Fizzelwick - The Brass Dragon Wyrmling

Role in Its Society:

Fizzelwick has appointed himself the unofficial Chronicler of Crossroads at a sun-baked waystation on the edge of the Wanderlust Plains where four major caravan routes converge. He is three years old, roughly the size of a large dog, and has more opinions about regional trade politics than most merchants ten times his age and considerably more years of experience. He does not guard the waystation. He inhabits it — perched on the roof of the water trough shelter or coiled around the signpost, intercepting every traveler who passes through with the focused energy of a creature that has discovered conversation and cannot believe everyone isn't doing it constantly.

The waystation's human caretaker, a retired caravan driver named Orvett, has developed a carefully negotiated arrangement with Fizzelwick: the wyrmling keeps watch at night (he sleeps very little and finds darkness boring anyway), and Orvett provides a daily ration of copper coins for Fizzelwick to sort, count, and reorganize — an activity that occupies him for approximately forty minutes before he needs to talk to someone again. The arrangement works. Orvett has described it as "having a very small, very warm, very opinionated business partner."

Fizzelwick is not dangerous. He is, however, relentless, and the distinction only matters until he starts asking questions about something you'd rather not discuss.

Appearance Description:

Fizzelwick is a wyrmling, which means he is roughly four feet long from snout to tail-tip, with the compact, coiled energy of a creature that has not yet grown into the size his confidence already occupies. His scales are a warm, burnished brass — not the deep gold of his metallic cousins, but a lighter, almost sandy amber-brass that catches sunlight with a faint reddish warmth, like copper just before it tarnishes. The scales along his underbelly are paler, shifting toward cream-brass, and the frills that run along his jawline and neck edge are thin and delicate, slightly translucent at the margins when backlit by direct sun.

His snout is blunter than a chromatic dragon's, with a slightly upturned quality at the nostril that gives him a permanently inquisitive expression reinforced by large, vivid amber eyes that track movement with the focused attention of a creature that is simultaneously listening to you and composing its next four questions. His horns are small nubs at this age, curving gently backward. His wings, when spread, are a slightly deeper brass with thin membrane between the finger-bones that shows warm amber when held up to the sun. He smells faintly of hot sand and the specific metallic warmth of a coin left in a sunny pocket.

Backstory:

Fizzelwick hatched from an egg that his mother, a young adult brass dragon named Varreth Sundrift, buried in a warm sandstone shelf on the southern edge of the Wanderlust Plains before departing on what she described as "a necessary extended journey" and what Fizzelwick, who has had three years to develop opinions about this, describes as "a very rude way to begin a relationship." Varreth left a small hoard of copper coins, a collection of carved wooden animals, and a note — which Fizzelwick cannot read yet but has memorized the visual shape of and is determined to decode.

He found the waystation at eight months old, following the sound of conversation from half a mile away with the single-minded purpose of a creature that has just discovered that other beings exist and is furious it took so long. Orvett, who initially attempted to chase him off with a broom, lasted approximately four minutes before Fizzelwick started asking questions about the broom's construction and Orvett's career history, and the negotiation devolved from there into the current arrangement.

In three years, Fizzelwick has accumulated a working knowledge of every major caravan route on the Wanderlust Plains, the approximate financial status of eleven trading families, the travel schedules of two Brightcrown noble couriers, and the preferred resting spots of a migratory thunderbird flock that passes through twice annually. He has not yet figured out what to do with any of this information, but he is confident he will.