>>5302999>>5303000>>5303006>17The din of battle is quieted. The kobolds cease hurling insults and projectiles. Your own forces are yet wary, but nobody seems harmed beyond easily-treatable minor wounds, and they know better than to disobey an order uttered with the force of the Fearsome Presence behind it—yes, even the Novice. This is all good, as it should be, but you scarcely pay it mind. Your attention is elsewhere…
>19…With your arrow, which now pins the reanimated limb in place, having penetrated it through the hand and buried its head into the earth. The limb flails, trying to free itself in a desperate and frenzied thrashing-about, but by the time it finally manages, you are already upon it. You pin it beneath your boot, and reach down, removing the ring and the finger to which it is affixed. You shuck the ring from finger, throw the digit disdainfully aside, and wipe the blood from the strange artefact. The hand and arm go still, confirming the relationship between this piece of interwoven metal and its eerie gem and the paranormal phenomena at play.
“You’ve caused enough trouble today,” you say to the ring.
You then turn to the kobolds, who all stare at you with wide eyes, trembling and afraid to move.
“Your false dragon—your PRETENDER, Hako, the so-called Dragonwrought—is a smouldering corpse.”
The silence grows more tense, more fearful. If you can kill their champion, their ‘dragon’, what can any of them do to you?
“You all now serve ME,” you announce. “You all will lay down your arms, step down from your parapets, and submit… To ME.”
And so they do. Your retinue emerge from their cover, assembling behind you, as the cowed kobolds line up and miserably relinquish their arms to your supporters, before kneeling before you. Their young cower behind the adults, staring at you with a mxi of fear and twisted, servile adoration.
It is over, and with surprisingly little bloodshed. Had your will been any weaker, your aim any less true… Well, you don’t wish to think about it, but you suspect things would have gone very differently.
What will you do with the kobolds?
>Forgive them, and hear their grievances—perhaps, with these rank-and-file reptilians, a common ground CAN truly be found>Decimate them, killing a tenth of their population as punishment for their impudent rebellion, and enslave those who remain>Slaughter them all, and take their spoils>Vassalize them—offer them autonomy, and let them stay in place, but make sure they submit to your will and that of the PriesthoodWhat of the accursed ring?
>Melt it to slag with dragonfire, and grind its gem to dust>Turn it over to the intellectuals to study—carefully!>Put it on, and interrogate the entity within yourself 