Kroppi - XERES LIVE!

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Basic Information

Full Name

Kroppi

Nickname

"Sticky"

Race (Grade)

Kobold (E)

Class

Rogue

Height

2'10"

Birthday

Mistfall 11, 1281

Age

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Birthsign

The Mist Chimera

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Bloodline Ability

🔮 Unknown

This Bloodline ability has not yet been unveiled to you.

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Physical Description

Kroppi on the rooftops of a big-folk town at the edge of the Geldergreen

Appearance

Kroppi is a wiry, ash-grey kobold whose scales darken to a mottled charcoal along his back and the spined ridge of his long tail, and pale to a dusty cream at his throat and belly. His ear frills are wide, webbed, and a soft salmon pink that he would very much prefer you did not mention, and his eyes are huge and amber-brown, which ruins most of his attempts to look dangerous. He works hard at it anyway. He wears a hooded cloak of dark leather that has been torn and restitched so many times it is mostly stitches, a dark red scarf he pulls up over his snout when he is working, buckled leather armor, bracers, and shin wraps, and a belt hung with pouches and a brass pocket watch that stopped years ago and that he keeps because it is shiny. Two curved daggers with engraved blades ride at his hips. He found them, he says. Nobody has ever pressed the point.

Unique Characteristics

Kroppi lives by four rules, which he learned on the streets and counts off on his claws when he is thinking, because otherwise he forgets them: look mean, know two ways out, never take from anybody who can't spare it, and never get caught. He keeps the first three very well. He has broken the fourth more than once, and he has broken all four at once every time someone small was in trouble, without ever noticing that he was doing it. He also tells anyone who looks at him too long about the man he killed in the big-folk towns. The story is different every time: the size of the man, the weapon, the town, and, on one occasion, the man's species. Kroppi has never killed anybody.

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Personality & Temperament

Positive Traits

Knows every back way, rooftop, and bolt-hole in town
Gives away nearly everything he steals
Never takes from anyone who cannot spare it
Can smell trouble coming from a street away
Fiercely protective of anyone small or alone

Challenging Traits

Steals constantly and sees nothing wrong with it
Growls at kindness until he is sure of it
Runs from any fight he cannot win, and says so
Cannot keep his own lies straight
No good with letters, sums, or plans past tomorrow

What're you looking at? Keep walking. I killed a man once. Big one. With a... with a spoon. Keep walking.

Rule one, look mean. Rule two, know two ways out. Rule three... hang on. Rule three's the good one. I'll get it.

I never left nothing on your step. Somebody else did. Probably a ghost. Eat it before it goes off.

Likes

Rooftops, the higher the better
Warm sand, with a wall at his back
Traders who overcharge, because they make easy marks
Stray animals, every one of which he calls Dog
Kūmara straight out of the fire pit

Dislikes

Being thanked
Anyone who shoves around somebody smaller
Pexxi asking where the food came from
Reading anything longer than a sign
Kuzzi's bombs, at any distance

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Background & History

Sticky

Kroppi was born in Burrowbough, a kobold village deep in the Geldergreen, on Mistfall 11, 1281. As a kit in the cradle burrow, things stuck to his fingers: spoons, buttons, other kits' acorns, and once one of Bumpi's slippers while she was wearing it. Burrowbough thought this was very funny and called him Sticky. Nothing in Burrowbough was ever locked and nobody ever minded, so he could never quite work out what the point of it was, and he gave everything back by suppertime. He was not much good at lessons. He learned his letters, as every kit in Burrowbough does, but slowly, with his lips moving, and he could never sit still long enough to learn a trade. The village decided, kindly, that he was good at climbing, good at hiding, and very good at being somewhere else when there was work to do.

The Big-Folk Towns

At sixteen, Kroppi rode out with a trader carrying Burrowbough's goods to the big-folk towns at the edge of the forest, and when the cart came home, he was not on it. He was robbed of everything he owned in his first week, boots included. Nobody in the towns thought he was funny, and nobody gave anything back by suppertime. He learned the streets the hard way, one lesson at a time, and he turned each lesson into a rule, because he could remember rules: look mean, know two ways out, never get caught. He spent ten years on those rooftops. Every so often he walked home to Burrowbough with presents for everyone, and nobody in the village ever quite asked where they came from.

Rule Three

In his first winter in the towns, Kroppi was the one who could not protect himself. A washerwoman with four children and no husband found him half frozen in her woodshed and, instead of chasing him off, fed him: a bowl of whatever there was, every night until the thaw, out of a pot that was never quite big enough for the five of them already. In the spring her landlord put her and the children out on the street, and Kroppi, who was small and nobody, could do nothing about it. He never learned her name. That was when he made his third rule. He began stealing from people who could spare it and leaving it on the steps of people who could not: widows, mothers on their own, children with nobody, and every stray and lame animal in the alleys. He never left a note. He growled at anyone who caught him at it, and if they asked him anything, he told them he had killed a man.

First Up the Tree

Kroppi came home for Funzi's life-pairing feast, because all of Burrowbough was invited and because Funzi had written to him herself. On the night of Goldenleaf 26, 1307, when Kobbin began beating on the meeting hall gutter, Kroppi was at the top of the tallest pine at the edge of the village before the second beat. He is not ashamed of that. Staying alive is the thing he is best at, and he will tell you so. What he does not tell you is the rest of the night: hanging head-down from the lowest branch by his tail, hauling up every kobold who reached the trunk, and twice dropping down among the dead to fetch a kit who had frozen on the ground. The ones he pulled up have told everyone. Kroppi says they are confused.

Behind the Back of the Column

When the survivors walked out of the Geldergreen into the big-folk towns, they walked into Kroppi's streets. He knew which boarding houses were honest and which were cheap for a reason, and he told Funzi before she paid for any of them. He knew which streets not to walk after dark, which shopkeepers would sell to a kobold at a fair price, and which would call the watch instead. Jozub read the contracts aloud, Pexxi stood guard at the back of the column, and Kroppi walked behind Pexxi, where she could not see him, making sure that nothing followed them that should not. Every few nights, food turned up wherever the survivors were sleeping: bread, cheese, and once a ham bigger than Kroppi that he had to roll most of the way. Nobody saw who brought it. Everybody knew.

The Beach

Kroppi reached Rokoura on Harvestide 5, 1307, two days behind Funzi. He picked it for three reasons, and he will give you all three: it is warm, nobody can sneak up on you across a beach, and somebody had to keep an eye on Funzi. He did not tell her he was coming, and he has still not told her that was why. Rokoura, he soon found, is a very hard place to be a thief. Its law says that none are left to fall, its Shared Hearth feeds anyone who sits down, and the grandmothers of the Rā Palm Commons keep trying to feed him. He has had to look much harder for people who need things, and he has found them anyway: newcomers who arrive with nothing, the children of visiting sailors left waiting on the shore, gulls with bad wings, and a scruffy three-legged cat on the Market Coast that he calls Dog. He steals only from the visiting traders on the Tātahi Market Coast, and only from the ones who overcharge. The Kaitiaki Wardens' Shore Watch has begun to notice that what goes missing from those stalls turns up on doorsteps in the Rā Palm Commons. They have not caught him yet. Rule four.

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Goals & Aspirations

Nobody Small Goes Without

As long as there is a child, a woman on her own, or an animal anywhere in Rokoura going without, Kroppi has work to do. He would not call it a goal. He would call it a habit, and then he would tell you to mind your own business.

The Meanest Kobold in Rokoura

Kroppi means to go on being the meanest kobold in Rokoura, so that people keep their distance and nobody looks too closely at where the food comes from. It is going badly. Funzi hugs him in public, the grandmothers of the Rā Palm Commons call him "little one," and the three-legged cat follows him everywhere.

The Washerwoman

One day Kroppi means to go back to the big-folk town where he spent his first winter, find the washerwoman and her four children, wherever they ended up, and leave something on their step big enough to make up for that winter. He does not know where they went. He never learned her name, and that is the one thing in his life he will admit to being sorry for.

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Development

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Current Status & Relationships

Residence

Rokoura

Role

Rogue

From Burrowbough