Ibin - XERES LIVE!

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Basic Information

Full Name

Ibin

Nickname

"Dash"

Race (Grade)

Kobold (F)

Class

Courier

Height

3'0"

Birthday

Rainsong 20, 1283

Age

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Birthsign

The Stormrider Pegasus

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Bloodline Ability

🔮 Unknown

This Bloodline ability has not yet been unveiled to you.

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Physical Description

Ibin outside a courier's office, with a letter that is not his to read

Appearance

Ibin is a wiry kobold exactly three feet tall, built for running and very seldom seen doing anything else. His scales are a bright sea-green that pales to cream along his snout, throat, and belly, two long horns sweep back from his brow with a row of shorter spikes between them, and his wide ear frills are a pale peach, thin enough to glow when the sun is behind him. His eyes are big and gold, and his grin shows every one of his teeth, which is a great many. He dresses like a courier who has seen a picture of one: a cream shirt, a brown leather vest edged in gilt braid with an embroidered badge stitched onto one shoulder, a navy-blue scarf, and a long navy coat-skirt that flaps when he runs. A leather satchel with a brass buckle rides on his hip, never more than a claw's reach away, and he carries a red leather scroll case capped in brass with a little brass star set into its side. There is almost always a letter in his other hand. He has never once opened one that was not addressed to him.

Unique Characteristics

Ibin remembers people by where they live. He will forget your name within the hour, but he will never forget your door, and he greets everyone he knows by their address, cheerfully and at full volume: "Morning, Third Perch, Greenbottle Rise!" He knew every burrow and perch in Burrowbough before he was ten, and by his second day in Silmarithil he had learned a frankly unsettling number of its doors. He does not walk. He trots everywhere, even when nothing is urgent, and when something is urgent he simply disappears. He always puts a letter directly into its owner's hand, never on a step or under a door, and then he waits, bouncing a little, to watch their face while they read it. He says it is the best part of the job. If the news is good, he will be delighted for you. If it is bad, he will already know from the way you hold the paper, and he will stay.

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Personality & Temperament

Positive Traits

Utterly trustworthy with anything you give him
Fast, tireless, and never late with a delivery
Remembers every door he has ever knocked on
Friendly, curious, and eager to see everything
Stays with people when the news is bad

Challenging Traits

Cannot sit still for longer than a short meal
Forgets names, even of people he likes
Shouts addresses across crowded streets
Takes any delay as a personal insult
Dreams of the road while he is still on one

I don't read them. I never read them. A letter's a promise between two people, and I'm just the bit in the middle with legs.

The owls are very good. I respect the owls. But an owl can't climb into your perch, and an owl can't wait while you write back, so.

That night I ran tree to tree telling mothers where their children were. Some of them I got to tell good news. The rest I told anyway. Somebody had to carry it.

Likes

A satchel full of letters and a long road ahead
Watching someone's face as they read good news
Maps, especially the edges where they run out
Canopy walkways that never touch the ground
Being the first person to tell anybody anything

Dislikes

Letters with no address, or a smudged one
Being asked what is in somebody else's post
Doors with no one home at all
Standing still while other people decide things
Carrying news he knows will break someone

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Background & History

The Runner of Burrowbough

Ibin was born in Burrowbough, a kobold village deep in the Geldergreen, on Rainsong 20, 1283, and like every child there he was raised by the whole village. In a village that lived half in its burrows and half up its trees, somebody always needed something carried: supper's ready, the roof crew needs rope, your aunt wants you home. From the age of five, that somebody was Ibin. By ten he knew every burrow and every perch in Burrowbough by heart and could run the whole village end to end along the branches without once touching the ground. By sixteen he was carrying the village's business out of the forest altogether, to the big-folk towns at the Geldergreen's edge: order lists for the traders, letters for the farms that bought Burrowbough's mushrooms, and messages for anyone who needed one carried. He takes no responsibility for what came back in the traders' crates, and especially not for Kuzzi's book.

One Thumb's Width

On one of those trips, when he was seventeen, Ibin traded a peddler two months of his wages for a big-folk map of the world. It was old, creased, and almost certainly wrong in places, and he pinned it to the wall of his burrow and spent every evening for the next eight years looking at it. Burrowbough was not on it. The forest was, a great green smudge with nothing written inside it, and the road he walked to the edge towns was about the width of his thumb. Everything else was out there: mountains, deserts, a sea, cities with names he practiced saying out loud. He had never been further than the third town down the forest road. He told everybody, often, that one day he was going to carry a letter to every single place on that map. Everybody smiled at him, kindly, the way you smile at a child.

Tree to Tree

On the night of Goldenleaf 26, 1307, when Kobbin's alarm rang out and the village scattered up the nearest trunks, families went up wherever they could reach, and in the dark nobody knew who had made it into which tree. Ibin did not stay in his. He spent the whole night running the high branches from crown to crown, where the dead could not follow, carrying word: your children are in the old oak, your father is in the ash by the stream, your sister is safe two trees over. He carried the other kind of news too, when he had it, because somebody had to. By the time the sun came up, every family in Burrowbough already knew who was in the branches and who was not, and when Funzi climbed down to count the survivors out of the trees by name, she found that most of the counting was already done.

Faster Than Walking

In the big-folk towns at the forest's edge, Burrowbough's survivors ended up scattered across three different towns, in whatever rooms Funzi could find for them, and Ibin spent that week running between all three with messages: who needed what, who had found work, whose wounds Tubbin needed to see. So when Kobbin first heard about Haven in a baker's kitchen, a kingdom where kobolds are welcomed, hired, and paid, the word spread among the stranded kobolds faster than any of them could walk, because Ibin ran it. He reached every kobold from Burrowbough in every town within a day and a half. He does not remember sleeping that week. He remembers the faces when he told them.

The Burrowbough Post

Once the survivors had split between Goodberry, Silmarithil, and Rokoura, somebody had to carry the letters between them, and Funzi, who writes to everyone every few days, made sure everybody knew it was Ibin. For his first week in Haven he did nothing but run the portal roads between the three towns with a satchel full of Funzi's letters and Jozub's very long answers. He saw the sea for exactly as long as it took to hand Funzi a letter. He also carried the letter that ended with Kuzzi moving to the coast, and he has not yet decided whether to be proud of that. When the time came to choose a home of his own, he chose Silmarithil, because its people have strung its trees together with canopy walkways and lantern bridges, and it is the only town he has ever seen besides Burrowbough that a courier can run end to end without touching the ground. He moved in on Harvestide 10, 1307. Muffit had his muffin waiting.

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Goals & Aspirations

Faster Than the Owls

Silmarithil sends its letters by owl, from roosts high in the Ancient Heart, and Ibin regards the owls as respected colleagues and, privately, as rivals. An owl cannot carry a parcel, climb into a perch, or wait while somebody writes an answer, and Ibin can do all three, faster. He means to know every door in Silmarithil by the end of the month, from the Hollow Crown to the last ranger's lodge on the Outer Trails, and to get anything from anyone to anyone else in the town before the person who sent it has finished their tea. He keeps a list of his times. He has not shown it to the owls.

The Kobold Express

Plenty of Burrowbough's survivors still need work, and Ibin has noticed that small folk make better couriers than big folk: they climb, they fit through gaps, and nobody looks twice at a kobold running down the street with a satchel. He wants to start a courier service run by kobolds, with runners in Goodberry, Silmarithil, and Rokoura carrying anything anywhere, and he has already painted the sign. It says KOBOLD EXPRESS. He has not yet worked out who will pay for any of it, but he has heard that Goodberry runs a messenger service of its own between the cities, and he intends to ask, very politely, whether it would like some help.

Every Place on the Map

Ibin's map burned with Burrowbough. He bought a new one in Goodberry with his first wages, and this one has Haven on it, and the portal roads, and more of the world than the old one ever did. He has started marking it. Burrowbough is there, with a small circle drawn very gently around it, then the three towns at the forest's edge, then Goodberry, Silmarithil, and Rokoura. Goodberry's portals open onto cities he has only heard of, Bannon and Kristofferson and Stoneharbor, and he means to carry a letter through every one of them. After that there are deserts, mountains, and the far side of the sea. He is still going to carry a letter to every place on the map. Nobody smiles at him the old way about it anymore.

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Development

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Current Status & Relationships

Residence

Silmarithil

Role

Courier

From Burrowbough