Overview
The Gem-Appraise Kobold is the watchful, pricing hand of the Anvil Caves, a small, furnace-scarred tinkerer of the gem-mine who prices every stone by its light and keeps the landlord's rent honest, gem by gem. It stands less than a meter tall, patient and curious, with the kind of certainty that comes from a life measured in priced stones rather than years. Where the goblins of the warrens read the dark and the bugbears of the mire set the trap, the Gem-Appraise kobolds of the mine price the gem, and they have been pricing the first stone in the first cave for a very long time.
Habitat
The Gem-Appraise Kobold keeps to the gem-lines of the Anvil Caves, gem-mining tunnels and forges under a dead mountain, its chambers lit by furnace-heat, its gems priced and its dragon respected. Its dwellings are dug into the faces of the gem-walls, hollows of shaped stone and woven mine-cable coaxed into a home that catches the furnace-heat on its inner face and the shelter of the mountain on its outer. It favors the older lines where the gem runs richest and the price is oldest, the places where a price can be named without the mine's own motion breaking it.
Appearance
A Gem-Appraise Kobold stands about 0.84 m tall, small and gem-bound, with furnace-scarred umber to warm grey skin that reads as dark in the mine's own light. Its hair runs fine umber, worn long and bound so it does not catch the dust, and its eyes are pale luminous amber, bright and watchful beneath the brow, the color of the gem-light's own glow at dusk. Its fine true scales run deep umber with a clean, deliberate bone-white tip, the color of the stone it has priced for years, and the scale-tips are the map of every gem it has named.
Behaviour
The Gem-Appraise Kobold is watchful, quick, and profoundly certain, a creature of long prices and long attention who rarely surprises and rarely is surprised. It observes before it prices, often for hours, watching a line or a person or a bargain until it understands the shape of the stone, and only then does it price, and then with a watchfulness that feels rehearsed over years. It is not unkind, but it is not easily moved, and a debt named by a Gem-Appraise kobold is a debt the mine will keep long after the maker has gone.
Natural Weapons & Defenses
The Gem-Appraise kobold is no open-mountain fighter and carries no blade, for its power is the stone and the price itself, not force. Its primary defense is the line, for it knows every turn of the gem-tunnels and can lead a pursuer through the dead mountain for days until the pursuit loses its nerve and its balance. Should it be forced to act, a Gem-Appraise kobold is quick and precise, 6 m/s through the tunnels and unhurried, and it fights to unmake a threat rather than to wound it, cutting a cable, dimming a light, or pricing a gem until the threat is spent.
Magic Alignment
The Gem-Appraise kobold has no magic of its own, and it does not want any, and the not wanting is the whole of its way of dealing with the world, for a kobold that has a gem and a word and a stone does not need a spell. It is not attuned to any art, and it is not bound by any word that is not its own, and the not being bound is the whole of its way of being free. Its one signature thing is the pricing, which is not a magic but is a thing that the kobolds of the mine have priced for a very long time, and the pricing is the naming, and the naming is the whole of its power.
Society
The Gem-Appraise Kobolds live in the Anvil Caves in small, watchful, and gem-bound packs of perhaps four or five, bound by the prices they name together rather than by blood or by place. There is no elder and no ruler, for a kobold that has priced the most and named the most is simply the one the others listen to, and the listening is a pricing and the pricing is the whole of their society. Decisions are made in the line, by a company of amber-eyed pricers that has already decided and is only agreeing, and once made they are kept, for a kobold that breaks a price is a kobold that has broken the whole of what it is.
Culture & Lore
The culture of the Gem-Appraise Kobold is a culture of the priced gem, a whole way of life organized around the idea that a word that is watchful and gem-bound is the only honest word in the mine. They keep no records, for a kobold that has priced a gem does not need a record, the pricing is the record, and the pricing is watchful and gem-bound and does not fade. Their stories are slow and watchful, told in the line at the dusk, and they are stories of gems priced and rents named and the watchful, gem-bound difference between them, told in a voice that is quick and means every pricing.
Home
The Anvil Caves is the Gem-Appraise kobold's home and its pricing, gem-mining tunnels and forges under a dead mountain, its chambers lit by furnace-heat, its gems priced and its dragon respected, where the kobolds name their prices and their watchful, quick words. It is a strange and watchful place, one that stands as if it were a very old animal holding its breath, and the Gem-Appraise kobold has learned to live inside that stone rather than against it. The warm furnace-heat that runs up through the chambers is the mine's own, a soft umber glow that the kobolds have come to read as the color of a priced gem.
Relations
The Gem-Appraise Kobold keeps a long, careful truce with the other creatures of the Anvil Caves, a truce of priced gems that has held for a long time and is the oldest and most fragile thing in the mine. To the warm furnace-heat of the forges the Gem-Appraise kobold is a watchful, gem-bound, and absolutely certain presence, an amber-eyed pricer that is at home in the lines and in the stone, and the heat has learned to glow wide and let the namings pass, for a kobold that has priced you has decided you are a keeping and not a lesson.
In the Story
In the story of the mine, the Gem-Appraise Kobold is the watchful, quick edge of the tale, the place where the gems are priced and a price is named and a naming is named. It is the figure that prices a new stone in the dusk and holds the light very watchful and very certain, and the figure that, when the rent with the dragon grows thin, is the one that remembers what the rent cost and keeps the old price watchful and gem-bound and absolutely certain.