Maxie
Maxie's backstory
“Maxie” (female gnome)
Tinker and Artificer
Maxie comes from a family of gnome Tinkers and Inventors for many generations. As a Guild apprentice with her grandfather, Tapper, she runs “Tapper’s Tinker Shoppe” to earn a business income. Along with an inventory of magical inventions for sale, they repair and mend things from armor to cloths to toys/inventions that they or other guild members have crafted and sold. Oftentimes, while Maxie is minding the shoppe, Tapper is busy in his back room, absorbed in building another invention to sell, usually a useful magical item or toy. It is a potentially lucrative business, growing steadily as more people settle nearby.
Maxie’s grandfather “Tapper” is a practical shop businessman and highly regarded expert Guild member of modest wealth, with a very wide array of skills to fix and invent almost anything -- some of the commoners call him “Mister Fixer”. He delights in creating various toys/devices that people find handy and will buy for utility (like clocks, alarms and magic locks, message stones and such) or entertainment (talking and singing dolls, origami pets and animated everyday objects like stirring spoons for the kitchen). From her grandfather, Maxie learned the many different skills required to be a highly successful Tinker and commercial Inventor.
Maxie’s father “Leo”, on the other hand, had no interest in running the shop. Instead, he delved into researching the deeper aspects of how things work, both magic and mundane, and how they combine and interact using universal laws. More of a scholarly type, he keeps whole books of various engineering designs and sketches that integrate magic with objects, with symbols (magic and math formulas) along most sketches. He has delved into the physics of magic involving force, electromagnetism, thermodynamics, gravity and other physical aspects of phenomena. He is a theoretician and practitioner, an experimental artificer constantly doing research on projects with novel magical inventions (and not without accident in his lab). In guild circles, he is considered somewhat of a wayward eccentric, known mostly amongst the Guild research and experimenter circles.
Maxie’s father is very fond of her and she is destined to follow in his footsteps. They often enter into deep, theoretical discussions behind the magicks of their devices, as well as how magic works in a more universal sense, beyond the magics of their Tinker’s Guilds. He shares with her his visions of what is possible to create as an Artificer. It will be he who later helps Maxie design and build her Defender (and associated Sprite), although he doesn’t know it yet.
Maxie just completed her apprenticeship with Tapper and her younger brother “Bitty” steps in to begin his apprenticeship with Tapper in turn. Maxie and Bitty are close. Bitty is small for a late-teenage gnome and he tends to feel intimidated by larger beings (like humans), but his hands are deft and nimble and he is quick to learn and eager to please.
Properly credentialed by the Guild and free to enter into her own enterprise, Maxie decides that it is time for her to steer her own path. She is eager to see the world and expand her experiences to better her knowledge and skills. She shares her father’s fearless ideals in becoming a master artificer and inventor of many wondrous things (even floating castles in the sky!).
Tinker and Artificer
Maxie comes from a family of gnome Tinkers and Inventors for many generations. As a Guild apprentice with her grandfather, Tapper, she runs “Tapper’s Tinker Shoppe” to earn a business income. Along with an inventory of magical inventions for sale, they repair and mend things from armor to cloths to toys/inventions that they or other guild members have crafted and sold. Oftentimes, while Maxie is minding the shoppe, Tapper is busy in his back room, absorbed in building another invention to sell, usually a useful magical item or toy. It is a potentially lucrative business, growing steadily as more people settle nearby.
Maxie’s grandfather “Tapper” is a practical shop businessman and highly regarded expert Guild member of modest wealth, with a very wide array of skills to fix and invent almost anything -- some of the commoners call him “Mister Fixer”. He delights in creating various toys/devices that people find handy and will buy for utility (like clocks, alarms and magic locks, message stones and such) or entertainment (talking and singing dolls, origami pets and animated everyday objects like stirring spoons for the kitchen). From her grandfather, Maxie learned the many different skills required to be a highly successful Tinker and commercial Inventor.
Maxie’s father “Leo”, on the other hand, had no interest in running the shop. Instead, he delved into researching the deeper aspects of how things work, both magic and mundane, and how they combine and interact using universal laws. More of a scholarly type, he keeps whole books of various engineering designs and sketches that integrate magic with objects, with symbols (magic and math formulas) along most sketches. He has delved into the physics of magic involving force, electromagnetism, thermodynamics, gravity and other physical aspects of phenomena. He is a theoretician and practitioner, an experimental artificer constantly doing research on projects with novel magical inventions (and not without accident in his lab). In guild circles, he is considered somewhat of a wayward eccentric, known mostly amongst the Guild research and experimenter circles.
Maxie’s father is very fond of her and she is destined to follow in his footsteps. They often enter into deep, theoretical discussions behind the magicks of their devices, as well as how magic works in a more universal sense, beyond the magics of their Tinker’s Guilds. He shares with her his visions of what is possible to create as an Artificer. It will be he who later helps Maxie design and build her Defender (and associated Sprite), although he doesn’t know it yet.
Maxie just completed her apprenticeship with Tapper and her younger brother “Bitty” steps in to begin his apprenticeship with Tapper in turn. Maxie and Bitty are close. Bitty is small for a late-teenage gnome and he tends to feel intimidated by larger beings (like humans), but his hands are deft and nimble and he is quick to learn and eager to please.
Properly credentialed by the Guild and free to enter into her own enterprise, Maxie decides that it is time for her to steer her own path. She is eager to see the world and expand her experiences to better her knowledge and skills. She shares her father’s fearless ideals in becoming a master artificer and inventor of many wondrous things (even floating castles in the sky!).