Nimlet - XERES LIVE!

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Basic Information

Full Name

Nimlet

Nickname

"Beetle"

Race (Grade)

Kobold (E)

Class

Druid

Height

2'10"

Birthday

Greenrise 27, 1275

Age

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Birthsign

The Radiant Treant

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Bloodline Ability

🔮 Unknown

This Bloodline ability has not yet been unveiled to you.

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Physical Description

Nimlet at the gate stone of the Hill Circle

Appearance

Nimlet is a lean, upright kobold with rust-red scales dappled and flecked with cream, like a leaf that has started to turn, and a pale cream throat and belly. His ear frills are tall and swept back to points, his horns are short, and his eyes are a warm amber that is always looking slightly downward, at whatever is crawling past. White spirals are painted on his cheeks and arms, and knotwork runs the length of his tail, in the manner of the druids who taught him. He wears their plaid, a dark green tartan shawl pinned at the shoulder with a silver triskele brooch over a belted kilt of the same cloth with knotwork panels, and a belt hung with leather pouches and a little bronze leaf. A tiny brass cage dangles from one ear frill, its door always open. He walks with a crooked wooden staff hung with feathers and a small lantern that has never held a candle.

Unique Characteristics

Insects listen to Nimlet, and he listens back. Bees have never once stung him. Ants step off the path to let him by, moths come to his hand instead of the lamp, and when the crickets around him go quiet all at once, he is already on his feet. There is nearly always something small riding on him: a ladybird on a horn, a moth asleep in the folds of his plaid, a beetle in a pocket. And every evening at dusk, wherever he is, the fireflies come. They settle on his horns and frills, they crowd into the brass cage at his ear, and they fill the little lantern on his staff until it glows, which is why it has never needed a candle. He has never known why they do it. They have done it since the night he was born.

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Personality & Temperament

Positive Traits

Gentle with every living thing, however small
Notices what everyone else walks straight past
Calm in a crisis; the crickets warn him early
Generous with everything he knows about the woods
Patient as a caterpillar in its cocoon

Challenging Traits

Talks to beetles more easily than to people
Takes it personally when anyone swats anything
Forgets to eat when there is an anthill to watch
Will stop a whole procession for one caterpillar
A little too pleased with himself when the fireflies come

Every bug in this wood has a job. Most of them are doing it better than we are.

Hush. The crickets just stopped. Something's out there, and they'd like us to know it.

They've come to me every dusk of my life, the fireflies, and I never knew why. Then I heard about the Duke here, and I thought: oh. There's two of us.

Likes

Dusk, when the fireflies come out
Silmarithil's law against felling living trees
Rotten logs, for everything that lives in them
Ladybirds, the gardener's best friend
Glowmorrow Sage in bloom

Dislikes

Anyone who swats first and never asks
Poison laid down for ants
Bright lamps left burning all night
Being called "the bug kobold"
Walking a path at night without looking down

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Background & History

Beetle

Nimlet was born in Burrowbough, a kobold village deep in the Geldergreen, on Greenrise 27, 1275, and like every child there he was raised by the whole village. On the night he was born, the fireflies came in through the door of the burrow and settled on the cradle, and they have come to him at dusk ever since. As a kit he came home every evening with his pockets full of beetles, so Burrowbough called him Beetle, and it stuck. Crickets sang on his windowsill, the bees in the hive oaks let him put his hands right into the hollows, and on summer evenings Bumpi found him in the cradle burrow's clearing by looking for the brightest kit there.

The Hill Circle

Nobody in Burrowbough could teach a druid. At eighteen, Nimlet walked out of the forest and into the hill country beyond it, to an old circle of druids who keep their standing stones above a loch, among stone cottages, sheep, and long low walls, and he asked them to teach him. The stone at their gate reads "Small Paths, Bright Tomorrows," and the sign in their village reads "Kind Folks, Warm Fires, Good Stories," and both turned out to be true. He stayed five years. The circle taught him the old ways of root, leaf, weather, and beast, and he quietly turned every lesson toward the small and many, until the elders gave up and let him. He came home in the circle's plaid, with the circle's spirals painted on his scales, and he has worn both ever since.

Small Work

Back in Burrowbough, Nimlet did the work nobody else noticed. He set ladybirds loose on the aphids in Vippi's gardens. He asked the weevils, politely, to leave the larders, and Vippi's sachets made sure they did. He coaxed the beetles that break down deadfall into working faster on the trees the storms brought down, and he walked the hive oaks with Nibbin, who keeps a tally of her bee stings on the inside of her hat brim and considers it deeply unfair that the bees have never stung him once.

Lights on the Trunks

On the night of Goldenleaf 26, 1307, when Kobbin began beating on the meeting hall gutter and Funzi ran through the village shouting out trees, it was very dark under the oaks. Nimlet stood in the middle of the village and called every firefly within a mile, and they came. They settled in their thousands on the trunks of the old oak, the ash by the stream, and every other tree Funzi was sending kobolds to, so that in the dark everyone could see where they were going and where to put their hands. Then he climbed into the old oak himself. He kept the fireflies on those trunks until dawn. It cost him more than he has ever told anyone, and he slept for most of the next two days.

The Kobold the Fireflies Follow

Nimlet walked out of the Geldergreen with the rest of the survivors and reached Goodberry with most of the village on Harvestide 3, 1307. He stayed long enough to settle ladybirds and beetles into the new kitchen gardens of the Burrowbough households there, and while he worked, he kept hearing about Silmarithil: a town under the old trees that takes its timber only from deadfall, keeps honey glades and mushroom cellars, lights its streets at night with glowing moss and fireflies, and dims every lantern for one summer night so that the fireflies can come in. And it was ruled by a Duke, Lucerion Emberlight, who was named for the fireflies of his island when he was born and who is almost never seen without one hovering near him. Nimlet had spent his whole life as the kobold the fireflies follow, and he had never once heard of anyone else.

A Crisp Morning

On the crisp morning of Harvestide 17, 1307, the portal to Silmarithil opened again, and Nimlet went through it a step behind Bumpi. He found a town that suits him down to the roots. Silmarithil lives by the seasons more than by clocks, it treats wasting the land as a serious wrong, it plants a sapling for every child, and it reads a great swarm of fireflies as a blessing or a sign of change. It is the first place he has ever lived where nobody thinks it strange to stop in the middle of the road and look at something small. On his first evening, the fireflies found him as they always do, and he noticed that they drift thickest of all over the Hollow Crown, where the Duke lives. He has his suspicions about why.

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Goals & Aspirations

The Night of a Thousand Lights

Every summer, Silmarithil dims its lanterns and plants its blooms to call the fireflies into town. Next summer, Nimlet means to help it call more of them than it has ever seen. He has a plan, and the plan involves a very great deal of Glowmorrow Sage, which opens only at night and which fireflies cannot resist.

Telling the Bees

Nibbin means to go back into the Geldergreen one day, tell Burrowbough's bees what happened, and bring them home to Silmarithil if they will come. Nimlet means to go with her. Beekeepers have always told the bees the news. He is the only kobold alive who can hear what the bees say back.

Two of Us

One day, Nimlet would like to ask the Duke whether the fireflies ever say anything to him, and if they do, what. He has rehearsed the question a great many times. It is a very short question. He keeps making it longer.

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Development

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Current Status & Relationships

Residence

Silmarithil

Role

Druid

From Burrowbough