Vress

Matriarch of the kobolds of Depth 4.

Vress sat elevated at the far end of the Matriarch's Hall when the party was brought to her. Grey-scaled. One eye milky and sightless. Three fingers gone from her left hand. Skit stood at her shoulder and translated.

The kobolds have been beneath Hammerfall since the Great Betrayal, their name for the day everything changed. When the elves left, the kobolds stayed. They finished what they could and sealed what they feared, and for four centuries they have asked what the shrines were built for and had no answer. Vress knows all the histories.

She was at the threshold when Odin's sanctum, closed for five centuries, finally answered someone. Afterwards she showed the party what her people had recovered from a sealed flower-shrine: an ivory comb carved with interlocking flowers, a sealed glass vial and three hollow coins marked in old elven script. They pointed the way to the Hollow Coin in Richeri.

When the party returned an old amulet to her, she took it in both hands. It had belonged to Vrakka, her ancestor and former Matriarch, who once worked alongside the builders before they fled the tunnels. As they left, she held out a hand.

"Three of ours. Last week. Red Below has been moving closer."