Dexter Tha'al
AKA: Shadowclown. That Foolish Goblin.
Gender: Male.
Race: Goblin.
Height: 3'2"
Age: 29
Appearance:
He is of slender build and wears oft patched and repatched clothing in a dazzling variety of colours and fabrics. Over this he wears a black woolen cloak which covers the backpack he usually wears making attempts to steal from him obvious to the most casual of onlookers.
Beautiful Green eyes peek out from under beetle brows and the dome of a smoothly shaven head. He'd be hansome but for his skin. Said skin is mottled mixing black, green and grey into a crazy patchwork which can most definitely not be called a pattern. His skin is that colour and patchwork mess because he was born that way. Perhaps it helps him hide in the wilderness but on the other hand, it makes him ugly to most people but he hopes one day to find someone who can find him beautiful anyway, sufficiently beautiful perhaps for falling in love. The three colours are so evenly scattered that it's impossible to tell which parts are birthmarks and which his natural complexion.
He seems to most races to be in his late teens although goblins would estimate his age as about 35. There is something about his eyes however that suggest the goblins are closer to the truth than others.
Personality:
Dexter has two trades. Before any trade though, he is something of a diplomat by personality, not by profession. When trouble starts, Dexter's agile mind begins working toward a solution that allows both sides to feel that they've won. The true winner in such situations often turns out to be Dexter but he's humble about it and always uses his good fortune to help others.
His first trade is that of a toolmaker and his second that of clown.
His kindness and humility are offset by a resistance to violence, and especially to getting into a fair fight. If he doesn't have an edge his opponent doesn't know about, he will run away and start looking for one. Some would call this 'cowardice' but Dexter calls it common sense. As a result, he has a terrible reputation among those who value honour.
If he is forced into confrontation he reacts first with honeyed words and then, if that doesn't work, with sudden terrifying escalation. After such confrontations, Dexter will shake, weep and in other ways let his fear manifest but in the longer term he is heavily into revenge and while such revenge will never be violent it will always be psychologically devastating.
HISTORY
Dexter was born on the large South Fluminian coastal island of Khala and enjoyed a decent standard of living once upon a time, having his own workshop in the port town of Khalhaven on the leeward side of the island, facing the mainland.
The Asteroid destroyed his business, his home and indeed the whole of Khalhaven and most of Khala apart from the village of Hole, set in the caldera of Mount Kala, the extinct volcano that produced the island.
From childhood he has worked at all of his skills. Diplomacy and Clowning skills came from the trauma he grew up with. He was bullied and beaten not only by his parents but also by anyone else who thought they could gain any advantage over him by threat of or actual violence.
He learned as a child that fighting is not a skill he could ever develop... backstabbing yeah but not fighting. If he fights he might get hurt again and he'd hate for that to happen.
His ability with tools grew out of a desire to have a skill he could sell. Clowning is too much like begging but toolmaking, that's a proper trade and it's one he made sure he understood. No matter what he does, he remains valuable to the tribe, to his friends or to the city in which he now finds himself.
After the asteroid, Dexter found himself taken from the ruins of Khalhaven in which he was slowly starving, to Coast City in South Flumina where Crocuta built a new workshop in which he could practice his trade (and store the props of his other trade). He no longer owns his own premises though. Now he has a workshop that he leases from Crocuta. Even when business is bad, he has to pay. It is at these times when he gets together with the acrobat, Melissa, the conjuror, Harry and the puppeteer Evie. Between them, with props and costumes and an outline of the story, the four of them improvise what they call theiir 'Vicious Cabaret'.
Skillsets
Diplomat - he has the ability to calm down situations that arise naturally although this doesn't work with deliberate bad actors He is highly empathic and as such he can see what people want and how to solve the issues that led them to threaten the peace (unless of course it's only evil that leads them in which case if he can't deflect them, then violence may be the only way).
Toolmaker - he works in stone and metal to make knives, hammers and simple machines such as levers, pulleys and gears. He has the knowledge to know how the stuff he works with 'wants' to be shaped and the dexterity to make it happpen.
Clown - he can read a crowd and make a fool of himself through joking, awful conjuring and skilled tumbling that seems to go wrong (and get the crowd laughing). He has the agility to land without harm and to dodge anything thrown at him. He has the humility to allow himself to look a fool if it serves his purposes.
Languages - Goblin and common are his native languages.
He is fluent in trade talk and Eastern.
He speaks broken draconic.
In flowtalk he knows only a few signs.
In Dotdash he only knows the codes for E, T, S, O, and V so nothing useful.
Weapons - Dexter knows how to use a light club and a sling. Other than that, he is an expert in improvising weapons from harmless objects such as tools, toys, furniture and cutlery.
Neutral Aspects:
Dexter prefers to hang around with foreigners and people of other races.
Weaknesses:
Dexter is reluctant to fight because he values his own skin too much. As a result, he has a reputation as a coward.
Dexter overthinks things. Sometimes he will delay his reactions in order to make plans when swift and certain action is needed. This often confirms his reputation as a coward.
He is, on the other hand, overconfident. After all nobody is as clever as Dexter thinks he is.
Contacts:
Evie Ponchinelli the Puppeteer. Harry Hancock the Conjuror and Melissa van't Hof the acrobat (between the four of them, they are The Vicious Cabaret) The others are also tradespeople who work along side him in the artisans' quarter and are respectively, Evie the toymaker, Harry the Carpenter and Melissa the Seamstress. He knows several other workers in the Artisan's quarter although not all of them by name. As far as he can tell, they are all in the same boat, former business owners now working in rented premises all provided by Crocuta.
He also knows the person who collects his rent on behalf of Crocuta and is lazy enough to co-operate with Dexter and his pals to hire whichever of them has the skills to fix any repairs that arise, in return for their rent being paid for a month or a year depending on the amount of work needed.
Dexter's Plans for the future:
1) Survival - that is the be and end all and everything is beneath this.
2) Find love.
3) Get rich or at least into a position where he has sufficient wealth too be safe.