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Though kobolds are often little more than resentful of races who seem superior to them, a few are fortunate enough to see past those ancient grudges to recognize not just their own species' gifts, but those of others as well.

From a young age, Loskra found herself deeply confused by the hatred of her peers toward the other races in the region. The dwarves didn't seem that bad, despite the warren's elders raging about how much they mined from the mountains; resources were in abundance underground, and the dwarves rarely ventured this deep anyway. Humans seemed like curious creatures: sometimes frightening, but often just as varied as the kobolds themselves were. Being a female, she was never allowed to venture too far from home, kept deep in the underground for most of her youth. But when captives and carts were brought underground, where others looted food and tormented survivors, she took more interest in the arts and writings of these other races.

Over time Loskra learned to decipher the writings of the other races. Reading Common became almost as easy as her native draconic tongue. Dwarven was no harder, given the abundance of dwarves she waved sadly to as they disappeared into the darkness of the kobold mines, likely never to be seen again. Gnomish was trickier, just from the lack of material, but even that and the ancient Undercommon were easy enough to understand once she had enough time. She had become so skilled at reading these foreign works that deciphering the works of an alchemist took only slightly more effort; it wasn't until she made and accidentally detonated her first fire bomb that she realized what she was reading.

Through her readings, Loskra slowly learned bits of the history of the world above her. She learned of ancient wars, great heroes, and terrible villains. Even if she mistook some of the exaggerated tales of bards as unembellished truth, it gave her quite the vivid, larger-than-life picture. Though for all the works depicting the more common species, her heritage made her especially fond of works depicting true dragons. Her warren had plenty of tales of dragons as well, worshiping idols of blue dragons; they saw the dragons as larger, far more powerful versions of themselves, capable of bringing ruin on the creatures and races they lacked the strength to take out on their own. But in these books, Loskra learned about other kinds of dragons - benevolent dragons - that her kind never spoke of.

Among the works she found, Loskra quickly learned that the other races did not see chromatic dragons with the same reverence the kobolds had for them. Some were incredibly hostile to them; others feared them for the same reason kobolds worshiped them: the dragons were often harbingers of destruction. Despite this, she learned that not all dragons were so cruel. She read an epic poem of the great brass wyrm Ravas who had documented almost a thousand years of a desert tribe's history, from their life as wandering nomads to a shining jewel of a city named in his honor. She read of a sea dragon who calmed a raging storm to let a fleet of ships return home to safety after a decade out at war. For every tale of horror featuring a chromatic dragon, she seemed to find at least two others showing her that even dragons could be a good force in the world.

The most treasured of her findings, though, were the stories about the mystical, primal crystal and cloud dragons. Being dragons from another plane - planes of earth and air, respectively - there were relatively few stories about them, often scholarly works by a plane-traveling wizard or sorceror. Such dragons were largely indifferent to the worries of this world, pursuing their own agendas. The few bits of writing Loskra had were still enough to send the young kobold's imagination run wild. The vast, underground caverns and tunnels of a crystal dragon's lair made her own kobold warren seem cramped in comparison, and the vibrancy of those caves still paled to that of the glittering, rainbow crystals of the dragons themselves. But the cloud dragons truly made Loskra envious. They had the entire plane of air to travel, flying free and exploring at will. A few cloud dragons even came to the material plane, so the stories went, filling the skies above cities as they sought something new to add to their hoard at home.

Even though she'd never seen the sky herself, the thought of that unbounded freedom stirred deep thoughts of wonder in Loskra. It would be a freedom like no other. Free not just from the bounds of the kobold warren, but free of gravity itself to soar and explore, to take in the world for all it was. She didn't want to run away from home; she wanted to take to the sky, like she had heard some other kobolds could, a gift she was not fortunate enough to have. Rather than merely being bitter for what she didn't have, Loskra let the desire to have such talents drive her forward. She wouldn't just mimic the gifts those kobolds had; she would be better than them in every way she could.

In addition to history books, she collected tomes from alchemists, spell scrolls, anything she could get her talons on to try refine her slowly budding yet dangerously untrained magical talents. Firebombs were the first trick she mastered, before turning her efforts to creating simple alchemical items like acid flasks. She experimented with mutagens, seeking their promise of a change in form not for raw physical power - she was already strong enough to intimidate some of the young males - but for the gift of flight she desired above all else. Her lab was improvised from what bits and pieces of gear she could secret away from the latest captives of her warren, and she kept them as well-hidden as she could in the small space she had for herself. More than once, she broke her supplies trying to hide them in a hurry, but inferior equipment was no deterrent for the young, slightly mad scientist. Most of the other kobolds tolerated her curiosity, when it didn't get in the way, though some of the elder males were concerned about the child getting into things a female had no business learning about.

Despite her curiosity about the world at the surface, Loskra was forbidden from going out to the surface. The warren was firmly patriarchal: the females were allowed to learn and occasionally even work in the mines, but actually getting exposed to the surface and the supposed dangers upon it was verboten. No matter how much the adolescent kobold pleaded and bargained, Loskra could not convince anyone to bend the rules - not even a little - for her. The rules were meant to be followed, the elders would insist. They were meant to keep the females safe, to keep the warren healthy. "So they can keep us to breed, basically," she muttered to herself. She had been fortunate enough to not suffer that indignity yet, though males had tried to talk her into it and occasionally force themselves upon her. Most were dissuaded with words; the rest were dissuaded with a small "accidental" explosion of a bomb in their faces. Her bombs became her safety: they were the one tool she had to scare away aggressors within the warren.

It was more than a decade before she first had the courage to sneak out and see the surface for herself. She had to try sneak past one guard after another, praying she wouldn't be caught by the kobold guards that served to keep dwarves out and females like her inside. Her luck held and, for the first time, she witnessed a world that was dazzlingly bright, beautiful, and colorful in ways she had scarcely imaged. It was far more wondrous than any book or image could ever hope to do justice to. Her questions about the kobolds were renewed: Why were so many of her kind so averse to coming to the surface and sharing in the splendor of the world? Aside from being uncomfortably bright, the surface seemed like a wonderful place. Her awe was interrupted by footsteps, a sound that immediately made her find a shadow to hide within. A family of dwarves walked out of the mine, right past her. She could have ambushed them - her instincts almost screamed at her to do so - but she watched and waited. She heard them talking amongst themselves about the most mundane of things, but hearing a full conversation in Dwarven for the first time was still music to her ears. When they walked past she snuck back into the cave she called home and snuck back downstairs, praying to the dragons she had dreamed of that nobody had noticed her leaving.

Throughout recent years, she had indeed had dreams of the dragons she read about. She dreamed of sitting on the steps of a great library and having a long conversation with Ravas about the history he'd seen. She dreamed of flying on the back of a cloud dragon, soaring so far above the mountain she had grown up in. They were so vivid - so real - she sometimes wondered if they were merely dreams or something greater. Such dreams often yielded to daydreams that distracted her from her work, whether that was mining some hopelessly generic minerals or experimenting with alchemical concoctions. A few times she got in trouble with a minor mishap here or there, but it rarely took more than a visit to the warren's healer for her or her accidental victim to fix what she had done.

Over time, she became more bold with her trips to the surface. She learned how to sneak past the kobold guards, found side passages in the dwarven mines that were long out of use, and spent half a day above ground whenever she had a chance. It still hurt to look at the sky, but the clouds going by were too beautiful to miss. She sighed wistfully, wishing one of them would be a cloud dragon to take her away, as life underground had become far too boring and limiting. Kobolds were usually kind enough to their own, but Loskra had grown bored with seeing the walls of her warren, now that she knew what else the world had to offer.

It was shortly after her sixteenth birthday when things went horribly wrong. She thought she'd learned how to make an explosive bomb: an even larger, more potent version of the ones she'd already created. This would have made mining quite a bit easier; instead of chipping away at stone, she could simply blow away chunks of the wall and have them loaded into a cart. She'd get credit for doing a day's worth of work in almost no time at all, freeing her to spend more time reading. That was the idea, anyway.

In reality, her bomb ended up being more powerful than she expected. Rather than merely blowing away a few large chunks of stone, an entire tunnel collapsed and buried two dozen kobolds alive beneath tons of rubble. The sound was loud enough to get the attention of other kobolds immediately, attention that Loskra most certainly did not want. Other kobolds started to hurry over, to try see what happened and try save any survivors they could. The sounds of the trapped, injured kobolds haunted Loskra's mind, all too clear even in the chaos she had inadvertently created.

The group slowly realized what had happened, and feared the young alchemist had grown up into a dangerous, reckless one. She tried to explain but those pleas fell on deaf ears as the mob grew agitated at her. Left with little else to do, she ran through the crowd, toward the tunnels she had learned to sneak through before. The mayhem behind her had distracted the guards well enough that she could simply run through the entrance while being chased by a mob of angry kobolds. As she ran up toward the dwarven layers of the mountain, she knew precisely where to run from years of sneaking through the same tunnels. Better still, the raucous noise of the mob had gotten the attention of dwarves. They feared another raiding party had come up from the depths of the mountain and took up arms, stalling Loskra's pursuers long enough for her to escape. She did not stop running until she reached the surface, with nothing more than the clothing on her scales and the small pouch of alchemical supplies she used in her ill-advised attempt at simplifying work.

Going back into the warren was not an option. Justice - or the mockery of it that the kobolds would deal out - was swift and cruel in cases like hers. At best she'd never be anything more than a miner and breeder for them; at worst she would have a long, slow, and painful execution as an eye-for-an-eye retribution for the deaths she surely caused. The only path for her was forward, out into the world she had read about and dreamed of for years, but had never truly explored on her own. She had a vague, textbook idea of how to get by, but the finer points of this were lost on her.

Her first few days out in the world were the worst. Water was easy to come by, but food was scarce, and consisted largely of whatever she could pluck from plants. She tried to approach a nearby Dwarven town, but after an unfortunate choice of words at the guardpost she had to turn and run again. Staying near where she was seemed pointless. She thought about the dragons she'd read about and realized that, even without being able to fly, she could still travel. That was the one thing she had going for her. She made her way to the nearest road and started to follow it, without caring where it would lead.

Along her travels, she ran across various other travelers. Caravans from lands near and far, as well as the occasional bandits that sought to take what few things she had. Her alchemical talents, simple as they were, proved useful to a few travelers. One one rainy night, she approached a small cart that had stopped. Its owner was desperately to start a fire when Loskra slowly walked up, hands open, and offered her assistance. Though uneasy, the merchant agreed to accept her help; one fire bomb later, the tinder had been lit and both kobold and human enjoyed its warmth. In exchange, she asked only for some food and shelter for the night.

Some encounters were less benign. The kobold needed to eat, after all, and if the only way she could get food was stealing it off the back of a merchant's cart... well, it was their fault for not offering her a chance to purchase or barter for it. She acquired some alchemical supplies in the same way, improvising with small quantities of this or that, eventually discovering she could use her bombs not just to harm, but to heal. This proved useful when wild animal attacked her on occasion; after dismissing the creature with fire, she turned restorative explosives on herself.

With her mix of talents, she was able to create new opportunities for herself. She stood back and watched fights take place on the road, as ill-prepared traders had to fend off bandits. When it looked as if the bandits were about to win, a few well-aimed bombs turned the tide of battle and frightened off some of the attackers. She walked up to the wounded and held up a healing bomb, offering them a simple proposition: She got what she wanted from the cart or she would let them die on the road in front of her. The threats paid off, granting her a reasonable collection of supplies, a couple simple weapons for her personal defense, and the means to carry them.

A few weeks after the accident, Loskra heard another fight break out on a particularly stormy night. By the occasional flash of lighting, she saw a particularly odd group of adventurers, including a creature she immediately recognized as a half dragon. She stayed out of the fight, too afraid she might cause another accident to help, but when the fight was won she moved up to their cart and tried to look innocent. It seemed to work, as they took her in as an adventurer with them. She now is traveling along with them, to destinations unknown, but the journey is the important thing to Loskra.