Marnik Coilthumb – Ventworks Engineer

Name: Marnik Coilthumb
Race: Gnome
Role/Class: Ventworks Engineer
Appearance: Marnik Coilthumb is wiry and restless, as if his bones were designed for climbing inside spaces no sane person would enter. His hair is a wild shock of dark curls singed lighter at the tips, and his eyebrows are permanently uneven—one shortened by a misjudged steam burst he insists was “worth it.” His eyes are bright hazel and always darting, tracking pipes, valves, and ceiling seams like they’re part of a living puzzle.

He wears a layered ventworks coat reinforced with leather patches and stitched-in metal ribs, with buckled straps that keep tools from swinging while he climbs. Around his neck hangs a copper respirator mask with interchangeable filters, and his gloves are fingerless on the right hand—because he claims he “needs to feel the vibrations.” A coil of thin chain, a bundle of chalk, and a compact wrench-hammer ride at his belt, along with a satchel full of odd brass fittings that somehow always fit the problem at hand.

Backstory

Marnik came to Thorn’del chasing stories: cliff-forges carved into living stone, smelting pits that glow like contained sunsets, and vent chimneys that breathe with the storm wind. He apprenticed under a respected engineer, learned the maps, learned the math, and then learned the truth nobody prints on guild plaques: the Bluffs are always moving, even when the stone looks still.

A pressure event in the Ventworks killed three workers and nearly ruptured a furnace line. The guild called it unavoidable. Marnik called it lazy. He started crawling the ductways after hours, chalking hairline cracks and marking “quiet spots” where airflow should have been. He found shortcuts, illegal bypass valves, and a hidden sabotage wedge jammed into an exhaust throat—small enough to miss, big enough to turn the whole system into a bomb.

Now, Marnik is the Crucible District’s unofficial pressure-safety savant. When the vents sing wrong, Brunna calls him. When glow-lamps flicker under heat haze, Helja asks him. The guild doesn’t love him—he’s too loud, too curious, too willing to shut down work lines—but the workers do, because he’s the one willing to crawl into the breathing stone to keep them alive.