Chibbit - XERES LIVE!

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Basic Information

Full Name

Chibbit

Nickname

"Miss Chibbit"

Race (Grade)

Kobold (F)

Class

Toymaker

Height

2'9"

Birthday

Rainsong 9, 1276

Age

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Birthsign

The Bloom Nymph

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Bloodline Ability

🔮 Unknown

This Bloodline ability has not yet been unveiled to you.

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Physical Description

Chibbit outside the Whimsy Nook, with the first red dragon

Appearance

Chibbit is a slight kobold with bright pink scales that pale to cream along her throat, belly, and the underside of her long, spined tail, and a shaggy mane of magenta hair that she ties back with whatever ribbon is nearest and that never stays tied for long. Her eyes are large and the same deep magenta, her ear frills are wide and pointed, and she is almost always smiling, or about to. She dresses like someone who sits on the floor with children for a living: a cream blouse with the sleeves rolled, a pink skirt with a lace hem that has seen better days, and a heavy brown leather work apron with a rabbit stitched on the bib and every pocket bristling with carving knives, gouges, awls, and paintbrushes. A little wooden star and a wooden pony hang from her belt on cords, and a small red wooden dragon on wheels rides in her apron pocket wherever she goes.

Unique Characteristics

No toy leaves Chibbit's shop without a name. Her daughter Tilli named every toy she was ever given, and Chibbit cannot bring herself to let one go out the door nameless: if the child has a name ready, she writes it on the bottom in tiny letters, and if not, they sit on the floor together until they find one. She can carve almost anything a child can describe, and has carved a few things that only exist in children's descriptions. She works only in wood that nobody cut down. In the Geldergreen that meant windfall, and in Rokoura it means driftwood, which the sea brings in smooth and silver, and which she says carves kinder than anything she has ever worked.

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Personality & Temperament

Positive Traits

Can carve any toy a child can describe
Patient and gentle with every child who walks in
Cheerful, chatty, and quick to laugh
Turns her grief into something a child can hold
Generous to a fault with her time and her stock

Challenging Traits

Will not sell the first red dragon, at any price
Gives away more toys than she sells
Goes very quiet around little girls of about five
Works by lamplight long after she should be asleep
Cannot leave a broken toy alone, whoever owns it

Every toy needs a name before it goes out that door. What shall we call this one? Oh, that's a good one. She'd have liked that.

That's a dragon on wheels. My Tilli had the very first one. She pulled it everywhere, and it went clack, clack, clack all over Burrowbough.

Small toys, big adventures. That's all a toy is for, really: somewhere for a child to put the big things.

Likes

Driftwood that still smells of the sea
The clack of a dragon on wheels over cobblestones
Children who name a toy the moment they see it
Bright paint, pink most of all
Muffit's muffins, eaten at the workbench

Dislikes

Toys bought for children and kept on a high shelf
Being told it is time she moved on
Winter fevers
Green wood that splits as it dries
Anyone who calls toys a waste of good timber

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Background & History

Shavings in Her Hair

Chibbit was born in Burrowbough, a kobold village deep in the Geldergreen, on Rainsong 9, 1276, and spent her days as a kit in the cradle burrow with Bumpi, who still remembers that she arrived every morning with wood shavings in her hair. She whittled before she could read, using a dull knife and whatever the woodworkers swept off their floors, and she made toys from the start: a bird, a mushroom, a lopsided bear. By fifteen, every kit in the cradle burrow had something she had made, and Bumpi kept a basket of her toys by the door for the days when nothing else would do.

Tilli

Chibbit's daughter Tilli was born in Greenrise of 1297, and from the moment she could hold anything she held her mother's toys. She loved all of them and named every one, but she had favorites: a little red dragon on wheels that went clack, clack, clack across the floorboards, a duck that pulled along on a string, a rag rabbit with button eyes, a rocking horse, a set of stacking blocks painted with hearts and stars, and a pinwheel she would only spin in the rain. The dragon was the first and the best, and she pulled it everywhere she went.

The Winter of 1302

In Frostnight of 1302, a winter fever came through Burrowbough, and Tilli, who was five, did not get better. Chibbit did not carve for most of a year afterward. Then a kit in the cradle burrow asked Bumpi whether there could ever be another dragon like Tilli's, and Bumpi went and asked Chibbit. She made one. It was the first thing she had made since the winter, and she found, to her own surprise, that making Tilli's toys for other children was the one thing that did not hurt. She has been making them ever since.

The Ash by the Stream

For the week before Funzi's life-pairing feast, Chibbit had been carving a little toy for every child who would be there, and on the night of Goldenleaf 26, 1307, her apron pockets were full of them. When Kobbin began beating on the meeting hall gutter, she ran for the ash by the stream, where Vippi was already climbing with an armful of the smallest children. Chibbit spent the rest of the night going from branch to branch, giving every frightened child in that tree a toy and telling them its name, until her pockets were empty. Her workshop burned with everything in it. The first red dragon, Tilli's dragon, was in her apron, and it is the one thing from that workshop she still has.

The Driftwood Shore

Chibbit walked into Rokoura on Harvestide 10, 1307, the day after Kuzzi. Most of Burrowbough had gone to Goodberry, but Funzi had been writing letters from the coast, and the letters said that Rokoura was full of carvers, that its children spent their days on the beach and in the palm-shaded commons, and that every morning the tide left driftwood all along the Great Shore that nobody had ever cut from a living tree. Chibbit has never wanted to cut down a tree to make a toy. Rokoura's law asks that the sea, the land, and the forest all be taken from with care, which suited her down to the ground. Every morning at low tide she walks the Ākau Nui with a sack over her shoulder and brings home the best of whatever the sea has left.

Chibbit's Whimsy Nook

Within a week she had a shop at the end of the Tātahi Market Coast nearest the Rā Palm Commons, where the children play: Chibbit's Whimsy Nook, "Handmade Wonders for Brighter Days," under a woven roof that Funzi talked half the Market Coast into helping her raise, with shelves full to the rafters with dolls, soldiers, horses, bears, stars, and wooden dragons. Its heart is the shelf by the counter that she calls Tilli's Shelf, where all of Tilli's favorites sit in every size, made again and again. She sells all of them, except one, to any child who wants one. Any child who has lost someone gets one free, and Chibbit does not ask who.

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Goals & Aspirations

Tilli's Shelf

As long as children somewhere are pulling a red dragon on wheels across the floor and naming their rabbits, Tilli's toys are still being played with, and that is the closest thing to keeping her that Chibbit has found. She means to keep that shelf full for the rest of her life.

A Toy for Every Child

Every child in Rokoura should have at least one toy that is theirs and nobody else's, and every child of Burrowbough, who lost everything they owned in a single night, should have two. She is keeping a list. It is shorter than it was.

The Feast Favors

Funzi still means to hold the life-pairing feast that never happened, and Chibbit has told her that she will carve the favors again: a little toy for every child who comes, each with a name. She has already started. She is making them a few at a time, in between everything else, and keeping them in a box under the counter that nobody is allowed to open.

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Development

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Current Status & Relationships

Residence

Rokoura

Role

Toymaker

From Burrowbough