An extremely pregnant kobold woman stood on the platform just outside of Rhys’s main entrance. Before her were two symbols: a circle of branches and two squares of equal size, drawn to form an eight-sided star. Within the star was an offering of grain, within the circle the heart of an elk felled in the valley outside.

And in secret, a small stone box was buried beneath them all. Though the Stillborn God refused any form of worship, it was still a quiet sign of respect to acknowledge Him, and the tribe had as much reason to mourn as to celebrate with this offering.

The bones held within the box were fresh this year, and came from many children born without life.

The tribe’s memory-keeper approached, and spoke prayers to the gods. He asked forgiveness of the Goddess of Life for choosing Her lands to settle within, and prayed to the Primal Goddess to keep the spirit of change within them, even if they could no longer be free. To the Wyrm of the Golden Path he asked for guidance, as they learned to farm and craft.

And finally, as he burnt the offerings given in sacrifice, he spoke in warding against the forbidden, who would only lead their people to ruin.

As the tribe gave their ritual responses, Guiying spoke right alongside them. These gods were hers as well, though they had been forgotten for most of her life, and her mother and aunt were their champions in her homeland. A tear fell, hoping that her mother knew where she was and that she was alright, but she supposed homesickness was normal at a time such as this.

From here, the feast began, with the kobolds celebrating the founding of their new home. Contests of strength, agility, dexterity, and stamina were held among them, and Guiying learned a lot about each stat from the contests and how well people did.

Strength was about slow-twitch musculature, primarily. One’s upper limits in the ability to lift and push. From there, Guiying could extrapolate that each point was about… 10 kilograms? This metric stuff Rhys used was annoying to convert, though she could see the mathematic benefit of a consistent base 10 rubric. But she knew her upper limit was about 220 pounds, or three fully-grown kobolds of average weight, so she could use that combined with her own strength score to estimate how much a point was worth.

Agility was more about fast-twitch musculature. It could be about how fast you could dash, to be sure, but it also marked your ability to quickly change direction and the speed of your reflexes. Little harder to establish a baseline, but Rhys said he could figure it out based on the game of “basket ball” the kobolds played.

Dexterity marked one’s hand-eye coordination, and Rhys said he had to wait on figuring out the baseline here because he couldn’t be sure. The kobolds were throwing knives at a massive section of log, then using which ring it landed in to keep score. The problem was distance, because the log section was out of the dungeon influence range at the moment. Rather by necessity, because Guiying and Zuk had been showing off. Zuk could consistently hit the center of the log from 100 meters off, but Guiying consistently put the knife in the exact center of the point he struck, and was a bit frustrated that it was too easy. But if they tried to move the target or her any further apart, they ran into terrain issues.

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Stamina, or constitution, was an easy one. It measured one’s physical durability and ability to withstand pain and/or discomfort. Most of the contests were the type seen almost anywhere, sitting too close to the evening bonfire, pain games like Mercy, and drinking contests. Guiying didn’t feel the need to participate in those, though the warriors were more than happy to jeer at her about it. Reminded her of a few of her brothers, really.

Boys are boys no matter the species, I suppose.

The weapons exhibitions were more interesting to her. Zuk and a few of the other warriors showed off spear drills, or participated in mock hunts with only their knives. She could see that this was as much training as play, and could see why so many of the kobolds were second-level in the Warrior class. She wondered to herself what it would take to push their levels further, since it seemed to be different from how she leveled up as a Monk.

The food was rough, but definitely worth eating. The elk had been well-butchered, and she’d been offered the liver alongside the chieftain, the memory-keeper, and the finest warriors. Was actually pretty good, though she was used to slightly less-gamey meat. She’d also had some of the front haunch, alongside a pancake of sorts the women made from wild grain milled into flour, water, and sweet berries. Helped cut some of the meat’s unpleasant undertones, while the meat’s savory aspects helped make up for the otherwise bland flatbread.

Then came the singing. Well, it was one word for it. The kobolds didn’t have the same mouth or throat structure as a humanoid creature would, so their “singing” was more of a multi-tone trill coming from their throat. She’d heard something close a few times, as people from her home village sang in harmony with themselves, but she’d never mastered the trick of it herself. She figured out it was only the male kobolds who were singing when the females, slightly larger than the males and many of them noticeably pregnant, began dancing. She started to see a story in the dance, a history of sorts of how the Goddess of Life birthed the first kobold tribe, and lived alongside them for many years. It went on to tell of the kobolds becoming numerous and strong, and splitting off to cover all the land alongside the other thinking peoples.

Then she heard the tone switch to melancholy, as the memory-keeper led the chorus in singing the story of how men and elves chose to stop wandering, settling in lands and raising plants and animals to eat instead of taking what they needed from the land before moving on to let it recover. It spoke of the dwarves, emerging from their hidden caves and teaching men how to work metal, creating tools that did not readily chip or shatter, and letting them build walls and cities.

It spoke of kobolds suddenly being “monsters” to those who had once treated them as equals, reviled and shunned if not openly hunted. It spoke of lands becoming sectioned off, as kobolds sought new hunting grounds in places not as welcoming to those who merely wished to live as their goddess had taught them.

And suddenly, she heard her own voice speaking of the Goddess of Life awakening an ancient being of her own creation, among the first of its kind. Of guiding one from a distant world who knew of strength and of wisdom to teach her children new ways. Of bringing them back to where she had first birthed them, that they might become a people equal to men, elves, and dwarves in their great empires.

And she spoke… of all tribes now being Called. Of the Kobold Gathering as tribes that once only held council every two or three years as they crossed paths now being brought to a single home.

And, in an aside only Guiying could hear, of Rhys being very busy for a very long time and not to let these pets starve just because he got bored of them.

Guiying giggled, and asked the Goddess to send her love home. She had a lot of work ahead.