- Rat Alley Oracle
- Laughing Menace
- Brandy-Fueled Chaos
Toby Talc
Alignment: Chaotic Neutral
Over the years, he became obsessed with patterns hiding beneath ordinary life. Rumors, overheard conversations, missing objects, contradictory stories, and strange coincidences all became pieces of a puzzle only he seemed able to see. The more he searched, the less anyone trusted his conclusions. Unfortunately for everyone involved, some of those conclusions kept proving correct.
His travels eventually carried him toward Smuggler's Cove, where madness, crime, and opportunity often share the same table. There he found a strange sort of acceptance among people who cared more about usefulness than sanity. The harbor became a place where he could disappear into the noise while continuing his endless hunt for hidden truths.
Today he survives through cunning, unpredictability, and the uncomfortable fact that he notices things others miss. He speaks in riddles because direct answers rarely protect him, laughs because silence terrifies him, and chases secrets because stopping would mean facing whatever still whispers from the darkness when nobody else is listening.
The Wrong Crate
A low-level smuggling outfit is trying to become dangerous one stolen shipment at a time. They lack polish, money, discipline, and most forms of common sense, but they have nerve, dirty luck, and enough desperation to make smarter criminals nervous.
When a crate is taken by mistake, the crew finds itself holding cargo meant for a far larger faction. What should have been a quiet dockside job turns into a scramble through alleys, taverns, rooftops, and backroom deals, with every hidden hand in the harbor reaching for the same prize.
At the center of the chaos is a wiry goblin nuisance who should have been too small to matter. His riddles, giggles, and brandy-soaked instincts make him impossible to trust, but his talent for noticing patterns may be the only reason the crew survives long enough to become something worse.
- Wrong Crate
- Tiny Syndicate
- Bigger Teeth
- Hidden Docks
- Contraband Deals
- Tidebound Secrets
Smuggler's Cove
Smuggler’s Cove hides beneath jagged cliffs where the sea pounds stone hard enough to drown out bad decisions. Lanterns burn low inside damp caverns, throwing gold light across black water, salt-stained beams, and docks that creak under crates no honest harbor would accept. The air tastes of brine, tar, wet rope, cheap rum, and secrets packed tight enough to sweat.
This is a refuge for those who prefer freedom with teeth. Nameless ships slide in under cover of fog, cargo changes hands in shadowed alcoves, and every bargain carries a second meaning if one listens closely enough. Coin buys silence here, but silence has upkeep, and anyone who forgets that may find the tide surprisingly intimate.
The cove matters because it is where hidden goods, hidden loyalties, and hidden dangers all wash ashore together. Information moves as quickly as contraband, debts follow longer than footprints, and even the smallest troublemaker can overhear something worth killing for. It is not safe, but safety was never the point.
Goblin
No one agrees where goblins came from, which suits goblins perfectly because every explanation sounds better when shouted over someone else’s. Some claim they crawled out of old tunnels where fey magic leaked into forgotten roots and stone. Others insist they were born from discarded wishes, bad bargains, or the universe dropping something small, sharp-toothed, and impossible to return.
The truth, if there ever was one, has been chewed, traded, misremembered, improved, stolen back, and probably hidden in a box labeled “do not open” for reasons everyone ignored. Goblin elders tell different origin stories depending on weather, audience, snack availability, and whether the listener looks too comfortable. In one version, they were made to survive the places larger folk abandoned. In another, they were never made at all — they simply noticed the world had loose edges and moved in.
What is certain is what they became. Goblins learned to thrive in cramped shelters, dark passages, broken walls, rough ground, and every overlooked corner that could be turned into home with enough string, stubbornness, and bad judgment. They wasted nothing, feared little for long, and treated curiosity as both sacred duty and recurring medical problem.
Now they remain quick, inventive, misunderstood, and nearly impossible to keep out of places that interest them. Their origin may be a mystery, a joke, a warning, or all three stacked in a trench coat, but their survival is not in question. Whatever made goblins, it clearly underestimated how hard they would be to get rid of.
- Tiny Trouble
- Crafty Survivors
- Fast Twitch