Zappy - XERES LIVE!

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Basic Information

Full Name

Zappy

Nickname

(none)

Race (Grade)

Kobold (F)

Class

Sorcerer

Height

3'1"

Birthday

Stormhowl 8, 1287

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

Zappy, newly arrived in Goodberry

Appearance

Zappy is a small, vividly blue kobold, his scales running from a deep cobalt along his spine to a paler, almost sky-blue across his belly and throat. A crown of short, darker blue spikes runs from between his eyes back over his skull, and they tend to stand up straighter than usual whenever he's excited, which is often. His eyes are large, round, and a bright electric blue that seems to hold a faint inner light even in shadow. He wears a patched dark leather vest over a soft cobalt scarf wound twice around his neck, and a wide belt hung with a half-dozen small glass vials that hum faintly with trapped static, each stoppered with wax and wrapped in a scrap of cloth so they don't rattle together. His tail is long for his size and in near-constant motion, flicking and curling in whatever direction his attention has just gone.

Unique Characteristics

Small threads of static crackle visibly along Zappy's claws and spines whenever he gets excited, nervous, or overjoyed, which for Zappy covers most of any given day. He smells, very faintly, of the air right after a lightning strike. His kind, the blue-scaled kobold lines said to carry old blue dragon blood, are naturally suited to lightning, and Zappy leans into it happily, collecting stray static in his belt vials the way other people collect pressed flowers, just because he thinks it's neat. When he laughs hard enough, small blue sparks jump harmlessly between the spikes on his head, and he has never once managed to notice this happening to himself.

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Personality & Temperament

Positive Traits

Warm and eager to help anyone who asks
Endlessly enthusiastic about even small things
Fiercely loyal to friends once he's made them
Quick to forgive and slow to hold a grudge
Surprisingly brave when someone he loves is at risk

Challenging Traits

Stutters badly when excited, nervous, or overjoyed
Struggles to finish a sentence under pressure
Sparks accidentally when his feelings run too high
Talks himself into embarrassed silence easily
Doubts his own magic more than he lets on

I-I-I didn't mean to zap the mailman! He just startled me, and I startled back!

F-friends don't let friends walk home in the dark. That's, that's a rule. I just made it up, but it's a good one!

Sometimes the words get stuck b-behind my teeth. The lightning never does, though. That part's easy.

Likes

Thunderstorms rolling in over Goodberry
Being trusted with someone's secret
Warm bread fresh from Briar's shop
Small glass vials that hum with static
Making someone laugh on a bad day

Dislikes

Being mocked for his stutter
Loud arguments between people he cares about
Feeling like he's a bother to someone
Damp, grey weather with no thunder in it
Being told to "just spit it out"

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Background & History

Hatched Beneath the Rootways

Zappy was born during a storm in the Rootways of Gelderai, the lower district where the city's non-elf residents make their homes among the roots of the Geldergreen, the only blue child in a clutch of green ones. He was raised communally by the small kobold enclave there, who held to the old "hearth-call" way: a young one's worth is in what he brings home and who he keeps warm, not in whose colors he shares. He was raised without much fuss made over the difference in his scales, though he noticed it himself long before anyone else brought it up, and the noticing stuck with him longer than it needed to.

The Jolt That Stuck

Zappy's sorcery announced itself early and badly. At six years old, startled by a slammed door, he loosed his first real bolt of lightning by accident, straight through his family's rootway home, and knocked himself flat on his back in the process. He was fine within the hour. His voice was not, not entirely, not ever again. A small, harmless hitch settled into his speech from that day on, worse whenever the same feelings that used to trigger the sparks came rushing back. He has made an uneasy peace with the idea that the thing that makes him magic and the thing that makes him stumble over his own words came from the exact same moment.

When the Dead Came to the Roots

The undead crisis pressing against the Geldergreen's borders had been a distant worry for Zappy, something the wind-singers spoke of in careful tones and the Tenders watched for in the deep groves. It stopped being distant a few months ago, when the attacks reached close enough to the Rootways that the enclave began keeping watch through the night. Zappy is no fighter. He tried to help where he could, mostly by staying calm when no one else in the room was managing it, but the fear of it settled into him in a way the sparks never had. When word came that Haven, the floating city, had drifted into position above Gelderai itself, he decided that was as good a sign as he was going to get.

The Road Up

Zappy left the Geldergreen for the first time in his life with little more than his belt of vials, his scarf, and a badly rehearsed explanation for why he was leaving, until he stepped out into Goodberry not knowing a single soul in the entire city. He is arriving now, for the first time, with no plan beyond finding somewhere warm to stand still for a while.

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Goals & Aspirations

To Say It Right, Just Once

Zappy wants, more than almost anything, to get through one important sentence without a single hitch in it, a toast, an introduction, a simple "thank you" to someone who's earned it. He has not managed this yet on anything that mattered to him. He keeps trying anyway.

To Make One Friend First

Zappy doesn't know anyone in Goodberry, not one single person, and the size of that fact hasn't fully hit him yet. His goal, before anything grander, is simple: one friend. Just one person in this new city who knows his name and says it back without him having to fight for it.

Somewhere Blue Fits

Zappy has never quite stopped being aware that he's the wrong color for most rooms he walks into, and now he's the wrong everything for an entire city he's never set foot in before. His quiet, mostly unspoken goal is to become so useful and so well-liked here that being the stranger, the outsider, the only blue kobold anyone's met, stops being the first thing people notice about him.

To Stop Flinching at Shadows

He hasn't said this one out loud to anyone, mostly because there's no one yet to say it to. Since leaving Gelderai, ordinary sounds, a door easing shut, a scrape against stone, sometimes catch him wrong and send him halfway back to the last night he spent on watch at the Rootway's edge. He wants that to stop. He is fairly sure it will, eventually, once enough ordinary days pile up between him and that night.

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Current Status & Relationships

Residence

Goodberry

Role

Sorceror

ATTENTION!

Zappy is brand new to Goodberry, having just arrived from Gelderai after the undead crisis pressing against the Geldergreen's borders pushed his family's enclave past what they could bear. He doesn't know anyone in the city yet. He is not dangerous, but he is jumpy: when startled or overwhelmed, static and small bolts of lightning can jump from his claws and spines without any intent behind them, mildly shocking, never meant to harm. Anything resembling the undead, moaning, shambling, grave-cold, is likely to spike this reaction badly given what he just fled. His stutter worsens under the same conditions. Patience and a calm voice get far better results from him than pressure or surprise.