Description This gnomish man stands just under three feet tall, but what he might lack in stature he seems to make up for in quickness. His face is dominated by a strong nose and his well-kept and carefully trimmed beard. His dark, curious eyes are always shifting from one thing to another. Biography Keys. Locks. Traps. Puzzles. Secrets. Everyone has their obsessions; those are mine. Ever since I was a child, I have been filled with a burning need to know and to understand. Born as I was just outside Vandery, no one thought this was particularly unusual. Vandery, which lies just north of the Gloom Woods on Mistone, boasts the largest temple to the gnomish god of inventing and tinkering, after all. Well, technically the great Clockwork Academy is only near Vandery and not actually in the town, but nonetheless, similar passions had led my older brothers and sisters and cousins to a life of inventing or serving Goran. Me, those same passions led to closed doors and locked boxes. It must have started with the puzzle box. I have no idea where my father got it?perhaps some passing trader, perhaps on one of his few trips to Argas or even Port Hempstead?but I remember that box as a fascination from my childhood. It was clever and very subtle: it had many sliding panels and complex little mechanisms that could be set in various ways to lock it, and that you then had to work just so, and if you did them all the lid would finally come off and you could peek inside. Every so often my father would leave a sweet in there, or a curious little object, and at first it was about being able to discover this secret. Later, though, it became about opening the box itself, and after that about understanding how the designer had made it. Long after my older siblings?I'm the baby in the family?and my cousins were inventing mechanisms and machineries of their own, I was still playing with the puzzle box, the child's toy, and developing what would become a lifelong obsession with puzzles and locks. From the puzzle box, my interests broadened to all kinds of locks. While they were never as satisfying as my first love, each was a small puzzle unto itself. A key and a lock were a jigsaw that fit perfectly, and that was satisfying. What was more satisfying still was finding ways to cheat. What else could one put into a lock that would open it? was my constant thought. Before I even knew that lockpicking tools existed, I was making my own and putting them to work. When my cousins and siblings found out, they put me to work, making me sneak into each other's rooms and break in and steal the plans for whatever they were working on at the moment. Inventors can be very competitive. I was good at sneaking and lurking and excellent with getting into things forbidden to me, and I had no real guilt over stealing their plans or work, but I also did not particularly enjoy being bossed around. Being the baby and the smallest, I had to get creative when learning to tussle with them, but gnomes are nothing if not innovative, and I found a number of ways to discourage them from bothering me too much. After I convinced my cousins to leave me alone, I was free to pursue my own interests. As it turns out, one such interest was exacting some payback on my brothers for all the times they had pranked me as a child. My parents, good Goranites that they were, were very relieved when I finally asked for my own workshop. Little did they know I was plotting revenge! First I snuck around and tailed them, tracked them and learned what they were working on and their schedules. Next, traps. Oh, traps are such fun! Every good gnome loves a prank, but switching the salt for sugar is crude next to the things I invented. Springs, gears, wire?all were put to use in making my siblings sorry for the times they had teased me, and there was nothing more satisfying than their indignant howls every time they reached for a door knob and got a rather shocking surprise. Of course the day came, finally, when I took one of my pranks too far, and after some heated discussions it was generally concluded that it would be best if I went on a little walkabout until I mellowed out a bit. Jeb's nose is healing nicely, by the way, or so I hear, though knowing him he is probably still fuming. The rest of my family are hoping, I am certain, that this trip will clear my head and that I will return ready to work on something more meaningful, like inventing a foldable, convertible spoon-to-fork utensil that can double as a sundial. I, on the other hand, am just hoping I find some interesting puzzles on the way.