Kobold King

Fiendfyre isn't dangerous to a Horcrux because of its power, per se. The simple fact that the protagonists were able to be around it proves that it's a lot less potent than strong Muggle explosives. Fiendfyre can destroy a Horcrux because of its strongly dark magical nature, which suspends the Horcrux's ability to repair itself. This is also why basilisk venom is as useful as it is. Basilisk venom is a lot less potent than the venoms of some Australian plants and jellyfish, but somehow I doubt throwing a Horcrux into a tank of box jellyfish would do much good. Magic, not power, is the key.

The speed at which Horcruxes repair themselves is also an important--and unknown--variable. For instance, if you put one in a vat of acid, would it be able to self-repair faster than it could be dissolved?

The key is to destroy a Horcrux beyond repair by magical means. If the Horcrux survives the blast mostly intact, albeit partially melted and cracked, an eleven year-old school girl could fix it with a simple Reparo. Self-reassembly would be child's play for the dark wizard's soul. You'd need to make sure the Horcrux lies at the epicenter of an explosion powerful enough for the Horcrux to be blasted completely apart. As a rule of thumb, the explosion needs to render the Horcrux completely unrecognizable, and then the pieces need to be heavily damaged as well. The boundary lies somewhere between a frag grenade and an atomic bomb.

You get spoilers! Good thing you've already seen it. * inserts Monopoly money *

Be the GM. Introduce a kobold comedian. Adventures. Slowly hint that the comedian who's accompanying the party isn't all that he seems. More adventures. Adventures. Experience points. Climax of the adventure. Reveal that the kobold comedian is actually the long-lost king of the kobolds, who was testing the party to judge their worthiness as heroes to help him reclaim his kingdom. This sets up the next campaign. Profit.

...I don't know much about pugs, but thinking one's going to literally die if he doesn't get to hang out with other pugs right away is a little extreme, yes?

Oddly enough I first encountered them on the chat feature on Wikia, and when I saw them on the Shard too I just assumed they were commonplace. How wrong I was.

Have you ever tried to organize an entire city's combat force during a frenzied battle against mutated panda bears? It's a bureaucratic nightmare. Some things get lost in the shuffle, that's all.

I feel the strangest urge to turn this picture into an Epic.

Awesome! I reached 2600 words in my file about the alien species I've been working on, but I'm not sure how much of that is from today. I should probably take a break and do a different species while I work out what sort of religion to give these guys.

First post up!

"I will only ask this once," Dame Galsikar of the Nineteenth Genocide Fleet growled, pressing the barrel of her ion rifle to the base of her lieutenant's skull. "Where are they?" The lieutenant squealed and scrambled across the bridge, his many legs slipping on the chrome floor as he manned the radar station and attempted to avoid the Dame's gaze. "W-we are still searching, my lady. We're not finding their life signs on the ship, but none of the escape shuttles are missing..." Galsikar roughly shoved the imbecilic officer out of the way as she loomed over the radar, affirming what the idiot had managed to bark out. "They must have their own ship," she hissed in some fusion of thoughtfulness and hatred. "But how? Our security is flawless!" She drew herself to her full height, nearly brushing the ceiling of the bridge room. She stared out the window into the black outside of space, at the tiny blue world that had brought the Nineteenth Genocide Fleet here in the first place. Earth, it was called. Such a dirty, pathetic name. The inhabitants that named it should have been radioactive stains in the soil by now. Instead, those primitive primates were still breeding, eating, and draining resources that rightfully belonged to the Empire. It was a grim thought, but Galsikar managed to hold on to a small glimmer of hope. She gestured with a hairy limb towards the front of the fleet, irritably snapping her pincers together. "What is the state of our collective weapons systems?" A technical officer quivered in fear. "All of our Plague Torpedoes have been jettisoned into one of the system's stars. The Quantum Blade Projection is offline, and we can't guarantee their sabotage didn't extend to the Doomsday Ray itself." Galsikar let out an internal scream of fury that made the crewmen quiver enough to indicate she'd bellowed it out loud. "How in the goddess's name did they even get into the weapons level?" The technical officer backed into a wall, his abdomen pressing into the corner as his legs still tried to put distance between him and the raging Dame. "Th-they displayed all the proper authorization," he stammered by way of excuse. "They were genocide inspectors, with orders signed by the Empress herself! They were just here to make sure all the bolts were fastened straight." "And since when," Galsikar seethed, "Has the Empress employed filthy mammalian two-legs as her inspectors?" The officer stopped quivering long enough to look thoughtful. "I-I hadn't thought of that," he admitted. "They were very persuasive. Or at least, the brown one was. The red one was just sort of... loud." Dame Galsikar looked at the abject incarnation of stupidity that stood in front of her, raised her ion rifle, and reduced it into a pile of quivering burning dust. Her legs pounded against the floor as she ran to the flagship's controls, determined to salvage some level of proper genocide from this fiasco. "Charge the Doomsday Ray," she ordered, glaring at the greenish blue planet on the view screen as if it had caused her some personal grievance. "We can't wipe out the lot of them, but we can make craters where a few of their filthy cities were." There was a flurry of activity that was more satisfying than any "Yes, my lady." Galsikar grinned--or gave the closest rendition of a grin possible to a giant tarantula-centaur from the Irigaspis Galaxy--and imagined the ensuing devastation the fleet was about to inflict. "My lady," a voice exclaimed in alarm. "An unidentified vessel is coming into view!" Earth had come to take up much of the view, but now there was an extra splash of blue coming into focus. What appeared to be a tiny, wooden blue box with alien writing etched upon it spun onto the scene, fixing itself directly between the Nineteenth Genocide Fleet and the planet below. Right in the path of the Doomsday Ray, like a mother throwing herself in front of an endangered child. "Incoming message," a lieutenant squeaked. A box appeared on the viewscreen, alien text translating into words the Dame could read. DON'T SHOOT. Dame Galsikar found herself laughing. "So that is where our intruders have gotten to," she leered, leaning her thorax into the controls. "They think themselves in some position to threaten us. Continue charging!" "Charging at 80% and rising, my lady." A second message appeared on the screen: REALLY, DON'T. Something unsettled the Dame, but she elected to ignore it. Instead she clapped her pedipalps in delight as the weapon finished charging. Every vessel in the Nineteenth Genocide Fleet began to glow with an infernal red light, as lines of pure energy crisscrossed between them. The whole fleet was connected. The energy of every ship was being brought into a unified whole--every ship in the fleet would contribute to the extermination of the native filth-apes on the planet below. It was beautiful. Another message on the viewscreen. LAST CHANCE. "Fire," snapped Dame Galsikar. "Fire straight through their vessel and into the planet. Show no mercy." A switch was flipped. An electronic command was sent to the Doomsday Ray to fire. At some point along its path, a mush of dough that a human would have identified as a jammy dodger blocked the signal, and the tremendous energy the Ray required continued to build between the fleet's ships. Dame Galsikar was aware of a building heat for only a moment. In that moment she realized something had gone terribly, terribly wrong, and that something almost certainly had something to do with the filthy two-legs' visit. A wave of incineration washed up from behind her, catching crewmen and experienced officers alike in its burning wake. On the radar screen the blips that signified the Genocide vessels went out all at once. The blast of annihilation burned straight through the Dame's back, and with her dying breath she found herself screaming the name of the terrible duo that had brought this black day to pass. "DOCTOR-DONNA!" And the Nineteenth Genocide Fleet was no more. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Not wanting to watch the incineration he caused, the Doctor gave the viewing monitor a shove that carried it to the far end of the TARDIS console, and flipped a few random switches he didn't know the purpose of to make it look like he was doing something clever. "That," he mused as he began pacing down a set of clanking stairs. "Was the third Genocide Fleet I've seen this year. You'd think they'd be as sick of building them as I am of blowing them up." He paused, folding his brainy specs and stowing them back into a spare pocket. "Well, I suppose technically this only the second time this millennium from their point of view. But I think the point stands, don't you?" An acrid odor and an unusual silence from Donna snapped his attention to her. The human woman was just standing there, smoking slightly from burnt patches of her clothes. "Er, no more distractions. You've been wanting to get your hair done, right? I can take you to the best stylist in the Andromeda Galaxy. She usually works with two heads, but I'm sure..." Sniff. There was a scent of slightly singed hair coming off Donna now. Maybe bringing up hair after the incident with the plasma control vent wasn't one of his brighter moves. The Doctor disembarked from the last step, standing on a flat even level with his companion--who was smoldering both literally and figuratively, as it happened. "Alright," he sighed, trying to meet Donna's furious gaze and failing. "On a scale of nine to ten, how much trouble am I in?"

There's a snake in my boot!

I have an opening to post, if RippleGylf doesn't mind.

I called it "Kobold's law" tongue-in-cheek. I'm not nearly original enough for it to be named after me. I don't know much about Edassan biology, but the creatures are for the most part fairly earth-like, yes? I don't recall any explicit discussions of creatures employing the magic, so to the best of my knowledge the rule doesn't hold true there. I also shouldn't call it a "rule" in the strictest sense, as that would imply that people who don't follow it are doing something wrong, which couldn't be further from the truth. It should be stressed that it's really just a way of looking at a fantasy setting through the lens of biological principles... "metabiology," perhaps?

Magic achievable by divine will or Invesiture is often hereditary. Technology requires a massive social infrastructure and access to specific resources, while the majority of magic systems that I've seen don't require much physically from the user. Dragons in D&D have largely the same requirements as a mundane predator of their size, for instance, but their firebreath and invulnerable scales gives them a tremendous edge over their competition. I stand by my statement that it covers most settings, though I will make an addendum that it leaves out settings that deliberately go out of their way to eschew evolution and limit magic to a single non-changing sapient race. I think if we compared in which magic is an ecological factor to those where it isn't, we'd find that the rule truly is applicable to any world in which a deity is not actively suppressing it. (These are rare, since gods created plants and animals as well and rarely have a vested interest in suppressing their development.) The rule should thus be relevant in the following settings: All D&D settings that I am aware of. Both worlds depicted in The Riftwar Saga. The Potterverse. Classical mythology. The Wheel of Time (Even without the Dark One's direct control, magical Trollocs and Shadowspawn would have overrun the world centuries ago if it weren't for the intervention of the Borderlanders.) The Elder Scrolls world. All Star Wars planets, since the Force connects all living things. Equestria Earthsea Oz Westeros has dragons, right? Middle-Earth Any other world in which magical forms of fauna and flora are seen to coexist with a mundane ecosystem, which is frightfully a lot of them. Those are only a few that come to mind immediately. There is an occasional ultra low-magic setting in which it doesn't apply, and on most Shardworlds the Shards seem to have an interest in keeping their planets earth-like and preventing the animals from accessing magic. I stand by my statement that the laws of evolution hold true for all living beings equally, and that the rule is applicable in any setting in which the author hasn't gone out of his way to thwart the rule and keep the magic out of the ecosystem. From a narrative perspective you're totally right, unless the human protagonists have been imported to the world and don't possess the same adaptations. But that's how life works. Life evolves to overcome limitations. Single-celled life overcame the hostile oxygen atmosphere by evolving to breathe oxygen. Single-celled life overcame scarcity of resources by collaborating, eventually becoming multicellular. Multi-celled life overcame gravity by evolving bones. Animals overcame the elements by evolving thick fur, long ears, claws, fangs, echolocation, big brains, or one of a million other adaptations that all living things possess to overcome specific environments. If magic were in the world, life would overcome any costs and necessities that come along with it.

The rule isn't applicable to 100% of settings, any more than Bergmann's rule is applicable to a hundred percent of all polar animals. But in most settings that I see, the cost of magic is marginal and easily overcome by evolution. For instance, if you need to sacrifice blood to cast a spell, then animals would simply evolve marrow that produces more blood. (Come to think of it, that would make for an interesting race... a species with blood magic that needs to cast spells regularly to be rid of excess blood cells and remain healthy.) In the specific case of sapience-correlated magic, I don't think you're quite gathering what I'm trying to say, for which I am to blame. There would be no additional incentive for life to evolve intelligence in a fantasy, but if it does--and let's be honest, it usually does multiple times in a traditional fantasy setting--then adaptive radiation will ensure that magic spreads further across the ecosystem. Personally, I would speculate that orcs, goblins, elves, and dwarves represent a case of adaptive radiation in precisely the way this rule suggests should happen. At some point a humanoid species diverges into multiple subspecies, all of which use magic in conjunction with a different niche. Orcs use it to become apex predators, elves use it to help them adapt to a woodland ecosystem, dwarves use it for burrowing and acquiring material resources, etc. And of course, this rule depends on evolution being applicable in a setting, which it not always is.

In some, but in no ways by all. In DnD there are plenty of non-sapient magical beings. Stormlight is crawling with them. The Star Wars expanded universe includes quite a few animals which utilize the Force, and classical mythology includes plenty of beings like the hydra which are unintelligent but possessed of potent magical survival strategies. Even in settings where magic is a function of intelligence, the rule should still take effect given enough time. Unless humans become entirely homogeneous over the face of their planet, they themselves will evolve into different forms to fill different niches, a la H. G. Wells' The Time Machine. If human magic provides a sufficient ecological advantage, then adaptive radiation will ensure that eventually the major roles in the ecosystem will be filled by a variety of evolved humans. It's not about which settings do follow the rule and about which settings should follow the rule, if realistic ecological principles were considered. I think that Stormlight presents a realistic look at what magic would do to an ecosystem, while most fantasy settings don't seem to process the full impact of a system that violates the conservation of mass and energy and can be manipulated to do just about anything the plot demands.

They hold true in most conventional fantasy settings.

Supposition 1: Magic is possible. Supposition 2: Access to magic is hereditary or tied to physical traits, and thus can be selected for. Supposition 3: Magic bestows benefits that are advantageous to life. Supposition 4: By mutation and natural selection, life is capable of acquiring any adaptation that is physically possible. Supposition 5: Any forms of life capable of harnessing a potent advantage will totally outcompete forms of life that are not. Kobold's Rule: Given time, life within a magical environment will evolve to harness magic for biological processes, from the largest megafauna down to the smallest microbe. Magic will permeate the ecosystem at every level.

As if time travel weren't confusing enough already, people who travel through time find themselves arriving at their destination in a flash of light, surrounded by a flock of tiny thumbnail-sized fish with hummingbird wings. The fish all immediately scatter in all directions before evaporating into bubbles of blue light, vanishing within seconds. Nobody has any idea where the fish come from or what their connection to time travel is. There are civilizations that have studied time for millennia that can only shrug at the phenomenon and say, as is always the case in paradoxes and temporal anomalies, "We're sure it makes sense in context." Of course... I know what the fish are and where they come from. But then, I'm omniscient.

Now, that's not fair. Hippogriffs are just a XXX and he likes them just fine. He's more likely to cross out the classification key and write in his own explanation about how the number of X's tells you how much potential fun the creature is.

It's my headcanon that the copy of the book that was released was heavily abridged so as not to alarm Muggles.