The first place Sweffton led Stephine to was the town hall, though town tower was more accurate. It was easily the tallest building in the town, a good four or five stories by her reckoning. It looked like it was primarily built of colored stone, much like the cliff face. There were no glass windows, just holes in the wall with more of the glowing runes. There were stairs wrapping around the building, but unlike the stairs in the cliff, it looked like the stairs were made of wood and metal. It reminded her of a castle tower she had seen on a tour in England, but someone had wrapped a set of stairs on the outside. There were kobolds flowing in and out of the building constantly. They mostly ran through doorways and windows through the first floor, but there were a significant number jumping through windows towards nearby buildings from the second floor, and a few were jumping off the third floor onto nearby roofs.

Stephine managed to peek into the first floor, which looked like a post-office crossed with a bar. Kobolds would run into the building, grab a letter or package from a tall lizardfolk standing behind a bar, and run out. The room itself was maybe 35 feet in diameter, and was incredibly crowded. There may have been tables, but she couldn’t see it through the people running around. She suspected she could have managed to get in if she cleared her throat, but she figured “disrupting mail service because you’re curious,” wouldn’t give her a positive reputation among the populace. “”

The mail system in Dragonsoul Village (a name which was seeming increasingly inaccurate to Stephine) worked via what was essentially “throwing a bottle into a river, but the river was people.” If you wanted to send a package, message, or product to someone, you’d slap a label on it and yell out the window for someone to pick it up. If someone was heading to your destination, or to the town hall, they’d pick it up and keep going. Once they delivered it to the destination or the mailroom, they’d collect a small fee and continue on their way. You could also collect mail waiting to be sent from the mailroom. It seemed to be uniquely suited to the constant activity of the kobolds in the village.

Sweffton and Karaxia lead her to the second floor, which seemed similar to the first floor, but rather than people running in and grabbing things and running back out, there were people posting things on cork boards, making posters, or just talking to people coming in. According to Lawrence, it was essentially the “commissions board” for the town. If you wanted to commission something from a craftsman, get a repair, or hire someone to fight a monster, you’d make a request and a reward here. It wasn’t as crowded on the second floor as the first, but if walking in there would cause the same kind of reaction as she’d caused when she first walked into town, she’d rather not risk it.

The third floor was not as centrally important. According to Sweffton, it was equivalent to the town hall. It was where the elders worked during the day. If they had a question about something in the town, they’d send a runner out to find it out. They were currently in a busy season, as the dragon egg they’d guarded for generations had just hatched. Karaxia insisted that she enter the third floor, saying that, “” which Stephine supposed was fair enough. So she walked in through the door, and, sure enough, every kobold in the room did a meerkat and pivoted to watch her. There were four elders currently in the room: Lushant, Meeroo, Sheshes, and Fairtail.

Lushant and Meeroo, a pair of blue and purple kobolds, were two of the elders in charge of craftsmen. Lushant was a blacksmith originally, while Meeroo worked with textiles. Sheshes, who had brilliant red scales and nearly half a foot over than every other Kobold in the room, represented mages, which was a real job, much to Stephine’s delight. There were apparently two more mage elders, but they didn’t like showing up, preferring to focus on their research. She’d had a few professors like that in undergrad, and felt bad for Sheshes. The last elder, Fairtail, was some sort of giant four-foot-tall white rabbit with four arms. A rabbitkin, according to Lawrence. They were in charge of the non-kobold minorities in the village. There weren’t technically any laws discriminating against non-kobolds in the village, but the massive population disparity meant that there were issues. It was the job of Fairtail and another elder who was currently out of the office, to solve those issues. It was a well-respected job in the community, according to Lawrence, Karaxia, and Sweffton.

Additionally, Sweffton and Karaxia were also village elders. Karaxia, unsurprisingly, was the one in charge of the local religion, and Sweffton was in charge of planning the village. He worked alongside an elder who was in charge of the house builders, who was currently supervising construction at the edge of town. Lawrence’s mother was apparently also a village elder, but she was out of town, making a trade agreement with a nearby village. There were seats for nearly 20 elders, but apparently some of them only showed up for urgent business, sending couriers for any communications. The rest were simply out on business.

The final two floors were a sort of temple crossed with mayoral office. Apparently, the actual temple was a different building, and was devoted to worshiping the various gods of Laxia. The top floors of the tower were covered in images of the dragons, and on the fourth floor, there was a book of what were essentially the town’s founding documents, as laid out by Stephine’s parents nearly three hundred and fifty years ago. Unlike the first three floors, there was a staircase inside the building, made of stone, to the fifth floor. The fifth floor was well decorated, and was apparently the office of the “mayor.” According to Lawrence, the village didn’t usually have a mayor. If some situation required a mayor, the elders would hold an emergency meeting and elect a mayor. The mayor would serve for a period of time, determined on their election, and then they would retire. In addition, the citizens could call for a vote of no confidence, and have the mayor retire early. In the history of the village, a mayor had only been elected three times. It seemed overly complicated to Stephine, but the kobolds seemed to prefer it.

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The very top of the tower was only accessible through a stone staircase on the fifth floor. It was occupied by a single kobold named Parxia, who had brilliant black and silver scales. She was the only kobold Stephine had seen with multicolor scales, and she was wearing what looked alarmingly like a lab coat. Her job was apparently to monitor anyone approaching the town, as well as keep track of the dragonstorm. She did this via a large telescope. She didn’t realize the kobolds had glasswork that advanced, since she hadn’t seen any glass windows, but according to Karaxia, “” She explained further that they used enchanted frames. They used magic to prevent wind, insects, and heat from entering and exiting buildings. However, it didn’t stop kobolds from jumping straight through, to wherever they wanted to go.

The casual use of magic made Stephine curious about it, so she asked to see the mages next. Sweffton nodded. “”

“” Karaxia and Sweffton walked back into the third floor and climbed onto two of the podiums that were currently unoccupied. Sweffton told Sheshes to show Stephine around the “” and Sheshes did what was unrecognizably a little “happy dance,” despite her lack of humanity. Sheshes walked off her podium and gestured for Stephine and Lawrence to follow her. There was a rope bridge leading from one of the third floor windows to the roof of a nearby building, and Sheshes walked across it. Looking around, most of the roofs in the village were connected by rope bridges.

As Sheshes led Stephine and Lawrence away from the village center, Stephine quickly learned that Sheshes was a bit of a talker. “” As she listened to Sheshes babble on, Stephine was very grateful that the [Language Acquisition] skill was helping her fill in the words and grammar she didn’t know. At the rate Sheshes was talking, Stephine felt like she would be fluent in Kobold by the time they arrived at the mage district. She was talking about attunement runes or something. Most of the technical terminology flew over her head.

Before long, they reached the edge of town, and Stephine could see another circle of buildings in the distance. They were made of deep red wood, and each was about two stories tall. However, unlike the flat roofs of the main village, every building in this had a pointed, spiral roof. Stephine asked Sheshes about the roofs. “”

As they walked into the mana district, Sheshes took them to a large building in the center. There was a short kobold directing some others around. Sheshes walked up to them and told them that she was showing Stephine around the mana district, and that she needed a replacement at the town hall. The short one grumbled and ran off towards the village. “”

Sheshes took them on a tour of the area. The largest building was apparently a library of magic, alongside general scientific knowledge. Once she learned how to read Kobold, she planned to spend a lot of her time in that building, if she could. There was also a “material repository.” According to Sheshes, it was used to store various material components used in the casting of spells. Stephine looked inside, and it was the most hodgepodge assortment of objects she had ever seen. There were swords, shields, potted plants, dead animals in cages, what looked like blood samples, and a few sealed boxes with dead kobolds painted on them. Apparently to the kobolds, even their toxicity warnings should be artistically decorated.

The rest of the buildings were research buildings and lecture halls. They were startlingly similar to the buildings from colleges in her old life, just much smaller. There were a few mages demonstrating spells in the lecture halls, and she stopped in for a while to watch real magic at work.

The mages were fascinating to Stephine. The way they did magic worked was unlike anything she had ever seen before. She didn’t know enough kobold to understand the technical terms of what the mages were saying, but it was a truly impressive art. The mage she was watching was demonstrating something called “Greyson’s Improved Fireball.” According to the presenter, it “ something something ” It made a pretty explosion once he cast it, and the presenter diagrammed some runes on a chalkboard, and some of the other mages in the room nodded.