<div class="floatright">(http://i1300.photobucket.com/albums/ag94/Autocad-E/Kingmaker_007a_zpsa0c8d385.png)</div>Mikmek saw to the proper send-off of the other three deceased kobolds that didn't survive the mites' torture first, making simple funeral pyres for them using some of the branches of the sycamore tree as fuel. After the cremation, he led the adventurers towards the kobold tribe's home to return the idol and claim their reward. He also knew the layout of some of the nearby lands, which he was willing to share with them. The journey through the hilly terrain required took a full day, necessitating camping overnight in the hills, and provided plenty of time for the kobold to tell the story of the horned devil statuette around the flickering light of the campfire.<br/><br/>Mikmek's tribe, the Sootscales, had been living peacefully in an old abandoned mine in the side of a hill on the north bank of the Shrike River for several decades now, the peace only broken when the occasional bandit or mite or trapper infringed upon what they considered to be their territory, a small region of several miles around their home. That all changed when a strange purple-scaled kobold shaman, Tartuk, arrived a year ago bringing the idol with him. He claimed that the idol was a god of the kobolds, Old Sharptooth, and Tartuk was his high priest. The kobolds didn't believe him at first, but when one of the scoffers mysteriously died and his scales turned yellow, they were forced to submit lest divine punishment strike them down as well.<br/><br/>Ever since then, Tartuk had supplanted Chief Sootscale as the real controller of the kobolds, communing with the idol and relaying the god's aggressive and bloodthirsty demands, which included attacking strangers, blood sacrifice, and a disastrous war with the mites with whom they had been in an uneasy peace before. When a daring mite raid resulted in the loss of the idol, the kobolds had sent their best and strongest warriors to reclaim it at once, for fear that Old Sharptooth would turn them all yellow and strike them down if they allowed the idol to remain in the mites' filthy hands. And the adventurers had seen for themselves how well that had turned out.<br/><br/>Most of the kobolds, Mikmek and Chief Sootscale included, bemoaned the changes that had taken place ever since Tartuk showed up, but against divine will what could they do? The best they could hope for was that by retrieving the idol and perhaps with a few sacrifices, the wrath of Old Sharptooth would be mollified and they would live on.<br/>