Master Mxblm

London - Pax Britannica -LPB- Walkers of the London Hedge -LPB- Unqillae of London

Sobriquet: Mxblm.

Appearance: A small male kobold, about 4 inches tall that looks like a bronze skinned Anubis. He doesn't feel cold, so seldom wears more than a loin cloth and a torq.

Behavior: Mxblm is a stubborn creature. He does only things that he wants or keep his oaths. He is not cruel, but his jokes can seem rather sadistic.

History: Master Mxblm was born in the middle reaches of the Fae Hedge, where the roots of trees twist like the bones of old oaths and the soil remembers every secret footfall. He is a male kobold—small, quick-fingered, and scent-tuned to ore—who trafficked in the subterranean politics of his clan until a human hand reached through a crack in the hedge. When the Romans still ruled Londinium, a desperate slave, fingers raw from work and hope thinner than a razor, called on the Hedge for aid. The slave's plea snagged on old bargains and Mxblm answered: iron-forged oaths sealed him to the lead and silver veins beneath the city. Those oaths are literal—an iron ring set over his heart and words hammered into his name—binding him to guard galleries that once rang with pick and pan and are now cold and defunct. He learned the language of collapsed roofs and remembered the cadence of Roman boots as if they were whispers in the bedrock; duty is a thing that tastes like rust to him, and he will not loosen his hold while the iron sings.

Centuries have given him odd company and odd loves. Nemo Arthur, a curious chronicler and salvage diver who knows the city's forgotten guts, is the friend who brings news and tinned sardines to the old tunnels; Nemo taught Mxblm how to read maps of water as if they were veins. Dulcinae, a laughing female Satyr who dances on the banks where moonlight turns mud to honey, has stolen a sliver of his thin, stubborn heart—he watches her from below with coal-bright jealousy and soft, clumsy gifts left on roots. Worse is the River Queen, who rules the Thames with a calm, cruel tide: she has drowned promises, redirected streams, and claimed river-borne relics Mxblm swore to keep. He hates her in the way an old guardian hates a flood: not merely for what she takes but for the way she makes his oath feel like a thin skin stretched over an endless, hungry current. So he waits in the dark beneath London, iron against chest, ears open to thieves and lovers alike, a small, fierce sentinel bound by law and longing.