The Gremlin
tinkerer, philosopher, outcast
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Ht: 2'1 / Wt: 20 lbs / Hair: cold white / Eyes: lavender
Age: ~400 / Creed: Gremlin / Status: *DECEASED
A small, dapper fellow with a haunted air. His lavender eyes are underscored by a smear of hollow darkness beneath them, the marks of his long, lonely entrapment. His skin is pinkish-pale, and his silvery hair is tufted, with an asymmetrical shock falling over one eye. His small beard and mustache are sharply pointed, echoing his the long point of his nose, and his large, triangular ears.
He dresses in a jaunty outfit of black and purple with silver embroidery, and wears upturned, pointy boots and fingerless gloves. His tunic has a turned-down hood and is covered with a leather workvest full of pockets and tools. Unusually for a Gnome, he does not wear a hat.
Vanderbilt appears impatient and twitchy, and is prone to intermittently zipping about in erratic, flickering bursts. His manner is polite but wry and somewhat moody. He is easily distracted, and will often trail off before giving straight answers to questions.
HISTORY
He is fascinated by systems in entropy, and easily bored by things that follow the rules and operate within expected parameters. Uncertainty and risk excites him; the thrill of seeing how - and precisely when - something breaks (or explodes) causes his eyes to gleam and his shock of silvery hair to prick up like a flame.
In truth, Vanderbilt is a rogue among his people. Throughout his life, his rebellious streak grew stronger, feeding his feelings of persecution and his increasingly destructive impulses. While other Gnomes created gadgets and mechanical toys to delight others, Vanderbilt created ones with hidden traps intended to sting and shock - tools of disillusionment - as he believed this better reflected the world as it was.
His antisocial compulsions reached their height when he sabotaged the waterwheel mills in Nockendorf, creating a cascade of accidents that resulted in several minor injuries and an overall halt to all work. For this act of Gremelschaft he had his hat and tools confiscated, and was detained by his village in a subterranean vault for a month, with no light or stimulation, and only beetles and lichen to sustain him.
Whether this sentence would have reformed him is unclear. Nockendorff was raided by Bronzanti's minions, and Vanderbilt remained trapped for almost 3 months, an eternity for a bored Gnome.
Finally freed by Kian Grey, he emerged a sullen, shivering, pathetic creature. Seemingly, he is still committed to liberating his kin from Bronzanti's clutches... though perhaps only to show them they were wrong for mistreating him.
