Basic Information
Full Name
Jeriko
Nickname
"Riko" (Anise's name for him)
Race (Grade)
Kobold (E)
Class
Scout
Height
3'1"
Birthday
Yearend 3, 1285
Age
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Birthsign
Bloodline Ability
Unknown
This Bloodline ability has not yet been unveiled to you.
Physical Description
Jeriko, outside the house Karthos gave him
Appearance
Jeriko is small even by kobold standards, standing just over three feet with a build made for slipping through underbrush rather than standing his ground. His scales are a deep, near-black obsidian that catches green and gold at the edges of certain kinds of light, running from a low ridge of soft spines along his skull down the length of a tail that never quite stops moving. His eyes are enormous, round, and amber-gold, set in a face that reads every emotion he has almost before he's finished having it. He wears a fringed wrap of woven grass and dyed cord that Anise put together for him years ago, cinched at the waist with a patterned band, and a single jade earring in one notched ear that he has never once considered taking out.
Unique Characteristics
At his throat, on a plain cord, Jeriko wears a small green soulstone. It stays smooth and warm for as long as the kobold who enchanted it is alive, the way a kobold's gifted soulstone does, and it was warm for every year of their marriage and every year of friendship before it. For six weeks in 1306 it went cold. Then, one evening, it was warm again. He still checks it dozens of times a day, without meaning to, and it is warm every single time, and every single time he lets out a breath he did not know he was holding. His hands and feet carry the specific scarring of someone who spent a decade climbing out of places faster than he climbed into them, and he still startles hard at loud, sudden movement, in a way that has nothing to do with cowardice and everything to do with one particular night at Goodberry's gate.
Personality & Temperament
Positive Traits
- Loves Anise with total, uncomplicated devotion
- Endlessly resourceful when he has nothing else
- Warms instantly to anyone who's kind to him
- Spots trouble in a crowd before it starts
- Keeps the whare's hearth lit every night, no matter what
Challenging Traits
- Acts on excitement before he thinks it through
- Still blames himself for the gate, if less than he did
- Trusts kindness so fast it's easy to exploit
- Fusses if Anise is out of his sight after dark
- Checks the stone at his throat, though it's warm now
Anise says I get excited like a puppy who forgot it has claws. She's been saying it again since she came back. I have never been so happy to be insulted.
The house has two rooms. For a while I only used one. Now the second one is full of her weaving, and I'm not allowed in it without knocking.
Somebody has to keep the fire lit until the last story's told and the last cup's empty. Turns out I'm very good at waiting up.
Likes
- Banking the hearth after the last Story Circle ends
- Hearing Anise laugh from across a crowded room
- Small, unasked-for kindness from strangers in Rokoura
- The weight of her soulstone, warm again, at his throat
- Being handed something small and told to watch it
Dislikes
- A cold hearth, for any reason, on any night
- Being thanked for "catching" the man at the gate
- Sudden shouting, for reasons he'd rather not explain
- Being asked what dying was like for her
- Brawls that start in the whare on his watch
Background & History
Two Strangers in Brackenwall
Jeriko met Anise in Brackenwall almost ten years ago, two small kobolds who had each already learned to expect very little from the world and got a great deal more than they expected from each other instead. Neither of them could ever quite explain, even now, what made the friendship instant rather than earned. It simply was. They spent five years like that, inseparable in the loose, orbiting way close friends are before either of them called it anything else, before it settled into something neither wanted to spend another day without. They married young, the way kobolds tend to once they've found the one person they intend to keep for the rest of their life, and traded soulstones on the same afternoon, under the same tree they'd first met beside. Jeriko's has been warm at his throat ever since, apart from six terrible weeks. Hers, he assumes, has been too.
A Life Kept Moving
For most of their marriage, home was wherever hadn't found them yet. Wild kobolds make good stories for the wrong kind of adventurer, and hunting parties still occasionally treat a kobold pair as an afternoon's sport rather than two people trying to live somewhere quietly. Jeriko and Anise got very good at reading a town before the town read them, and better still at leaving before it mattered. It wasn't a hard life so much as a light one; they owned little enough that packing it never took more than a few minutes. When word reached them of Goodberry, a city with a reputation for actually meaning it when it said outsiders were welcome, they decided to stop testing that theory from a distance and simply go see for themselves.
The Signal Given Too Soon
They arrived in Goodberry with nothing and settled into Tent City the way most newcomers without coin or trade do, resourceful in the specific way people are when resourcefulness is the only option left. It was there that Karthos, then a name more than a man to them, found Jeriko with an offer: watch for a bald, bearded stranger passing through, report it the moment he was seen, and a house of their own in Rokoura would be waiting. It sounded, to a fugitive kobold who had never owned four walls in his life, like the easiest promise he would ever be asked to keep.
He kept it wrong. When the bald man finally appeared, Jeriko's nerve broke a few seconds too early, he signaled the guards before they were in position, and those few seconds were enough. The stranger saw them coming and turned the encounter into a fight before it had properly started. Anise was dead before Jeriko understood what was happening. He remembers very little of what came after in any order that makes sense: a dagger, the ground, Anise's name coming out of his own mouth over and over, and then very little at all.
He kept it wrong. When the bald man finally appeared, Jeriko's nerve broke a few seconds too early, he signaled the guards before they were in position, and those few seconds were enough. The stranger saw them coming and turned the encounter into a fight before it had properly started. Anise was dead before Jeriko understood what was happening. He remembers very little of what came after in any order that makes sense: a dagger, the ground, Anise's name coming out of his own mouth over and over, and then very little at all.
Ash Enough to Choke a City
The bald man didn't stop at the two of them. Before that night of Sunspeak 23, 1306 was through, he had set fire to Goodberry itself, and the city spent the weeks that followed putting itself back together, board by board, street by street. Jeriko was not conscious for most of it. Vasilios Stormwind was the first to reach him, but it was Arties Geodegazer who arrived in time to matter, and whatever she did that night is the only reason there is a Jeriko left to grieve at all. He does not remember her arriving. He remembers waking up and finding out, in the same conversation, that he had lived and Anise hadn't.
A House With One Room Too Many
Karthos kept his word regardless of how badly the night had gone, and once Jeriko was well enough to travel, he was given the small house in Rokoura that had been promised, two rooms, sound walls, a door that locked, more space and more permanence than he had owned in his entire life up to that point. It should have felt like winning something. Instead it felt like being handed a life-sized version of the empty half of a soulstone. Jeriko slept in it. He ate in it, when he remembered to. He did not spend much time in it otherwise, because a house built for two people holding only one shows its math too plainly, and he found it easier to sit out on the front step until long after dark, keeping watch over nothing in particular.
The Second Pulse (Goldenleaf 7, 1306)
Jeriko was sitting on that front step on the evening of Goldenleaf 7, 1306, the way he did every evening, when the stone at his throat went warm. He thought at first that he had imagined it. Then he thought he was finally losing his mind. Then he understood, all at once, what a soulstone going warm can only ever mean, and he was running for the portal road to Goodberry before he had decided to stand up. The wave that would come to be called the Second Pulse had gone out from the ruin of Goodberry and across Haven, and wherever it passed, the dead it found came back. He found Anise in Goodberry that same night, wrapped in a borrowed blanket, thoroughly confused, entirely herself, and asking why everyone around her kept crying. Jeriko did not stop crying for most of the next day. Anise, true to form, told him he was getting her blanket wet.
Keeper of the Shared Hearth
Anise came home with him to Rokoura, and the house with one room too many finally made sense: she filled the second room with her weaving, and the front step went back to being a place to sit together rather than a place to wait. Jeriko found his work not long after. When Rokoura raised the Ahi Tahi Whare on the edge of the Market Coast, it needed keepers, because the whare belongs to no single family and its sunken hearth must be lit every night no matter who comes to sit beside it. A kobold who had spent weeks unable to go to bed before the small hours turned out to be exactly the right person to keep a fire burning until the last story was told. He started by tending the hearth, then pouring at the long driftwood bar, then closing up, and before long the whare's other keepers simply counted him as one of their own. He is its tavern keeper now, most nights, and his old lookout's instincts have found the best use they have ever had: he can tell when a table is about to turn into a brawl a good minute before anyone at it does, and he has usually walked over with a fresh round and a change of subject before it gets there.
Goals & Aspirations
Keeping the Fire Lit
For years Jeriko wanted something to watch over, and now he has a whole room full of people around a fire every night. He wants the Ahi Tahi Whare to be the warmest place on the coast: the place a stranger walks into on their first night in Rokoura and leaves feeling like a neighbor. He has started keeping a small slate behind the bar with the names of newcomers, so that the next time they come in, someone will already know them. He has never once let the hearth go out on his watch, and he does not intend to start.
Every Day She's Here
Jeriko and Anise spent most of their marriage packing up and moving on before anywhere could find them. He does not want to move on ever again. His plans are small and he likes them that way: a door that locks, a garden that Anise picks, a front step to sit on together, and a young tree planted beside the house, so that one day they will have their own tree to sit under, like the one in Brackenwall where they met and traded soulstones.
Never Too Soon Again
Jeriko knows exactly what it cost when he gave the signal at the gate a few seconds too soon, and getting Anise back has not erased that. He is working, deliberately, on the habit that caused it. Behind the bar, he practices waiting: reading a room fully before he moves, letting a tense moment breathe before he steps in, counting to three before he acts on anything that makes his heart race. Anise says it is the most patient she has ever seen him. He says he has a very good reason to learn.
Development
Current Status & Relationships
Residence
Role
Tavern Keeper
Spouse
Allies
ATTENTION!
Jeriko keeps the hearth and the bar at the Ahi Tahi Whare most nights, and nothing much gets past him there: if he quietly suggests you call it a night, there is a reason, and it is usually the table behind you. He still reacts fast and trusts kindness faster, and he still carries guilt over the signal he gave a few seconds too soon at Goodberry's gate. His wife Anise was killed that night and returned in the Second Pulse; please do not ask either of them what dying was like. And do not ask him to "keep watch" on anything unless you mean it. He will take it more seriously than you did.