Zoe Boomweld

Appearance: Zoe is a fire-haired goblin fresh into adulthood. She is often dressed in colourful although tattered clothing, but prides herself on being clean even if being neat and tidy is not quite so important. There is little on her to suggest she is a technician or a mage, although an array of pouches attached to her bright-red sash could contain any number of things.

Alignment: True Neutral/Neutral Evil. Zoe is highly prone to being selfish and aiming toward her own personal goals. Regardless of this she sometimes sees fit to do something that is more useful although not necessarily more moral in the long run. She has absolutely no care for faction struggles, even between competing technological disciplines.

Psychology: Zoe is a slightly neurotic goblin, a few short years of fruitless effort and inhaling bizarre chemicals have left her psyche slightly scarred. She maintains youthful curiosity in her still early age and is sociable enough when her neurosis is successfully suppressed.

Background:

Chronicles: Double Standards

Zoe was the daughter of two relatively wealthy goblin magi, being born in a developed section of Undermine and often well spoiled as a result. Her parents were odd in the sense that their care for technology was greatly smaller than that of most goblins, but early on into her childhood she began to seek out technological climes anyway, curious as to why her parents, her mother in particular, were so indifferent and in some cases opposed to it. Initially she was met with limited success, so she grew up being taught the value of magic and pyromancy in particular.

Much to the disappointment of her parents, she was a useless pyromancer. She was adept at controlling raw arcane forces but struggled to refine it into frost or fire permutations; so it was upon this that she worked. On the other hand, at around age sixteen, she came into contact with a (slightly maddened) inventor whom she managed to get some semblance of understanding of technological concepts from. Before she could discover any sort of talent beyond the basics, her would-be tutor died to an as-yet unconfirmed chemical poisoning. “Assuming” fresh control of his workshop by legally questionable means, she began to experiment herself (ignoring the inherent warning in the death of her friend) with technological concepts.

Much to her parents’ horror, they would later discover that she had been frequently combining her inventions with arcane elements in lieu of better or ideal parts. One particular incident involving experiments with a Sparklite Welder and several electrical cords gave rise to the nickname "Arc", although it was in fact used as an insult as it bothered Zoe quite a lot at the time. Technomagical concepts were something they despised, and even many of the engineering-inclined caste abhorred this mixing of disciplines. She was mostly disowned by magical and well enough excluded by technological circles followed by severe avoidance from her parents. Losing respect and wealth fast, Zoe chose to hit it out on her own at around nineteen, giving up on the prejudices, politics and laundering of Kezan. Leaving with little other than a few half-finished trinkets and a handful of coins, she stowed away on a trade vessel heading for Ratchet.

Although this stowing away was successful, she quickly found out how little her handful of coin was worth – it was likely that the exchanger from macaroons to coins was thoroughly ripping her off – and ended up stealing, filching and salvaging parts as well as food. Resorting to mobile vagrancy, she still lives in this manner as she attempts to find her place in the world. It is her dream to bring her technomagical discipline into the spotlight of excellence, even if she firmly knows just how far away that is, let alone her being good enough at it to do so.