Name: Bruck Nezoxt
Age: 25
Gender: Male
Race: Goblin
Height: 4'3"

Appearance:
The brown skinned, floppy eared, sharp toothed, glasses wearing goblin takes great pride in his appearance, favoring archaic human fashion trends. His ears have piercings that change from time to time, as he tries to keep a collection going for his various subtle disguises. He is lean and toned, as his job favors a different sort of physical fitness than one associated with raw muscle, and what little hair he has he keeps close cropped.

While Bruck is not above it if it is practical or during a job, he rarely wears the fire or acid-resistant clothing his kind need to wear when pursuing their traditional crafts, taking pride in the fact he pursues a line of work that does not require such an approach. He will, however, wear whatever his job requires him to wear, whether that means dark clothing or aprons. Or dresses, in the case of one really messed up job. But he is usually wearing a wig at any given time.

On the job, once the disguise and the subtlety are gone, or he is simply at a place where talking his way out is a failure anyways, he breaks out the harness and the tools, and he would not be confused at this point for anything other than his actual job, looking the part of a likely very out-of-place appraiser. The glasses, in addition to providing cursory cover for his eyes from light hazards, also serve as a subtle reading aid, helping small print become larger print. With a mere change of his stance, he can seemingly rewrite himself into another person.

Personality:
While Bruck is the stereotype of conniving and scheming, he lacks the obviously crazed bent his kind often possess. He IS as partial to explosions and fire as any self-respecting goblin, but they aren't his first tools except as a distraction. During a mission, he is calm, focused and cool under pressure. He relies on social engineering to get into wherever he is going, relying on the dismissal most tall folk have of creatures that go at or below their waist, and on charm for the rest.

He's learned that poise is everything. When he wants to bring out "the Specialist" (as he likes to think of it), it is merely a change of stance that commands a surprising amount of attention. As a result of his ability to deceive, he is ever watchful of tricks others might try on him, and sometimes causes his demeanor to slip as he worries about something that doesn't actually exist.

The voice in his mind, while usually an advocate for calm, is a steady, unrelenting student of the world, constantly seeking to learn new things that Bruck fancies himself as not honestly caring about (he does). This force drives and encourages Bruck's natural curiosity and sometimes compels him to overstay a mission because he's noticed something not on the plan that is "too good to pass up."

Strengths:
Just According To Keikaku, Which Means Plan
Cool under fire, Bruck has a plan for every problem and a counter for every threat, having planned for it some time ago...or so he claims. He "knew" this would happen, because whatever this is either always happens, or always "wants" to happen, and he knows it. In reality, his paranoia just works in his favor, and the voice in his head does give him lots of ample practice to think possible problems out well in advance. Some of his best ideas come from this voice, or his dreams.

Handsome and Prestigious...For A Goblin
Bruck has large ears for a Goblin. That often means by he's considered to have the blood of a leader...for whatever that is worth when the person talking to him is NOT, in fact, a goblin, and therefore could not care less about his culture or physical goblinoid attributes.

Con Artist Is A Rude Way To Put It
He's learned how to lie by "reinventing" himself - he can put up a convincing front of charisma, in spite (or perhaps because) of his constant concerns and worries. The voice in his mind lets him practice, giving him an actual line of dialogue to test how convincing he sounds to others, and the voice occasionally offers suggestions, or fast thinking ideas to help him out.

Second Story Man AND Knowledge Broker
He's fairly good at breaking and entering, and at convincing others that something is worth more than it is. But his main talent in the underworld he lives in is what he knows and has learned: the little guy hears a lot, steals books, and knows quite a bit about this and that for a goblin, and he'll part with it...for a price.

Quality Safecracker
He has an affinity for locks of all kinds, understanding the principals behind them just well enough to know how to open them up. The voice tends to be really chatty when he doing this, but so far, it hasn't gotten him killed yet, and it seems to know what it is talking about.

Principals of Magic
Whether it is the voice in his head, or whether he just happened to learn more than he thought during the dark years, he understands the principals of magic, with a specialty in maleficence. He can't actually use magic, and probably never will unless another person earns his trust enough for him to be willing to listen, but he understands the gist of how it works, and can "pass" as a person who is a magician. Sometimes he has gotten desperate and played the charlatan once or twice, although selling somebody a medicine that would not actually help them is beneath either him or the voice.

Practical Alchemy
While he understands magical principals, this is what really lets him fake it. He's not the best at crafting it, but he understands its use and placement very, very well, such as understanding how much acid is too much, how much powder is needed to blow a lock while destroying nothing else of value, and the safe handling of said materials.

Neutral Aspects:
All You Have To Really Fear Is PARANOIA!
Bruck knows for a "fact" danger lurks behind every corner. This can make him annoying or unsettling, depending on the circumstances.

Small and Unobtrusive
He's easy to overlook, ears or not, which can be hazardous to his health in a world of people double his size who trample the little goblin.

The Mad "Noble" of the Streets
His reputation is one of intelligence born of madness, or that of a broken genius. Others tread warily around him - they don't know why he's not afraid when he isn't showing fear, and only the most brazen wish to find out if it is a bluff or not.

Thieves' Honor
If he's not lying from the onset, Bruck will keep his word of honor. Competence, equity, loyalty, and silence - he feels all have their place, and he isn't on the side of the authorities.

Weaknesses:
Voices In My Head
Due to an accident in his youth involving brief service to a practitioner of the dark arts, he is convinced he has a spirit bound to his. Whether this is actually true or not isn't the issue, but it does cause him to occasionally slip into old dialects and out of date clothing habits if he isn't reining himself in. He can make himself welcome wherever he goes, but he has no real home anywhere for long, especially when he starts loudly talking to himself because the voice just WON'T SHUT UP.

It's the Adrenaline Junkie, Not Me
This frequently drives him into dangerous situations, or randomly choosing an action for his otherwise comparatively orderly life. For some reason, danger makes the voice go quieter, or at least more focused on the situation at hand instead of talking about distant lands and times.

I Just Gotta Know!
In addition, even without the voices, his insatiable curiosity can cause him to run into a lot of problems. Sometimes he gets information too hot to sell, and that can cause him to gain the eyes of interested parties who don't want to risk their secrets getting out. While he hasn't made any enemies yet, that is only a matter of time before he cheats or robs the wrong person and gets caught.

You Are A Scary, Scary Goblin, Bruck
To Goblin eyes, Bruck is a time bomb without a visible fuse. He will often fall into odd habits and appetites, such as seeking solitude, a very ungoblin concept...almost human, actually. Additionally, he is too patient in their eyes, terrifyingly so, leading some of the more conspiratorial to believe he maybe has some grand plan to kill them all, or that he doesn't value money like they did, and therefore either can't be trusted, or perhaps he's a shapeshifter in disguise.

I'm Just A Little Guy
He has all of the fighting prowess of a vicious child. With a knife, he can be dangerous, but his lack of reach and comparative body strength puts him in danger against a violent world filled with large beings. The more gang-oriented goblins or halflings could probably beat the hell out of him in a level fight, because he doesn't have a lot of practice fighting fair.

Looking Out For Number One
His trust is a bit broken, given what he went through and his present work. As a result, he is slow to trust, and quick to run if he thinks a betrayal is coming, which is his default presumption. Only a lure of something he wants will keep him loyal under bad conditions, and those have limits - he won't end up in the cooking pot, not him!

Notable Equipment:
Knife, Telescope, Goblin Diving Suit (rarely worn), fireworks launcher, a lucky squeeze ball, spectacles, classy (if old fashioned) clothing, and a "magical" examination harness (pulls over from the back to the eye and the ear, often used on the job to examine a trap or lock of some kind better - basically a big magnifying glass and earphone).

Likes: When a plan comes together, tradition (oddly enough), secrets, opportunity, money, and (admittedly) explosions and fire
Dislikes: When "someone/something" ruins a plan (never his fault), poverty, true inaction (not merely waiting), responsibility, unplanned violence
Habits: Tapping a surface like a spider as he's running numbers or ideas in his mind, the occasional glance behind him as he moves through a crowded area

History:
Being an Inrivers slum goblin wasn't easy, but what the young Bruck lacked in size, he made up for with cunning and opportunism. He also had a sense of patience his fellow goblins lacked, making him a prime candidate when a man paying coin for "volunteers" came rolling into town. He was one of ten selected, and then he was one of seven who understood when to duck, one of four who understood what not to touch, one of two who understood how not to be selected for a ritual sacrifice into a cauldron, and he ended up the best with a knife when the last one snapped under pressure.

One day, his master decided he still needed more body for his rites, and Bruck decided he had enough of this nonsense. He "accidentally" dropped a stone bust on his master's head from the top of one of the shelves, and before his master could regain consciousness, the goblin dragged the dark magus to the threshold of his own cauldron and dropped him inside, ensuring his death.

The consequences of this action have followed Bruck to this day. He doesn't know who or what the spirit is, or even if it is real, but he is a haunted goblin all the same by what he experienced. He became addicted to both danger and learning. For some reason, both adrenaline and new literature were equally effective at making the voice quiet down.

This penchant for learning meant he advanced rather swiftly in goblin society, becoming quite the "respectable" scholar and knowledge broker. Combined with his growth spurt in puberty, he had become quite the confident and (by goblin standards) attractive specimen, meaning others (Goblins, specifically) listened to him more. Even his odd fashion sense somehow worked out for him, and his interests (and willingness to fund) regarding pyrotechnical research were always welcome and took the edges of his quirks, even as it reinforced some of the rumors about him.