Thornscale Tribe
A kobold mining clan scattered and poisoned by the Cinderclaws, who found their way to Citadel Altaerein by a longer road than intended.
The Thornscales are a kobold mining clan originally native to the northern Mwangi Expanse, where they worked veins of stone and ore in the deep places beneath the jungle. They were not soldiers or warriors. They were craftspeople: diggers, assessors, builders of tunnel supports and wash systems for ore. They traded with goblin clans in the underground routes and occasionally with Ekujae-adjacent communities above ground, occupying a narrow but stable niche in the Mwangi's complex web of small-folk relationships.
The Cinderclaws ended that. Most of the tribe scattered or died. Eight survivors made it out of the mine and into the jungle. They are the ones who reached Citadel Altaerein.
The Mine
When the Cinderclaw cult needed organized labor for its Mwangi gold operations, it recruited by force. The Thornscales were close to the most promising vein — the bend of the river where the water ran slow and deep — and the cult's boggard and charau-ka enforcers knew where they lived. The offer of food and protection lasted as long as it took for the first cages to close.
The gold ran wrong from the start. The Ekujae prohibition on Mwangi mining is not arbitrary: the gold beneath the jungle is tainted with arsenic, a fact their traditions encode as Dahak's curse. The Cinderclaws knew the gold had unusual draconic properties; they did not know or did not care about the arsenic. The Thornscales knew the moment they touched the ore. Their claws burned. The water tasted of metal and death. They said so. The wrath demons in charge of the operation told them to keep digging or die.
They dug until they couldn't. Then they ran.
Eight survivors hid in hollow tree stumps in a deadfall clearing several hours from the mine, living on whatever they could forage and trying to outlast the arsenic poisoning that had already progressed through three stages. They were there when the party found them: scales dulled, breathing labored, a trap rigged from mining equipment to keep the cultists away. Not an effective trap. A desperate one.
Krezek
The Thornscales' spokesperson. He introduced himself after Nadira began treating the first two kobolds, when it became clear the party was not going to ask for anything in return. His voice grew steadier as the treatment progressed.
Krezek has the bearing of someone accustomed to speaking on behalf of others — not born to it, not comfortable with it, but doing it because someone has to. He is formal in the specific way of a person who does not have many formal resources left, deploying deliberate posture and considered phrasing to carry weight that circumstances have stripped from everything else. The bows he offers are precisely calibrated. The tokens he gives are chosen.
He does not conceal bitterness when speaking about the Cinderclaws. He does not perform it either. It is simply there, a fact in his voice like the arsenic was a fact in the gold.
When Nadira offered sanctuary at Citadel Altaerein, he translated for the others in Draconic before responding. The collective response was immediate.
The Bone Token
Before parting ways with the party, Krezek gave Nadira a small carved bone token bearing the Thornscale tribe mark. He explained its use: if the party encountered Hezle at the Cinderclaw mine and showed it to her, she might remember what she had been before the cult changed her. Tribe marks carry weight for kobolds that names alone do not. Hezle had been Thornscale once.
The token arrived with the party after the Cinderclaw mine and has not been needed since. Whether it retains meaning for Hezle — wherever Hezle ended up — is an open question.
Hezle
The kobold mine boss the cult installed over the Thornscales was Thornscale herself, once. Cobalt-blue scales, fire breath, a staff. The Cinderclaws had changed her: made her run hot, made her useful to them, made her the instrument of what was done to her own people. Krezek believed a kobold heart was still inside her somewhere. He was not certain. He was choosing to believe it.
The party encountered Hezle at the mine. Whether that belief proved correct is part of the record.
The Road to Isger
Nadira gave Krezek clear directions to Citadel Altaerein: the route through the jungle, the landmarks, the Huntergate. She told him about Pib and Zarf — kobolds already living there — and about the Bumblebrasher tribe. She told him what she had said at the edge of the compound to the freed workers: strong friendships make communities stronger.
The Thornscales headed north with renewed purpose.
They arrived at Citadel Altaerein months later, in the wake of the party's return from Cypress Point. The delay was not explained in any formal detail. Krezek described it as getting lost along the way. The party had crossed a continent, freed dozens of enslaved people, killed a demon, and ascended to mythic rank. Eight kobolds with no map, no guide, and no experience of Isger's terrain had navigated from the northern Mwangi Expanse to a specific fortress in the mountains above Breachill on foot.
The months were not questioned.
Citadel Altaerein
The Thornscales arrived at the gate and announced themselves. Helba Bumblebrasher let them in, told them they looked terrible, and called for Pib and Zarf.
The introduction was what it was: two kobolds who had decided they were dragons meeting eight kobolds who had spent months surviving on endurance and the memory of a promise. Pib told them about the hoard of four silver pieces. Krezek told Pib they had once had a hoard of their own. Something settled between them that had nothing to do with treasure.
Falwan assessed them and told them to rest before working. Krezek told her they were miners and could be useful. She said she knew.
Within a week, the Thornscales had inspected the crumbling mortar on the lower east wall and begun repair work. Their assessment of the citadel's underground infrastructure turned up two drainage problems that had gone unnoticed since the Hellknights left. Helba called the situation satisfying and then began reorganizing the watch rotation to account for nine more bodies.