Deep in the isolated Marak valleys of the Steamwall mountains lives a subrace of kender completely unlike any others on Krynn. Buy Time of the Dragon: https://www.dmsguild.com/en/product/16960/time-of-the-dragon-2e?affiliate_id=50797
Transcript
Cold Open
When the apocalyptic fury of the Cataclysm shattered their peaceful valleys, this unique group of kender came to a terrifying realization: the gods were no longer their protectors, they were the ultimate threat.
Intro
Welcome to another DragonLance Saga episode. My name is Adam, and today we are heading into the lower slopes of the Steamwall mountains to talk about the Marak Kender. I’d like to take a moment and thank the DLSaga members and Patreon patrons, and invite you to consider becoming a member or patron — you can even pick up Dragonlance media or get $10 by signing up to StartPlaying.Games using my affiliate links. I’m referencing the Time of the Dragon boxed set for this information. If I leave anything out or misspeak, please leave a comment below.
Discussion
Physically, the Marak kender look like the rest of their race, though they are notably longer in the face. Their environment has completely dictated their appearance and gear. To blend into the gloomy, rocky walls of their canyon homelands, they completely forgo the bright, mismatched colors of traditional kender, dressing strictly in somber grays and blacks. A typical outfit consists of a simple shirt, heavy trousers, and hard-soled moccasins, topped with a hooded half-cape coated in wax or fat to keep out the foul, constant mountain rain. They still grow their hair long, but instead of wild topknots, they bind it in tight, spiraling buns or head-hugging braids.
Their weaponry has adapted to the mountains as well. Lacking the straight-limbed wood needed to craft a traditional hoopak, they harvest the springy, twisted wood of the Steamwall forests to construct the hoopaui, or stone-bow. Operating exactly like a heavy, mechanical crossbow, this weapon fires hand-selected stone pellets with deadly accuracy. Because of their obsessive hoarding tendencies, Marak kender carry an unusually high number of magical short swords, daggers, axes, and spears. They wear no standard armor, relying on natural camouflage to disappear into the stone, but when war comes, they present an incredibly bizarre sight. They girt themselves in a mismatched, chaotic collection of stolen and scavenged pieces—a League legionnaire’s helm, a Thenolite breastplate, a hobgoblin bone plate, or a full suit of ancient dwarven plate armor packed with pillows so it doesn’t fall off their slim frames.
To understand why these kender are so different, we have to look at their history. Before the Cataclysm, the Marak kender lived in idyllic, sheltered valleys. The human Aurim Empire lay to the north, and the elves lived to the east, neither bothering the kender. They possessed an absolute, childlike trust that the good gods loved them and would protect them from all evil.
Then came the Cataclysm. The smiling kender were subjected to horrors no mortal army could inflict: volcanic fires lit the skies, weeks of toxic ash poisoned their water, and rivers of lava scoured their villages. The Marak kender realized that only the gods could unleash such localized cruelty. They didn’t view it as an accident; they believed the gods had actively betrayed them.
This trauma completely broke their cheerful nature, replacing it with deep, survival-driven paranoia. They are still incurably curious, but it is a curiosity born of fear. When a Marak kender meets a stranger, they don’t want to make a friend—they want to know exactly who you are and what you are carrying to determine if you are a threat to their valley.
This paranoia completely reframed the classic kender habit of “handling” items. Their absolute lack of a moral concept regarding personal property didn’t change, but their excuses did. Marak kender now steal items explicitly to “check them out” for danger. If you catch a Marak kender with his hand inside a wizard’s pouch pulling out a wand, he won’t claim he dropped it. Instead, he will deadpan: “I’m only making sure nothing in here is dangerous. And of course I’m keeping this wand—after all, you might decide to use it against me later.” They naturally assume that every outsider is an immediate, lethal threat, and they steal your gear to actively stack the political and physical odds in their favor.
Their sense of humor has twisted into pure black comedy. They still delight in practical jokes and mischief, but their pranks are harsh, punitive, and aimed squarely at exposing or mocking outsiders. Within their own valleys, these mean-spirited practical jokes are used to settle scores, creating a highly elaborate social hierarchy based entirely on who has managed to get the last laugh or the better of their neighbor.
Furthermore, the Cataclysm forged their family units into fanatical bonds. While traditional kender are loosely tied, an insult to a Marak family line is treated as a capital offense and has caused countless internal murders. Even meetings between kender from neighboring valleys are stiff, cold, and intensely formal to prevent accidental slights from escalating into multi-generational blood feuds.
Surviving the Steamwall is a grueling, daily struggle. The kender work small, harsh farms along the valley floors, but fields near the rivers are routinely poisoned by thermal toxins, and the outer fields are choked with dry volcanic ash. While their crops are poor, their defenses are legendary.
The kender cluster their homes into small villages fortified with simple field-stone walls. However, following their trap-making instincts, they surround these villages with deep concentric rings of devious, hidden, and lethal traps. The local hobgoblin tribes are their primary predators, and they have learned through bloody experience never to assault a kender village directly. Instead, hobgoblins launch sudden ambushes on isolated farmers working the fields.
When the hobgoblins do gather the numbers to lay a full siege, it triggers a terrifying game of cat-and-mouse. The hobgoblins hide in the overlooking hills for days, mapping the village paths before advancing under the cover of night. The siege officially begins when the kender suddenly hear the agonizing screams of hobgoblin scouts triggering hidden traps in the pitch black. What follows is a brutal battle of wits. By night, the hobgoblins carefully clear and advance along safe routes. By day, they dig in to defend their progress, while kender saboteurs use their camouflage to slip past enemy lines and construct entirely new, deadlier traps in the dirt. Because these small villages rarely have the raw numbers to survive a direct, open infantry clash, the security of the entire community relies entirely on whether their insidious traps can break the hobgoblins’ morale before they breach the stone walls.
Because the Marak kender are notorious collectors, rumors across Taladas insist they are a race of secret misers hiding vast vaults of legendary treasure beneath their villages. Even the kender have fallen victim to this rumor, firmly believing that the kender in the neighboring valley are hoarding powerful, ancient artifacts.
However, these rumors completely misunderstand what a paranoid kender actually finds valuable. They do hoard magical weapons and armor, but solely to keep them out of the hands of potential enemies. To an ordinary human or dwarven adventurer, a Marak kender’s ultimate treasure trove will look like a massive pile of assorted junk—unreadable scrolls, strange mechanical baubles, bright trinkets, and random components that the kender kept simply because they thought it might be used as a weapon against them someday.
Outro
But that is all the time I have to talk about Marak Kender. How would your players react to a kender who steals their magical sword not out of curiosity, but out of a calculated, paranoid preemptive strike? Leave a comment below.
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Where is that kender? I suppose he stole the barmaid-?
