Trout's Landing.

  "Amazing." The Chief said in awe as he looked around the cavern that Jeb had created.

  He and the other kobolds were busy getting a fungal farm set up in order to better diversify their diet, and something to fall back on during future winters when foraging outside and fishing became too harsh for them.

  Yet despite the necessity, he and the others of the tribe still stopped to look around at the cavern. Where solid dirt and stone once filled, now a comfy den for the tribe to use. All within the matter of a couple of minutes.

  The Chief reached a claw out and brushed it against a nearby blackened root. It felt as solid as before. Yet there was a thrum to it. He pressed his head to the root and closed his eyes. He shuffled back with a surprised yelp when he heard what sounded like a heartbeat through the root!

  Though perhaps his fascination with Jeb's Eldritch power was boosting his imagination. He turned and looked to where some of the tribe dug into the rich soil. To where they hammered and built grooves and divots in the ground to collect and distribute the trickle of water coming from the river via a root.

  He watched as the water began to pool in shallow indents where leaf litter and damp logs sat waiting. While fungus would be the main focus of this room, that didn't mean it would be solely used for it. Pools and ponds would be useful for cultivation of moss and algae during the colder seasons as well as breeding for frogs.

  It would certainly be easier to secure, the Chief thought as he side-eyed a troupe of salamanders meandering into the cavern and already began searching for snacks and treats. Most lapped at pools or snapped up greener pieces of foliage. A couple however got wise enough and plopped down by the small stream flowing through the wall. He watched them snap at the stream every so often as small dark shapes followed the stream to a new source a little warmer than above. Which spoke highly of their future planned project for a fish sluice! All they'd have to do is divert water into a warm chamber and the fish would follow it to get away from predators above as well as the cold!

  But he was getting ahead of himself. They would already have their claws full with this current project. Their tools were already at their limit, and from the state of Jeb after doing this he wasn't likely to be doing it again too soon.

  But that didn't mean he couldn't still plan in advance! Which he did. Already he could see tunnels leading deeper and deeper into burrows, caverns, hazardous switchbacks and dead ends and cramped crawl spaces that anyone bigger than them seemed to hate.

  But that wasn't even the beginning! He's already learned so much in their short, though no less eventful, time in this world! A cavern filled with all sorts of knowledge he would gather! Plans, medicine, construction, inventions, cultures, the possibilities were endless! The entire tribe could have the knowledge of entire worlds at their claws!

  Even their favorite past time of trap making wasn't immune! What they've been taught by Jeb already expanded their knowledge of traps. Mixing chemicals to produce poison gas. Stringing those "guns" as Jeb called them to traps to make explosive, and rather gruesome if effective, deterrents. One thing he's even suggested is using vision as a trap!

  The Chief wasn't sure about that one. At first it seemed like he wanted to use Illusion Magic to hide traps. But that wasn't it. Or it was? He wasn't sure as Jeb's explanation of "optical illusions" confused him. Apparently they both were and were not magic.

  Of course Jeb's ideas have also been rather impractical as well. Like rolling a boulder down a narrow hallway? Not only would it be time consuming, and a waste of good stone, it would be a trap that would work only once! The damage the boulder alone did to the ground would tell anyone coming in after that it was there!

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  Of course that's not even counting the likelihood of getting a massive hunk of rock to roll in the direction you want it to. Or the time spent carving it so it wouldn't just get wedged somewhere. Or making sure it wouldn't just shatter when it hit the ground!

  Even then, it was a trap that anyone their size could easily avoid! All they'd have to do is press themselves against one of the corners to avoid it! Which could easily be countered by traps being placed to hurt, maim and/or kill said person. But at that point there was just easier and more practical traps that could be used than some giant rolling rock!

  Like poison darts. Small, silent, deadly, practical. All it takes is hollowing out some side rooms for kobolds to keep watch and reload and activate them. Accompanied by a pit trap and it worked wonders!

  The Chief paused as he tried to recall what he was doing.

  "Oh, right. Projects."

  While they could also use the fungal farm to grow herbs and vegetation, the proximity to the fungi could lead to less-than-edible molds and mushrooms propping up. The Chief paused as a thought occurred to him. While dealing with slimes and oozes back in their former home wasn't entirely uncommon, he's yet to see or hear of any encounters from the Trap Master, Jeb, or the rest of the tribe.

  Usually they'd get a least a few cropping up in their former home now and again. More pests than actual threats. Non-edible. Hard to actually kill. With the annoying habit of reproducing should someone use something sharp to attack them. About the only utility use they had was cleaning up refuse. If one could corral them into the right direction and prevented them from eating something important.

  While he could say it was the cold, from what he's read and understood about the creatures is that they're worse than rats and could be found anywhere and everywhere. Or so he thought. Was there something in this world that just prevented slimes and oozes from forming? Or have they just not been subjected to the gelatinous blight just yet?

  Of course that isn't mentioning that the fungal farm might produce some of its own. Especially at the size it was. Enough slime or ooze puddles up there's a good chance it decides to sprout legs, or whatever they use to get around with, and meander off.

  The Chief shook his head as he retrieved his satchel and looked at the clippings and collections of various plants he had stored in jars. He was getting ahead of himself again. If he didn't focus on the present he'll be thinking of a new hoard cavern before he knew it!

  "Where would it even go?" He muttered to himself as he walked across the cavern and gave some fungal spores and mold colonies to those of the tribe in charge of overseeing the cultivation of the farm.

  Would tribute be piled inside Jeb's room like they would their old draconic master, the Chief thought as he idly helped move a half rotted log into a puddle and offered some fungal spores.

  Or would it go someplace central like the gathering area where the tribe met, bartered, and traded? He hummed in thought as he picked a wriggling grub from a log and snapped it up as a treat. Perhaps a dedicated chamber this time around? Someplace to keep their loot and wealth?

  He yelped as he bit his tongue. He sighed and shook his head. He did it again, he thought with a sigh and turned his thoughts towards current work instead of future projects. Which was hard to do as the more he worked the more he thought.

  They could expand the fungal farm into the stone of the mountain with Jeb's assistance. From there they could build a bat roost. The bats would then provide meat and fertilizer for their fungi and other plants.

  "Ow!" The Chief yelped as he bit his tongue again. He should probably not be so distracted when chewing.

  -----

  Don't Tell Motel.

  Dr. Obermann fumed. As if being handicapped by the agency wasn't bad enough. As if being so close to his goal wasn't torture. As if being the only one that saw the danger and potential that lurked just up the road from this armpit of a town.

  But no. On top of the various insults, frustrations, and general inconveniences and annoyances, he also had to be a glorified bureaucrat! Yet what noble work was he graciously given? Dr. Obermann squinted at the print at the top of the paper.

  "Dimensional Travel and Fertility. Schei?e!"

  He apprenticed under the greatest minds in the Third Reich. Even shook hands with Himmler himself! It was his thesis that led to the expedition to Nepal! If not for those fools and their wunderwaffe they'd have won not just Europe but the entire universe as well!

  "But nein. They wanted rockets! Dummkopfs!"

  Just goes to show that the idea of a "Master Race" is na?ve. For every race has stupid people. Some more than others, Obermann thought as he glared at Agent Smith as if his hateful gaze would cause him to combust.

  Alas. It did not. So Dr. Obermann returned to his "work". Which was, from what he could tell from the idiotic wording of these papers, was the likelihood of procreation between the locals and the newcomers.

  Which was a stupid thing for him to be researching! The agency already had this well documented! Innsmouth Syndrome has it's own section in the archives! The entire thing is based on an Eldritch entity, a being not of this dimension, or potentially any for that matter, procreating with local humans!

  He could be interrogating or dissecting those little lizards or the Eldritch spawn by now. Or at the very least getting fresh samples to study. One only knows what their DNA looks like after spending so long in the presence of the spawn. But no. He couldn't even study the mutated fish found in the river or the river water itself. They had some kinder, still an acolyte, from the Occult Division looking through them all!

  At this point it'd be more productive eating his cyanide capsule. That stupid brat wouldn't know the difference between plain river muck and the darkness of the cosmos made tangible! He could. He could write tomes from what he'd discover. But instead he's doing research on the sexual nature of creatures so driven by their base functions that they'd mate with a can opener if it looked at them!

  Every day that he is stuck in this cesspool is another day that he dreads waking up in his bed and that capsule in his fake molar is all the more tempting.