Friz

Friz Bottletop is a Gnome Artificer introduced in the premiere episode of Legends of Sha'oghal.

Backstory
'''“Uhtred Einarsson, get outta my workshop, will ya? Go find your father and bother him for a time; can’t you see past your nose that I’m busy here?” Friz waved the sword he was working on menacingly toward Rex, the end glowing with a multitude of oranges and reds as the heated metal cooled. “I said I’d work the forge for a day in return for some time in your father’s workshop. I never agreed to watchin’ after you, nor to answering your mountain of questions!”'''

'''Rex looked a little saddened but cautiously stepped back out of reach of the cantankerous gnome and the business end of his work. “Ok, ok, by the Absolute I’ll go. It’s just….well how am I ever meant to learn anything from you if I don’t ask?”'''

'''“Listen to me, Uhtred, you’re barely out of your father’s britches. You’re like a pebble next to a boulder, and you need to get your head on straight, too. Your father tells me you’ve been talking up all that nonsense about becomin’ a god!”'''

"Deification. My ascension to becoming Absolute. By no measure do I assume I will become as powerful as them, but I do believe... No, it is determined that I will Ascend."

'''“I tell you now lad, all that’s gonna get you is a heap load of trouble and then it’ll be down to me and your father to clean it up! Far better to keep your head down, learn a trade and work hard. There are Thirteen gods because the law says so, and if you say otherwise too often to the wrong people, well you’ve seen what they do to heretics!”'''

'''“I’ll keep it to myself for now. And I’ll stay quiet if I can just sit and watch, I promise.” Rex looked down at the gnome with a sheepish half smile.'''

'''“Well if you keep quiet and it’ll keep you out of trouble then you can stay lad. Make yourself useful and grab those tongs. You can hold the blade while I work it with the hammer.”''' The Bottletop family were once a small but proud clan of gnomes who dwelled at the foot of the Shimmering Peaks. Renowned for their tinkering skills, the Bottletops were courted by traders from far and wide, though many gnomes would grumble about outsiders coming into the village and throw dirty looks at Ol Pa Bottletop.

Friz was a young gnome back then, way less grumpy than he is now and keen to learn the ways of the tinkerer. “It’s tradition” his father would tell him. All the Bottletops had been tinkerers, a long line of them since before there had been gnomes on the Peaks. And so it was that Friz became an apprentice to his Ol Pa.

Perhaps this is why Friz finds the boy so infuriating sometimes. He’s got his head in the clouds, thinking about methods of making himself a god… when all Friz wants is someone reliable to pass his skills on to. He’s getting up there in gnome years and it won’t be long before he has to put his tinker toys down for the last time.

Before he met A’nar Bjournsen, Friz had barely stepped foot outside the village, let alone Mithjall. After the war between the longshanks clans many of the old great families of the Gnome and Dwarf were displaced. To see so many of his fellow kinsmen without a sturdy home to keep warm...it pains him to think about it.

Never having married and with no heir to carry on the good family name, decided years ago that he would put his considerable (in his eyes) talents to use and help those less fortunate than him. Many dwarfs and gnomes suffer at the hands of raiders - orc, goblin, human or otherwise; it seems none of the higher-ups safe in their luxurious undermountain dwellings care to do a thing about it.

But Friz is well aware his grand plan is going to cost gold, a lot of gold. While he makes a decent wage working for A’nar at his forge (and teaching his pestering son), it barely covers costs for his latest endeavor (whatever that may be). So many times Friz has been turned down by potential patrons for his latest madcap inventions. He knows with just the right gadget and the shrewdest investment, he’ll be able to make his fortune and plough it into his gnomanitarian efforts before orc raiders have carried the last gnome clansmen off the side of the Shimmering Peaks to stew in their cooking pots.

These longshanks in Logantach, though…none of them seem interested in Friz and his latest gadget or toy. Word has gone around that the gnome artificer has failed to complete his contracts on more than one occasion. It’s not all his fault, though; fate itself is out to get him! Materials get lost in transit to the city, no doubt fenced off for coin. And when they did make it, their quality is always subpar, causing his inventions to malfunction. Even now at A’nar’s shop – too often the metals cast in the furnace would show weakness upon cooling, becoming too brittle for their intended purpose. It was as if the Thirteen Gods themselves had cursed him.

Heis never pleasant to be around when one of his gadgets fail, too. Friz, like a lot of older gnomes, has a short temper, especially when things aren’t going his way. Gnomes don’t have the best social skills at the best of times and older gnomes can be so cantankerous that they can’t even stand their own company.

Friz isn’t daft though. He realizes that in order to make the coin he needs for his masterwork he’s going to have to earn it the hard way. He’s begun calculating how much he can make turning in goblin heads to the Dwarfholds in Mithjall. That’ll get him started. If he could find himself a dragon hoard, well that’d do just fine, if he lived to tell the tale of course.

But who could he call on to help? As a crotchety old gnome Friz doesn’t make friends easy. Maybe the boy, he’s daft enough to say yes to an adventure or two, right? As long as he doesn’t go on about becoming a god or pester him too often.

Friz feels only a small amount of guilt at the thought of putting other people in harms way. It’s for a good cause! he keeps telling himself. And before the day is done, if Uhtred has had some sense knocked into him, maybe he’ll actually make a fine apprentice after all. All they needed now was a couple of marks (he’d never call them that, of course) to fill out the group and they’d have themselves a party, ready to explore and loot those old hollows and secret places left behind after the longshanks war.