed in silvered robes, had been stabbed many times, the torso almost obliterated. “What monster did this?” Azak hissed. Azak kept digging through the rubble, turning the body over. “It has to be here, it has to be! Help me!”

Tuud came over, helping to shift the debris around. “What are we looking for?”

“The staff! The staff! That is what Dorgach sent us to find.” Azak sat down, defeated, their head in their hands. “It’s not here.”

“Then we must make a new one.” A raspy voice intoned from the shadows. Tuud startled and spotted a thin humanoid shape with creepy proportions barely visible in the far corner, near where an empty cage sat.

Azak stood up and defiantly shouted. “Not from Tuud!”

Tuud startled again. “What?”

The humanoid shape sighed, then laughed. “Fine. Fine. Your friend can keep his skull. If not a fresh one, then we will need several.” A long midnight-blue arm extended from the shadow, and a long finger extended from the hand. “Start with the previous shaman’s skull, then collect the ones of your other clansfolk, and all of their arm and leg bones.”

Tuud waited but his friend pulled out a dagger and began cutting away at the lizardfolk’s robes. Tuud sighed and unsheathed his own knife.

“Azak, what is this for?” Tuud whispered to his friend “Why are we desecrating the shaman?”

“Because,” Azak said, tiredly. They wrapped scraps of the silver robes around their arms and torso. “I’m the new shaman. Lord Orcus demands it.”

In the shadows, Dorgach laughed, raucously, its deep voice booming through the fallen tomb.