The World of Abadonya

Small Hands Beneath Great Mountains

Aurelion's kobolds have lived beneath its mountains and arcane settlements for longer than many surface communities realize. Some warrens occupy natural caves, while others have expanded through abandoned mines, collapsed laboratories, old drainage systems, and forgotten tunnels beneath ruined towers.

Their natural talent for mining and trapmaking makes them exceptionally good at turning poor terrain into defensible territory. A passage that appears insignificant to a human explorer may be a major kobold road, while an apparently empty tunnel may contain concealed doors, warning devices, false floors, and carefully engineered escape routes.

Not every kobold warren is hostile to outsiders. Some trade ore, salvage, maps, mechanical work, or information with nearby settlements. Others remain fiercely territorial, especially when strangers trespass into tunnels the kobolds consider ancestral ground.

The Blood of Dragons—or So They Say

Kobolds stand roughly three feet tall and are covered in reptilian scales. They have narrow limbs, long tails, clawed hands and feet, and jaws much stronger than their small frames suggest.

Scale color varies widely. Red is common, but black, blue, green, white, orange, yellow, purple, and other rare colors appear. Many kobolds interpret scale color through stories of draconic descent and assign family or spiritual meaning to it.

In Aurelion, certain warrens preserve elaborate genealogies claiming descent from dragons that once nested in the region's mountains. Whether these claims are literal, symbolic, or embellished over centuries depends entirely on whom one asks.

Built for Places Others Ignore

Kobold communities are typically organized around tightly packed warrens. Space is used efficiently, with sleeping chambers, workshops, hatcheries, storage rooms, shrines, and escape tunnels stacked into compact networks.

Aurelion kobolds value cleverness, preparation, useful skills, and contribution to the warren. Miners, scouts, builders, trapmakers, tunnel-mappers, and caretakers are all essential. Elders commonly hold authority because they remember which passages are safe, which old structures are unstable, and which bargains with surface folk should never be forgotten.

Their reputation for traps is deserved, but kobolds do not see traps merely as weapons. In dangerous underground environments, alarms, collapsible passages, deadfalls, warning mechanisms, and concealed routes are basic tools of survival.

Where Stone Hides Old Magic

Aurelion is the principal homeland associated with kobolds in the Abadonya Archive. The region's magical ruins and ancient foundations have given kobold warrens access to places surface scholars have forgotten.

This has produced a strange relationship between kobolds and Aurelion's arcane institutions. Scholars sometimes hire kobold guides to reach buried chambers, while kobolds occasionally bring strange devices or scraps of forgotten magic to the surface for trade.

Some kobold communities deliberately avoid active magical sites, believing ancient wards and unstable ley currents bring disaster. Others build their entire identity around studying, scavenging, and surviving those same places.

Respect What Can Crush You

Many kobolds hold dragons in enormous reverence, seeing them as ancestral ideals or proof of what draconic blood might become. Some warrens maintain shrines to remembered dragons, while others simply tell stories linking each scale color to a different draconic legacy.

Abadonya kobolds may worship any deity. Some Aurelion warrens favor Namir for craft, fire, and worked stone, while magically inclined kobolds may turn to Rashtala. Others worship local powers, ancestors, dragons, or spirits associated with the deep places.

Kobold morality is not dictated by race. Warrens can be cooperative, isolationist, mercantile, cruel, honorable, or anything between. Their strongest shared tendency is practical survival: a plan that keeps the warren alive is usually valued more than a dramatic gesture.

Standard Pathfinder 1e Racial Traits

Ability Score Modifiers: Kobolds gain +2 Dexterity, –4 Strength, and –2 Constitution.

Type: Kobolds are humanoids with the reptilian subtype.

Size: Kobolds are Small creatures and gain the normal Small-size modifiers: +1 size bonus to AC, +1 size bonus on attack rolls, –1 on combat maneuver checks and CMD, and +4 size bonus on Stealth checks.

Base Speed: Kobolds have a base speed of 30 feet.

Languages: Kobolds begin play speaking Draconic. Kobolds with high Intelligence scores can choose Common, Dwarven, Gnome, and Undercommon as bonus languages.

Armor: Kobolds gain a +1 natural armor bonus from their scales.

Crafty: Kobolds gain a +2 racial bonus on Craft (trapmaking), Perception, and Profession (miner) checks. Craft (trapmaking) and Stealth are always class skills for a kobold.

Darkvision: Kobolds have darkvision 60 feet.

Light Sensitivity: Kobolds suffer from light sensitivity.

Race Points: 5 RP.

These are the standard Pathfinder 1e kobold racial traits. The Abadonya material on this page changes only setting lore and does not alter these mechanics.

Selected Alternate Racial Traits

Beast Bond: Gain +2 on Handle Animal and Ride checks, and both become class skills. Replaces Crafty.

Day Raider: Lose light sensitivity and gain low-light vision instead of darkvision. Replaces Light Sensitivity and Darkvision.

Dragon Affinity: Kobold sorcerers with the draconic or kobold bloodline treat Charisma as 2 points higher for sorcerer spells and class abilities. Replaces Armor.

Dragonmaw: Gain a 1d4 bite attack and, depending on scale color, may deal 1d6 additional energy damage with it once per day. Replaces Armor.

Dragon-Scaled: Gain energy resistance 5 based on scale color: acid for black or green, electricity for blue, fire for red, or cold for white. Replaces Armor.

Gliding Wings: Gain weak wings that allow safe falling and limited gliding with Fly checks. Replaces Crafty.

Prehensile Tail: Gain +2 on Acrobatics and Climb checks and improved ability to draw a hidden weapon with the tail. Replaces Armor.

Secret Strider: Twice per day, move through natural surroundings without leaving a normal trail for 1 minute. Replaces Crafty.

Shoulder to Shoulder: Gain benefits for fighting and maneuvering in the same space as another Small ally. Replaces Crafty.

Spellcaster Sneak: Gain +2 on Stealth checks and use Silent Spell once per day without increasing spell level. Replaces Crafty.

Wild Forest Kobold: Gain +2 on Perception and Survival checks, with Stealth and Survival as class skills. Replaces Crafty.

These are Pathfinder 1e alternate racial trait options drawn from the kobold rules. They use the normal replacement rules and do not represent Abadonya-specific mechanical changes.

Those Who Take the Upper Roads

Kobolds who leave their warrens often do so because they are scouts, traders, exiles, salvage hunters, emissaries, or simply too curious to remain underground. Aurelion's ruins provide endless reasons for a kobold to join a group of surface adventurers.

Rogues, rangers, alchemists, sorcerers, investigators, fighters, and wizards are natural fits for common kobold skills, but kobolds can pursue any class.

An Aurelion kobold adventurer might seek proof of draconic ancestry, map a lost tunnel network, recover a stolen warren relic, study a mysterious arcane mechanism, or prove that being small has never meant being insignificant.

Return to the Races of Abadonya index to browse other ancestries.