Skobble - XERES LIVE!

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Basic Information

Full Name

Skobble

Nickname

"Nugget"

Race (Grade)

Kobold (F)

Class

Miner

Height

3'2"

Birthday

Heatwave 8, 1283

Age

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Birthsign

The Sunscale Wyrm

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Bloodline Ability

🔮 Unknown

This Bloodline ability has not yet been unveiled to you.

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Physical Description

Skobble and Tink, deep in a crystal seam

Appearance

Skobble is a stocky kobold a little over three feet tall, broad through the shoulders and arms the way only years of swinging a pick can make a kobold. His scales are a deep brick red that darkens to crimson along his forearms, shins, and tail, with a tan snout and throat and a row of short, sharp spines down the length of his tail. Red spiky frills fan out behind his jaw, and two dark curved horns poke out through holes he cut himself in a battered leather miner's helmet, which carries a brass headlamp fitted with a glowing crystal lens. His eyes are big, round, and amber, and they light up at the sight of a good seam the way other people's light up at a meal. He dresses like what he is: a heavy canvas shirt under a leather harness of crossed straps and buckles, a belt hung with sample pouches, a red bandana knotted at his throat against the dust, patched work trousers, and wrapped leather boots with reinforced toes. A small brass lantern usually hangs from one hand. Over his shoulder, always, is Tink.

Unique Characteristics

Tink is Skobble's pickaxe, and it is the most important thing in his life. It has a steel head with a smith's mark stamped near the eye, a long ash handle that has worn smooth and dark to the exact shape of his grip, and an edge so carefully kept that it catches the light even underground. Skobble bought Tink brand new, with his own saved money, and he will tell you so within a minute of meeting you. He cleans and oils the head every night before he sleeps and touches the handle for luck before every swing. Beyond Tink, he is a miner through and through. He sniffs at rock faces, licks his claws after touching a fresh break to taste what is in it, and claims, with complete sincerity, that every ore has its own smell. He hums under his breath to the rhythm of his swing, and when he is happy, which is most of the time he is underground, the frills behind his jaw rattle softly.

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Personality & Temperament

Positive Traits

Hard worker who never shirks the narrow seams
Proud of his tools and keeps them spotless
Saves his money with remarkable discipline
Knows bad air and loose rock before anyone
Cheerful and steady, especially underground

Challenging Traits

Brings up the pickaxe in nearly every conversation
Will not let anyone else touch Tink, ever
Stubbornly thrifty, even when he should not be
Restless and grumpy after too long in daylight
Judges people by how well they keep their tools

Fourteen months. One gold a month, and half of it went home. Brand new. Nobody ever owned Tink before me, and nobody ever will.

Big folk listen to the rock with their ears. You've got to listen with your nose. Iron smells like rain on a cookpot. Silver smells like nothing at all, which is how you know.

Miss Traken says a crew is only as safe as its worst-kept tool. Then she looked at Tink and hired me on the spot. Look at that edge.

Likes

The ring of a clean strike on a good seam
Oiling Tink's head before bed every night
A fat coin purse that he has no plans to spend
The glitter of a crystal pocket in lamplight
Tunnels exactly big enough for a kobold

Dislikes

Anyone touching Tink without asking first
Rusted, dull, or abused tools of any kind
Hand-me-down anything, on principle
Bosses who pay kobolds less for the same work
Wide open sky with nothing over his head

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Background & History

The Digger of Burrowbough

Skobble was born in Burrowbough, a kobold village deep in the Geldergreen whose homes began as burrows among the roots of its old oaks before they climbed into the branches. Somebody had to dig those burrows, and from the time he could hold a trowel, that somebody was Skobble. He dug new family burrows, widened the root tunnels, deepened the village well, and cut new rooms for Gribblit's mushroom cellars and Jozub's ink workshop. He did all of it with tools that had belonged to someone else first. Everything in Burrowbough was secondhand, traded in from big-folk villages as castoffs: picks with cracked handles, shovels with chipped blades, a trowel that had been mended so many times nobody remembered what it was originally made of. Skobble did not mind the work. He minded the tools. He wanted, more than anything, to own one thing that had never been anybody else's.

A Pick of His Own

At eighteen, Skobble walked to a human-run iron mine at the southern edge of the Geldergreen and hired on as what the miners there called a seam rat: a kobold small enough to crawl the narrow seams that no full-sized miner could fit into. He was paid one gold a month, a third of what the human miners earned for less dangerous work, and he slept in the tool shed to save the cost of a bunk. He sent half of every month's pay home to Burrowbough and saved the rest, coin by coin, in a sock he kept inside his shirt. It took him fourteen months. When he finally walked into the mine town's smithy and counted out twelve gold on the counter for a brand new pickaxe, steel head and ash handle, the smith's mark still fresh on the metal, the smith asked him who he was buying it for. Skobble said it was for himself. He named it Tink, for the sound it made on its first strike, and he has never let it out of his reach since.

Climbing With Tink

Skobble was home in Burrowbough between contracts on the night of Goldenleaf 26, 1307, when Kobbin's hammering on the meeting hall gutter woke the village and the dead came through the trees. Skobble grabbed exactly one thing, and it was Tink. He sank the pick into the bark of the nearest oak and used it to haul himself up, swing by swing, then hung from a branch with his tail and reached the handle down so that the kobolds below him could grab it and be pulled up too. He lost count of how many came up that way. By dawn the skin of both his palms had torn open from the grip, and Tubbin bandaged his hands in the branches while he kept Tink clamped under one arm. He likes to say that Tink saved more lives that night than he did. He is wrong, but it is the closest he comes to admitting what he did.

Haven's Mine

When the survivors turned toward Haven, Skobble asked only one question: did Goodberry have a mine? It did, and a large one, dozens of veins deep beneath the city, worked by more than a hundred miners. He went there the morning after he arrived, before he had found a bed, and walked up to the check-in station at the mine's timber entrance with Tink on his shoulder. The foreman, Helen Traken, is a woman who believes a miner tells you everything you need to know about himself by the way he keeps his tools. She looked at Skobble, then took a long look at Tink, and then put him on her crew for the narrow work that afternoon. He is paid exactly what every other miner on the crew is paid. He has checked twice, and he is still not entirely used to it.

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Goals & Aspirations

A New Pick for Every Kobold

Now that he is earning a fair wage, Skobble has a new savings goal, and it is much bigger than the last one. He wants every kobold from Burrowbough who goes to work in Haven to start with at least one brand new tool that has never belonged to anyone else: a pick, a hammer, a trowel, a needle, whatever their trade needs. He has already worked out the cost for every survivor on Jozub's Roll, tool by tool, and he keeps the figure written inside his helmet. It will take him years. He has done this before.

Learning Every Vein

Goodberry's mine is bigger than anything Skobble has ever worked, and he intends to know all of it: every vein, every seam, every place where the rock runs thin or the air goes bad. He spends his breaks walking tunnels he is not assigned to, sniffing at the walls and making notes in a chalk shorthand that only he and Jozub can read. Miss Traken has noticed and has not stopped him. He thinks this means she approves. She is still deciding.

His Own Vein

Every miner dreams of opening a vein, and Skobble is no different, except that he is convinced he can smell where the next one is before anyone breaks ground. When the mine next opens new tunnels, he wants to be the one who calls where to dig, and he wants Tink to make the first strike. He has not decided what he will name the vein. He has a list.

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Development

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Current Status & Relationships

Residence

Goodberry

Role

Miner

The Goodberry Mine

Helen Traken

Foreman

From Burrowbough