The Kobold Tribes
You won’t get what you deserve; you are what you take

Unlike many of the other races, the Kobold tribes exist in a sort of permanent diaspora. If they ever had a homeland, its existence and name have been lost to time. And again, unlike the other races, this fact does not bother Kobolds in the slightest. For them, a people are not tied to the land but to their family and tribe- everything else is secondary. Even the individual fades away into the group when the needs of the tribe are concerned. Though many tribes still roam the tunnels and caverns of the Stoneback Mountains, this is only out of convenience- despite frequent territory disputes with the Dwarves, the Kingdom of Liedeck and the Arden Empire both have opened their borders to the diminutive race. Hard working, industrious, and exceedingly clever, the work of Kobolds is sought wherever skilled or unskilled labor might be called for. In this modern era, they exist as a loose confederacy of tribes, located mainly in the south of the Kingdom of Liedeck and along the western edge of the Arden Empire. It is only recently that, thanks to a small band of explorers, old tribes thought long-dead have been found again in the Iceridge Spires, living under the thrall of the Orcish hordes. The standing of these northern tribes has yet to be fully understood, though their desperate pleas for assistance from the Kingdom have not gone ignored.

Total population: Unknown. At least 2 million, perhaps (many) more.
Currency: Those of the lands they trade with. Between themselves, the tribes often use barter or the coins of whichever land they are in.
Capital City: None

Because they do not have a single country or even city to call their own, it makes little sense to speak of Kobolds as having settlements. Their lifestyles are largely nomadic, typically following trade or hunting routes that they have established over many generations. Some tribes do ply their trade as miners or smiths, and these tend to gravitate toward the nearest large human or Elven settlement where they set up semi-permanent outposts. When dealing with the Dwarves, Kobolds tend to be cautious (at best), as the two have long had on-again/off-again skirmishes over what the Dwarves consider their borders to be. More than one Dwarven Clan has had their own mines hollowed out by roaming tribes of Kobolds that either did not know or did not care that the mines were in use.

It should be noted that there are two exceptions to the nomadic tribal custom of the Kobolds- the Silverridge tribe lives in the city of Calaben and is ‘ruled’ over by Duke Nettick Silverridge, and has been for over a hundred years, putting the Duke on the verge of middle age. The second exception lives in a warren on the eastern end of the Stonebacks. This tribe, the Fir-crests, have set themselves up as something of a trading concern, moving goods between the more reclusive Dwarven Clans and those outside races such as the Elves, and the Kingdom of Liedeck.

Each Kobold tribe is a matriarchy, ruled over by a small council of warren-mothers who work to come to a consensus on what is best for the tribe as a whole. The council usually consists of 3-5 matriarchs, though in some cases there is one matriarch who carries more status or standing than the others (and whose word carries more- but not absolute- weight). These matriarchs rarely leave their tribes, as they may be called upon at a moments notice to make important, life-or-death decisions regarding the overall welfare of their extended families.