Name: Fitzgerald Toastcruncher Fountainbloomer the Fourth
Nickname: Toast
Age: 35
Race: Gnome
Physical Description: In typical gnome fashion, Toast is fairly small, and fortunately, he didn’t inherit his mother’s curvy or his father’s burly shape. Toast is fairly wiry, thin but with a bit of built-up muscle from diving for cover at regular intervals. He is fairly athletic in general due to having to crawl around in water canals or sewers and needing to remain in the most uncomfortable positions at times to fix things.
Toast has a slightly green tinge to his otherwise normal complexion. This is due to a failed experiment back in his teen years. The positive aspect of this failure is that his nose rarely picks up on the stench in the sewers unless it’s extremely out of the ordinary. His short spiky hair (often slightly singed) is of a normal chestnut colour, so are his eyes, which are generally covered by protective goggles when he is working. There is nothing extraordinary about him, other than a few scars scattered all over his body. Most of those are from his childhood years before he learned to protect himself against flying objects; the others are results of occasional mishaps on the job.
Possessions: Anything he can fit into his pockets and his bag that could help him with fiddlings of a general sort, such as pieces of wire, various buttons and screws, rubber band, glue, tweezers, screwdrivers, etc. All these tools are lined up on a piece of waterproofed cloth with pockets for each individual item, which is rolled up when no longer needed and fitted into a side pocket of his bag, but will strap around his waist when he’s working so he has them all ready at hand. He also carries at least one flashy light tube to illuminate the way; one of them is usually strapped to his left arm.
As far as protection specific gadgets are concerned, he carries:
- - a special gnomish gun which shoots tranquiliser darts and may have to be shaken from time to time just to make sure it still works as intended. He has a second gun containing poisonous darts, and he never leaves the house without an extra stash of ammunition, which is safely encased so as not to cause any harm to him. The effects of the tranquiliser darts have not been tested on magical beings and are most likely prone to failing on a general scale. They would in any case be useless against a mage with protective magic. The poisonous darts have a limited amount of poison in them, generally to paralyse temporarily rather than to kill. In beings with a strong natural or magical resilience, the poison might not immediately take effect, or not even at all.
- a couple of devices he can throw on the ground and which launch a protective shield (for the greater part a technological effect, interspersed with a bit of magic as is practically innately used by gnomes when creating gnomish machinery) up into the air, assuming the shape of the tunnel, when an enemy comes close. The shield will only hold for several seconds but it should give Toast (and any other people with him) enough time to pick up his feet and run the hell away or at least get out of range to use one of the guns. The shields come in the maximum size of an average tunnel. If the tunnel is smaller, the shield can downsize a little, but if the tunnel is bigger, the shield will be unable to fill it completely, thus leaving some space on the sides and above it, which enemies could use to their advantage.
- a shield-gun. It acts as protection against projectiles as much as any normal shield would, only it has a gun integrated into the middle of it with a small transparent area for targeting. It is a bit of a nuisance to carry around sometimes but it has serviced him well so far.
- a few small knives are included in his tool-belt. These are used for cutting rebel wires and the like but could serve for protection in close-quarter combat as well, if necessary.
- a handful of explosive devices, creating very small scale explosions with just enough force to blow enemies off their feet but leaving the surroundings mostly intact. He would never use these inside a sewer tunnel however as it would be close to suicide in such a refined space.
Strengths: When he starts something, Toast sees it through to the end. Now, it may take him a bit of time sometimes to get started though since he may not be finished with something else, but he loathes a job unfinished and will go to certain lengths to see it done.
His lean frame is the perfect asset for him to be sent down into the sewers and water canals at regular intervals for inspections or reparations as he doesn’t run the risk of getting stuck and can still carry all the necessary tools with him. A plus for him is also that his sense of smell has been so degraded that he barely notices the stench of the sewers unlike most other people.
If he has learned one thing with all his experiments and the years of work in canals and sewers, it is how to protect his own body. He would never carry something that could endanger him, and he wears protective goggles whenever he is working on something (they are strapped to his head or around his neck if currently not in use). He is very good at finding cover or hiding spots in the face of danger. If all else fails, he can handle himself well enough with his gadgets and daggers to prevent being eaten or otherwise killed.
As a gnome, he has an affinity for creating technology and he loves spending his time on creating new things, regularly experimenting with anything he can get his hands on. Some of his inventions have been very successful as well. When he has a good day, he is what could be considered a genius. He uses his head for most any situation and tries to understand and find solutions before taking unnecessary steps.
His special strength as far as technology is concerned is waterproofing basically anything he can get his hands on. He isn’t quite sure how exactly he did it and hasn’t quite managed to decipher his own recipe after taking apart a few items again for inspection. His tool-belt is only one example of the handy use of this skill. He has invented a special paste, only producible in small amounts for the time being, to spread over tools and certain smaller items used within the system so the water doesn’t affect tubes or even screws as quickly, which avoids having to replace the material all too soon due to rust and oxidation. (He is currently working on a sort of casing for all the wheels to prolong their lifespan and a possibility to produce this waterproof paste on a slightly larger scale.)
Weaknesses: Whereas Toast does want things to be finished, he prefers this not to happen in exchange for too much of his personal comfort, such as eating and sleeping. He may have been lucky with his body shape but he still has a weakness for food. Especially toast. Without food, Toast can be quite grumpy. And he does not like to be interrupted when working on an invention; it makes him nervous.
Though he may be the perfect man for jobs in small spaces and able to support the stench for long periods of time, his lack of smell has already gotten him into trouble as well. He is unable to pick up any scents unless they are overly strong, or unless he brings things up close to his nose. Thus a silent perpetrator would be able to sneak up on him fairy easily.
Some would consider it a weakness that Toast prefers to hide before facing an enemy; they say he is a coward and in time, he has learned to simply let people believe what they want to believe. He is no coward, but he does not see the point in rushing head first into a situation before assessing it. He is small, really not intimidating and he prefers to use his brain before facing an unknown situation, especially if it involves beings much larger and much more dangerous than him.
Stressful situations aren’t his forte. Toast believes in being prepared and he prefers to lay a few small traps that alert him to intruders, including the shielding devices. Though he can handle himself in combat when he knows it’s coming, he becomes fidgety when danger suddenly lurks around the corner and he isn’t prepared for it, making him very nervous. His generally good aim with the gun can fairly easily stray from its intended target when he is under severe stress or extremely nervous.
He is very proud of his creations, even those that don’t work exactly the way they are intended to, but bashing his inventions is one sure way of getting him riled up. However, as fantastic as he sometimes is in terms of creations, his genius is more often than not hidden deep down in his subconscious. It is most certainly there, but it takes many useless and often rather defective experiments (some of which are prone to causing considerable damage to his surroundings) before such a stroke of genius hits.
History/Background: Toast’s mother, Tilbi, has always had a particular fondness for food, duly noticeable by her rather round frame, but it has risen to a peak when she was pregnant with him, and much to his dismay she had conveyed that love for food while naming him - it was all that his father, Fitzgeral "Sprocket", could keep her from imposing “Shortbread” or “Pickle” as another middle name. Adding to his mother’s preferences, Toast himself shares said love for food and his nickname soon changed from Fitz to Toast, seeing that he simply adores munching on toast.
Toast’s father, just like his father before him and generally every male in the family, works with the water system in Marn. Their family had been one of those to establish the sewer system alongside the running water canals spread throughout the city. Ever since their creation, they have been running a well-organised corporation of repairmen, inspectors and new inventors to keep up to date with the needs of the inhabitants of Marn. The gnomes are very proud of their work and would very much like to keep it all intact without major issues.
Both his sisters are quite the seamstresses. One of them, Petal (Tilbi had had a flower-phase, much to Sprocket’s grievance), creates rather daring and very colourful clothes and always fixes his when he ripped them again. The other, Button (to Sprocket’s greatest pleasure, Tilbi had finally entered a phase leanings towards technology) is a genius when it comes to creating camouflage, technology-based uniforms for working in the sewers and canals. Toast never wears them though. He doesn’t trust his sister not to play a prank on him and hide ants somewhere in the outfit.
When Toast is not working in his family’s company, he spends his time on experiments and inventions. Most of those involve the family business or personal comfort, such as his personalised goggles or the flashy light tubes he carries around with him at all times. The sewers are dark and gas lamps or candles wouldn’t work well, and would actually be a hazard to use, thus Toast has been working on a better way for illumination that would be handy to have in case of an underground job. The tubes are practical but need to be carried or strapped to the body, and Toast would very much like to remedy this nuisance as soon as he has the time.
He fabricated various useful gadgets for his mother to use around the house already, a few tools that he is using himself for his work or larger inventions that benefit the family business. A particular project he has been working on for many years without being able to fully perfection it, much to his frustration, is a sewage launcher. The intention is to use a tube with a mouth to suck up the sewage mess. The tube would then remove the sewage from the tunnel and launch it into a specially designed carriage, which then in turn would dispose of the mess somewhere outside of the city walls; at a location to be designated by the officials, should the sewage launcher ever work the way it was designed to. It is thanks to a complete failure of this steam-powered machine at its early stages that Toast lost his sense of smell. Somehow the launcher had backfired and instead of sucking up the sewage, it had blown it all straight into his face, bathing him in the mess for what seemed like an eternity before he managed to scramble for the lever to turn it off. He had been unable to rid himself of the smell and taste of sewer for weeks, and once he finally was rid of it, his nose seemed to have built up immunity. The backfires have been reduced to barely ever happening but the machine was still prone to overheating after a minimal time of use.
Incidentally, it was one such lucky creation that brought the City Guard’s attention to him.
Or maybe it was just that they needed someone to help them with a secret sewer-mission and he was the best they could find for such a job; especially considering that often enough a guard is along for the ride when he has to work down in the sewers and word might have spread that he has a knack for waterproofing almost anything as well as the fact that he knows the sewers like the back of his hand. Maybe there was also mention of him having a portable non-flammable light.
Stalking through the sewers had been a childhood pastime, playing adventure and treasures games, and it had later lead into what he does for a living and for his family’s upkeep. Now, here he is, doing the same for the City Guard of all things. Stuck with the lowest jobs the City Guard has to offer but alas, work is work, and if the gnome has learned one thing from his family history, it is that there is only one way to efficiently deal with work: by doing it. The sooner a job is tackled, the sooner it is over. Plus, although it may be the basest job of the City Guard, he knows his way around and he is proud of the construction. His family had been part of its creation after all! Others can think what they want. The intention had been a good one, despite the lingering smell of garbage and the fact that the sewers were most often than not used by criminals.
Toast is not a part of the City Guard in terms of a guard, but he is part of a selection of specialised individuals with a specific skill set the City Guard can benefit from, in his case it would be his knowledge of the outline of the sewers and his waterproofing skills. He is not addressed as a guard, nor does he follow the strict regime of combat training and the like. He merely is a contract worker to provide support in the area of his expertise, namely waterways and sewers.
