TG - The Kobolds

The Kobolds are a very small faction made up primarily of a /tg/ outcast ("Now"), a /co/ regular (Tesseract) and a handful of builders. Their territory is mutable due to their size and scavenging nature, but they most often settled themselves on the island of /tg/.

V5 - Origin & History
The Kobolds were created on Saturday, the 12th of April, 2014, by the /v/ & /tg/ user NowHearsThis (known as Now). In the previous two weeks, he had been a member of the /tg/ faction as they prepared to play on the server; the day before, Friday the 11th of April, he had been unceremoniously kicked out of /tg/ under accusations of being a spy from the faction's intelligence officer, despite much protest.

Rejecting their proposal to join the satellite faction of /trv/ and considering himself to be just as much a part /tg/, the board, as the main faction, Now decided to make his own group on /tg/ island as the next dwarfiest creature he could think of - Kobolds, which would have blackjack & hookers. Hollowing out space within a small mountain which he called the Kobold Cave and creating a fishing hut out of wood on the surface, he carved a niche for himself over the course of a few days, and responding to a request for food & boats from another user on Admin Island, ended up recruiting the faction's second player and only officer to date, Tesseract.

During this time, a practicing raiding party from /mlp/ passed over /tg/ island, and found the Kobold Cave. Despite being told not to take anything of value by their superiors, several of the more brash party members stole various semi-valuables from the cave - including redstone blocks, lapis blocks, iron, mob drops and fishing rods. This was not a significant amount to either party, but through negotiation, /mlp/ decided to return the items as a show of good faith, which was done by leaving them in a chest within the fishing shack, with a sign saying "sorry about the faggots. /mlp/". The fact that they came with a book of pony pornography and an additional sign saying "/mlp/ rubbed their dicks all over your fish" was another matter.

Between them, Now and Tess expanded the dug-out rooms and corridors laid by the former, and began seeking the main /tg/ faction, communicating with the nearby /p/ and larger political parallel /c/ factions, and recruiting more members. In this time, they made the faction more public to others and began opening diplomatic channels wider. They came into truce with almost every faction on the server at this time; when /a/ was set to war with the server, however, they were not excluded, though there was no overt hostility between the factions other than this declaration towards the Kobolds.

At around this time, the serverwide raid on /a/ began; naturally, the Kobolds did not include themselves. /adv/ quietly changed themselves to enemy status with the Kobolds, though this was thought to be an error. Scavenging resources from other bases, recruiting more people, and additional building made the Kobold Cave a comfortable place to live, and on Friday the 25th of April, longtime trading contact and friend to the faction, Iggyblack of /p/, became the first person to officially visit the Cave.

Early in the morning of Saturday the 26th of April, Heinreich of /adv/ forcibly became the second by blasting open a tunnel through claimed territory using creepers into the Kobold Cave's chicken farm, shortly after slaying a greeting Now outside the base. With the utility wing of the base compromised, Now attempted to counteract the attack, only to witness Heinreich utilise an Ender Pearl exploit to pass through the faction-protected iron door separating the wing from the core of the base. Heavily out-equipped and with his resources burned, Now was forced to log out, and returned shortly afterwards having issued a heartfelt plea to /tg/ for assistance. /tg/ deployed three defenders, led by MonkeysInSpace himself, but it was too late - the base was in ruins, lava poured throughout the otherwise darkened rooms & corridors, all resources in the supply room burned to nothing, and with the goading offender nowhere to be seen.

Dejected, Now thanked the defenders for their valliant attempt, filled his inventory with the trading, mining and building supplies left in a room Heinreich had not been able to access in that time, left a message for his second and logged out. The base was later repaired on the final day of the server, hours before shutdown. Only the fishin' shack and stonehouse were intact at time of closure. The server was changed into a standard map for plugin testing that night, though it only began working days afterwards.

V9 - /tg/ Faction
Now played Minecraft on and off during the years after V5, including a very brief appearance in V7 - but only when V9 was looming did Now respond to the Dwarven Alarm Clock and join in once more.

This time, he was a lone Kobold, but working under the /tg/ banner, having proven his loyalty as one of only two false positives in the history of /tg/'s dwarven spy detection process. He invited Tesseract to join him in these endeavours, but due to time constraints, the latter Kobold was unable to join them. Nonetheless, Now had an opportunity to get stuck in with the main /tg/ faction, putting his building skills to work.

With little redstone experience (and all of it self-taught), and a tendency towards thematic, spectacle-based traps, Now's building style contrasted with the existing, more practical techniques put across by the dwarven faction at large. With their base being built on the shore of a /tg/ Island lake, he contributed with foresting, animal handling, reinforcement, scouting, trading and, of course, water features. He even participated in combat, though his noncombative nature meant that he mostly supported the more warrior-like dwarves.

The Dwarves made three bases - one by the lake, which served as a starting location, mine entrance and decoy for ADHD raiders (serving this purpose well); one floating above the lake, which contained spawn points and was well-defended for the most valuable items; and a final one in the dimension known as The End, which was defended to the teeth and practically impossible to breach. The admin disliked this base, and it was teleported in its entirety to a point floating above /b/ - but not before wiping the contents of its chests and dooming anyone who had logged off there or teleported home.

Despite this setback, V9 ended in success for /tg/, with most major factions either benign, destroyed by infighting or taken by each other in combat. The last group left other than the Dwarves, being a small, well-prepared faction situated in a floating obsidian autism cube at the top of the map above a lava lake, was breached by Now himself, two days before server closure. An attempt at revival, V9.11, met with failure as its awkward timing and terrain drove people away, including the only remaining representative of the Kobolds.

/tg/craft - Diversity Hires & The Monster Alliance
After V9.11, a small number of /tg/ players played on /int/craft, a server taking place across a Minecraft-emulated map of Europe. They settled in Wales, much to the amusement of Now, who found his hometown was now a starting point for a bridge across a stretch of ocean. A short amount of time later, /tg/craft came into existence. This represented the /tg/ factions of several different servers, and the Dwarves joined in a somewhat different form - the Stormdwarves, an invergent /tg/ group made from 4craft dwarves and the former 4chab and not4chan servers, united under the banner of Brighthold, their capital.

This server was light-roleplay, as is typical with /tg/-related things - nations took on racial identities, be they humans, dwarves, elves or others. The residents of Brighthold, naturally, were dwarves; Now joined them as a diversity hire. But interestingly, he was not the only Kobold on the server.

An original /tg/ dwarven played named Jinxy created a one-man Kobold faction and a Kobold cave to match, which he built in the middle of an Antarctic island on the server. This took the form of a giant dragon's skull, which went underground into a chamber lined with the deceased lizard's ribs, and leading to an ice cave along its tailbones. Jinxy recruited more Kobolds to his faction, and then united several of the monster races on the server under his banner, including goblins and hobgoblins. His Kobold warren is the largest single settlement in the /tg/ Kobolds' history.

Now, meanwhile, was working with the Brighthold dwarves. A local township created by the dwarf Canuck Dreamer, called Tim Hortons, provided food, mining and logistics operations to Brighthold, and Now became part of the effort. He expanded their farms, travelled far and wide to secure their animals, dug out transport & mining tunnels etc., and of course, built aesthetic structures, like the traditional Fishing Shack.

4craft v11 - Rapture Containment
In this iteration of 4craft, Now joined the dwarves of /tg/ again as their trusty diversity hire.

His initial works were focused on the small, first base created by the faction to use as a starting point. This base was built around the traditional concepts of a first home in Minecraft - a place to gather resources during the early days, with an extensive mining and mob grinding system, a farm, a basic alarm system, an idle fishing box for the resident fisherdwarf, and most importantly, canary appeal.

Over time, however, his focus shifted into contributing primarily towards building and maintaining an enormous undersea facility. This was the tertiary base of the faction, with the secondary base being hidden safely away elsewhere. This facility was an incredible feat of engineering, being both an undersea city and a containment facility. Several prisoners from other factions were held here for a considerable time, having been captured through seventh-dimensional chess level mindgames.

Building Works
Over several different servers and iterations, the Kobolds have completed a number of building works:

- The Kobold Cave; home of the Kobolds, containing complete meat & produce farms, utility rooms such as libraries, and bedrooms for most faction members, the Kobold Cave was awaiting the construction of a nether portal and a strongroom when it was attacked.

- The Fishin' Shack; a small, simple wooden hut on the water created early in the Kobolds' lifetime when Now was alone, it was intended to be, at best, a nice place for anyone to fish, and at worst, a decoy for an ADHD attacker with flint to reveal themselves to the locals. It survived until the server was reset.

- The Stone House; a single room built on the ice by Now around a redstone-light construct created by Kobold two6player, it survived two days before the server reset and ended up having no real purpose other than looking pretty.

- Turtle Rock; a stone brick fortress created for aesthetic purposes during peacetime, it contained a tower at each of its corner, a rooftop courtyard on the main keep, and an undersea glass viewing room hanging below it. It also had a jetty, at which a simple raft and a complicated submarine were docked.

- The Tunnel; though details are currently classified, an extremely long tunnel was carved out of the very rock to facilitate movements of materials and manpower. At points, this tunnel even passed under the sea; Now undertook this difficult task with gusto, and a dwarven ally turned it into a minecart track.

- The Terrace Farm; originally built by Roigel in the form of an Asian-style rice paddy farm stretching down from the mountain, the farm was expanded by Now to include an additional level fed by a pond which in turn was fed by a waterfall, and an underground mushroom farm with two layers to cultivate potion ingredients.

Culture & Behaviour
The Kobolds have always been a laid-back group, but have taken on aspects of their namesake and their leader's /tg/ heritage - including a tendency to explore caves, make intricate machinery, mine, build, plot and scavenge resources. This is, however, counterbalanced by faction policy of being friends with anyone who will accept them. They are typically assigned titles that vaguely reflect their primary disciplines - for example, in the V5 iteration, Now was the Plumber, and Tesseract the Survivor. They are not militaristic, and their combat capabilities are mostly limited to fighting mobs; however, they are officially a hireling faction, and their services in mining, building and adventuring can be contracted by any faction in truce.

As of their integration into the main dwarven /tg/ faction, Now's behaviour is more or less the same as it was before, except he typically goes about undertaking quality-of-life tasks for the good of the warren base between larger projects. Jinxy's faction is allied, and open to taking in "monster" factions, but their exact behaviours are still unclear; they do, however, seem to embody the spirit of more traditional Kobolds a little more strongly than Now.

Diplomacy & Nonaggression
The Kobolds' opposition to combat stems from a combination of the leader, Now, being a gigantic fucking bleeding heart faggot holy shit adverse to fighting in general, and also from simple survival instinct - in order to continue to exist in servers filled with large, well-equipped warring factions, it was reasoned, the Kobolds would be seen to be non-violent by the simplest means. All factions were and are invited to be in truce with the Kobolds, though alliances were avoided due to possible misunderstanding over the non-militaristic nature of the faction. In order to help progress this image, the Kobolds use most of their diamonds for mining equipment, whilst mostly arming & protecting themselves with iron.

The Kobolds offer themselves as, amongst other things, trading & diplomatic conduits between larger factions who may not be on the best of terms. As of his inclusion with the dwarves of /tg/ in /tg/craft, he often acts as a diplomat, reaching out to others and putting them on good terms.

Relationships with Other Factions
The Kobolds maintain that they would like to be friends with all who enter the servers, even moreso than their larger political parallel of V5, /c/; however, they have been resistant to setting alliances over truces, due to possible military requirements. This may be subject to change, as their stance on aggressive behaviour has been made clear.

The Kobolds are unique in that they are a /tg/ separatist, loyalist and satellite faction, all at the same time. Their close ties are maintained through constant nagging on Now's part to whoever will listen to him in /tg/.

/p/ has been a frequent trading partner with the Kobolds throughout their various bases. They found each other's animals for their farms, explored distant lands together and toured each other's homes - they are the closest small faction to the Kobolds, and their ties are likely to persist in later server generations.

/c/ was an early truce for the Kobolds as part of the former's similar policy of being friends with everyone. When /c/ splintered, all relevant factions remained on good terms with the Kobolds.

As part of this splintering, a group who joined /mlp/ were first invited to settle on their then-local (to a hidden base) island of /ck/. As Now was in the chat at the time and had already established the Kobolds as friendly, their offers of peace, trading, resources and a defensive umbrella extended to the Kobolds, who chose to keep their distance - not out of fear, but because they were already considering moving in the other direction. The peace, however, stands.

/co/ was also welcoming to the Kobolds, and set them a similar offer - but they again chose to stay where they were, and both /co/ & /mlp/ respected that the Kobolds needed to maintain their independence whilst staying close to /tg/.

Whilst technically enemies with /a/, they never crossed paths with the Kobolds, and Now even expressed thanks to /a/ leader Djinra for saving /p/ from another raid from marauder group The Intangibls.

/adv/ was set as an enemy faction to the Kobolds, but the only member they ever encountered was the lone attacker, Heinreich - he may have instigated both the change to enemy status, and the attack, without representing the rest of his faction. The situation is unclear.

Bases of Operation
- In v5, the Kobolds operated out of their Winter home on /tg/ Island, the Kobold Cave. Proposals were set for future generations of 4craft that they move closer to the /tg/ faction proper, to /co/, or even /mlp/'s /ck/ outbase.

- In v7, Now became part of the official /tg/ faction, and set up a home for the Kobolds near the faction's secondary farm.

- In v9, Now's faction set up shop next to, and then above the lake on /tg/ Island. This base was later moved to The End, and that base was subsequently moved to /b/.

- In /tg/craft 2016, the /tg/ faction settled in a frozen mountain range, in a river-run valley overlooking a dense forest. This was the site of the great hall of Brighthold, designed by Urist McSock, and Tim Hortons, designed by CanuckDreamer.

Trivia
- Kobolds have appeared in multiple forms throughout fantasy settings - small dogmen, small ratmen, small dragonmen - but it is generally agreed that the Kobolds as a faction are modelled on the small lizardmen version, consistent with the Dungeons & Dragons article about "Tucker's Kobolds" that became their inspiration.

- Despite this, Now has posted a picture of a Cutebold (a running joke on /tg/, doglike Kobolds drawn to be as cute as possible) on 4craft /vg/ threads, probably as a disarming measure. As of /tg/craft, this is his current official faction skin as well.

- Like other factions, the Kobolds have an official themetune - The Old Man of the Mountain, as sung by Burt Ambrose. This was selected by Now early on in the Kobolds' existence, to give the clear impression of their relation to the main /tg/ faction.