Trubbo - XERES LIVE!

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Basic Information

Full Name

Trubbo

Nickname

"Anchor"

Race (Grade)

Kobold (E)

Class

Monk

Height

2'8"

Birthday

Stormhowl 7, 1279

Age

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Birthsign

The Stormghast

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Bloodline Ability

🔮 Unknown

This Bloodline ability has not yet been unveiled to you.

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Physical Description

Trubbo training in the courtyard of the Falling Water Temple

Appearance

Trubbo is a small, compact kobold about two foot eight, and nothing about the size of him prepares anyone for what he can do. His scales are a deep moss green, mottled darker across his back and shoulders and fading to pale cream on his throat and belly, and two curved brown horns sweep back from his brow above a fringe of short, spiked frills. His eyes are large, green, and very calm. He is lean rather than muscular, and he moves with an economy that is unsettling to watch: nothing wasted, nothing hurried, and every step landing exactly where he meant it to. He dresses as he did at the temple, in a sleeveless cream robe worn ragged at the hems, loose brown trousers gathered at the shin, and a red sash knotted at the hip. His forearms, hands, and shins are wrapped in linen, his feet are bare, and a long string of dark wooden prayer beads hangs from his neck, ending in a worn bronze disc stamped with the temple's sign.

Unique Characteristics

Trubbo is much stronger than he has any right to be. He can hold a stance on one foot while a grown human leans on him with all their weight, he can break a roof beam with the side of his hand, and he once carried a well-fed friend up the trunk of a beech tree without using his arms for more than balance. He does not show any of this off. He rises an hour before dawn every day to train, eats one bowl of plain grain a day and nothing else, never drinks, and says very little, slowly, as if every word cost him something and he wanted to be sure it was worth it. His one great weakness is Noopa, who brings him a second bowl every evening. He eats exactly one spoonful of it, out of respect, and hands it back, and he would not miss that moment for anything in the world.

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Personality & Temperament

Positive Traits

Disciplined: up before dawn every day, without fail
Calm and steady when everyone else is shouting
Far stronger than his small frame would suggest
Loyal to his friends well past the point of sense
A patient teacher to kits learning to fall and rise

Challenging Traits

Eats one bowl a day and will not be argued out of it
Says very little, and says that little very slowly
Holds himself to standards no one else could meet
Will not bend on a principle, however small
Forgets that other people need rest

Water does not argue with the stone. It goes on falling. In time, there is no stone.

I did not fight the dead. I stood on a branch. They kept trying to come up, and I kept not letting them. That is all.

At the temple, everyone was trying very hard to become someone else. Noopa has never once tried to be anyone but Noopa. She brings me a second bowl every night. I eat one spoonful. She knows I will eat one spoonful. She brings the whole bowl anyway.

Likes

The hour before dawn, when nothing is moving
A single bowl of plain grain, eaten slowly
Noopa's laugh from across a room
Kits who fall down and get straight back up
The sound of falling water

Dislikes

Fighting for show, or for coin
Bullies, of any size
Being thanked for the night in the beech
Wasted food, because it makes Noopa sad
Soft beds

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Background & History

The Kit Who Got Back Up

Trubbo was born in Burrowbough, a kobold village deep in the Geldergreen, on Stormhowl 7, 1279, and like every child there he was raised by the whole village. He was the smallest kit of his year, and the bigger kits found that out early. They knocked him down a great deal. What they could never do was keep him there: Trubbo got back up every single time, without a word, until they got bored before he did. The only kit who never laughed at him was Noopa, the roundest kit in the year below, who did not care in the slightest what anybody thought of her and could not understand why Trubbo cared so much. One day she sat down beside him at lunch and gave him half of hers. She has been doing it, one way or another, ever since.

The Pilgrim

In the winter of 1291 an old monk walking a pilgrimage through the Geldergreen sheltered in Burrowbough from a three-day snowstorm. On the second day, twelve-year-old Trubbo walked up to him in the meeting hall and tried, with all his strength, to push him over. The monk did not move. Trubbo tried again, and again, for most of an afternoon, until the monk finally asked him why. Trubbo said that he wanted to learn how to do that. When the storm broke, the monk left the village, and Trubbo went with him, all the way to the Falling Water Temple in the foothills of Pan'Che's Jade Mountains, where the monks train beneath a waterfall and teach that water never argues with the stone. It only keeps falling. He spent twelve years there. He was the only kobold the temple had ever taken, he was the smallest student in every class he was ever in, and by the end there was no one his age who could move him.

Coming Down the Mountain

In 1303 his teacher told him that discipline learned on a mountain is only half learned, and that the other half has to be practiced among people who will test it. So in 1304 Trubbo walked home to Burrowbough, carrying nothing but his beads and a bundle of one hundred and forty-four letters, every one of them from Noopa and every one of them about food. She had a bowl waiting. He spent the next three years training on the meeting-hall green before dawn and teaching any kit who would get up that early how to fall without being hurt, and how to get back up. Quite a few of Burrowbough's kits could fall very well indeed by the summer of 1307. Some of them are alive because of it.

The Lowest Bough

On the night of Goldenleaf 26, 1307, when Kobbin's alarm rang out, Trubbo was already up a tree. He looked down, saw that Noopa was not, and went back for her. He carried her up the big beech on his back, set her on a bough beside the children, and then climbed straight back down to the lowest branch, put his back against the trunk, and stayed there until morning. The dead came up the beech all night. Not one of them reached the second branch. Above him, Noopa held a single lit candle so that the children could see he was still there, and she did not put it down once. In the morning he climbed down without a word, and he has not talked about that night since. If you thank him for it, he will leave the room.

The Slow Road

When the survivors set out for Haven, Trubbo stayed behind in the towns at the forest's edge to walk the slowest of them out: the old ones, the hurt ones, and the ones who were not yet ready to leave. Noopa stayed with him, and fed the whole group every night on candles traded for flour and onions. Trubbo carried whoever could not walk, a few miles at a time, and took the last watch every night. They reached Goodberry together on Harvestide 10, 1307, a week behind everyone else, with every one of their stragglers. Since then he has trained before dawn in the yard behind Noopa's shop, slept on her floor, and turned down three offers of paid work from people who wanted a fighter. He is still deciding what Goodberry needs him for.

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Goals & Aspirations

Why So Deep

The undead had been gnawing at the edges of the Geldergreen ever since Gelderai fell, but in all the years before, they had never come anywhere near as deep into the forest as Burrowbough. Trubbo does not believe that something changes for no reason. He has started asking, quietly and patiently, everyone he meets who knows the forest roads, what might have brought the dead so far in. He has not found an answer yet. He has a great deal of patience.

Fall and Rise

Trubbo wants to open a small training yard in Goodberry, open before dawn and free to any kobold who comes, where he can teach Burrowbough's kits, and anyone else small enough to be overlooked, how to fall, how to get back up, and how to stand still when something is coming. He does not want to teach them to fight. He wants no kobold to ever again be someone who could only run.

The Second Bowl

Trubbo knows perfectly well what Noopa is doing with the second bowl, and he has decided, privately, on the day he will finally eat all of it: the day that every kobold who came out of Burrowbough is safe. He has not told Noopa. He suspects she knows anyway.

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Development

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Current Status & Relationships

Residence

Goodberry

Role

Monk

Friends

Noopa

Best Friend

From Burrowbough