*800 Personal Development & Journaling/810 Hermit Gaming/Games in Play/Esteomund - Worldbuilding/++Esteomund Meta This page is effectively my "game log" for this character in this world. I'll write some entries as if 800 Personal Development & Journaling/810 Hermit Gaming/Games in Play/Esteomund - Worldbuilding/Trixie Goldspark is writing a diary, and others will be Meta game notes, with various links to keep the story going.

Potential Adventure Hooks

Why Did Trixie Get Fired?
Where Are The Aunts?

The Adventure Begins

Day 1

Trixie: I got fired. The Dean called me into her office and told me that my termination was effective immediately, but that I have thirty days to vacate the apartment the University provided for me. Not like it's a great apartment. Or a great job. But it was a job at the 800 Personal Development & Journaling/810 Hermit Gaming/Games in Play/Esteomund - Worldbuilding/University of Pichetope and that was kind of a big deal back home.

Trixie: This on top of getting kicked out of 800 Personal Development & Journaling/810 Hermit Gaming/Games in Play/Esteomund - Worldbuilding/The Guild of Tinkerers is just too much. I don't know what I'm going to do. I can't go back home to 800 Personal Development & Journaling/810 Hermit Gaming/Games in Play/Esteomund - Worldbuilding/Praft Schotek. It's so boring there. Maybe I'll set off in the world. Make my own maps, instead of constantly copying the maps of others. Why should I have to wait for full Research Professor status before I make my own maps? It's not like I'll ever get promoted to that anyway cuz they fired me.

Trixie: I gotta find some work though. Find a way to pay for travel. I don't really need a place to live. I could sell most of my stuff and just travel with what I can fit in my pack.

Trixie: I just wish I knew why they'd fired me. "Downsizing" is such a bullshit reason.

She begins to pack up her mapmaking supplies and looking around the small Gnomish apartment that had been provided as part of her compensation for her work as an adjunct professor at the university. Mostly she'd taught some freshman classes and graded lots of bookbinding and mapmaking projects. It was boring work really, not what she'd always wanted to do, which was travel the world to catalog lost artifacts and make maps of 800 Personal Development & Journaling/810 Hermit Gaming/Games in Play/Esteomund - Worldbuilding/The Forgotten Zones, those lands that had been sundered during 800 Personal Development & Journaling/810 Hermit Gaming/Games in Play/Esteomund - Worldbuilding/The War Between Viclejan and Chaconor and that had scarce been visited since.

Trixie has a Construct, 800 Personal Development & Journaling/810 Hermit Gaming/Games in Play/Esteomund - Worldbuilding/Stalwart Friend, who is a sentient construct and belongs to the Society for the Recognization of Construct Independence, a radical rights movement aimed at giving sentient constructs citizenship rights and recognition as independent beings without owners. He was built by her aunt, 800 Personal Development & Journaling/810 Hermit Gaming/Games in Play/Esteomund - Worldbuilding/Zana Garrick, a renowned Tinkerer. They are close - when Trixie left her hometown of 800 Personal Development & Journaling/810 Hermit Gaming/Games in Play/Esteomund - Worldbuilding/Praft Schotek, it was with the help of Zana and her half-gnome/800 Personal Development & Journaling/810 Hermit Gaming/Games in Play/Esteomund - Worldbuilding/Half-Elf wife, 800 Personal Development & Journaling/810 Hermit Gaming/Games in Play/Esteomund - Worldbuilding/Mard Garrick.

So it makes sense that Trixie would go to see Zana and Mard to discuss with them her options now that she's lost her job and been kicked out of the Guild.

So that's what she does. She hops on a transit car - run by Crystal Power, of course - to the district where Zana and Mara live. Once there, she finds both shops closed up, and the door to the upstairs apartment locked. This isn't really unusual. Zana and Mard often take a break midday to do their own shopping and errands. Without anything else to do, Trixie decides to wait on the porch for their return and to read a book in the meantime.

After just a couple of chapters, a courier comes running up to the building. "Are you Trixie Goldspark?" he says, and Trixie nods. "This is for you." He hands her a box wrapped in brown paper and tied with string. There's a note attached that simply says, "For: Trixie Love: The Aunts".

The courier gnome runs off - Trixie notices him hopping onto a crystal scooter with a wagonload of packages pulled behind it. Couriers are common in 800 Personal Development & Journaling/810 Hermit Gaming/Games in Play/Esteomund - Worldbuilding/Pipolus - it's the largest Gnome metropolis and center of the nation of 800 Personal Development & Journaling/810 Hermit Gaming/Games in Play/Esteomund - Worldbuilding/Pichetope.

It's not unusual for The Aunts to do this - leave a package for her. It usually means they're leaving town for some conference or other, and there's usually instructions and supplies for caring for whatever needs caring for while they're gone. And it's not even unusual for a package to show up no matter where in the city you are - the Couriers can find people anywhere.

Sitting back on the porch steps, Trixie opens the package. In it, she finds a note, a keychain with several keys on it, and a box of small hand tools - some for digging and excavating, some for tinkering, and even some lockpicking tools.

She opens the note:

Trixie, darling,
It should come as no suprise that we've decided to start traveling. It's been many years since Mard and I have had a good and proper Gnomish Jaunt and we feel the need for one. We've left the keys to the shops and the apartment for you - though you shouldn't need to do much, we've left the shops in capable hands with the managers who will tend to things in our absence, but perhaps you could move into the apartment while we're away, that way you don't have to keep spending money on that dreary hole they put you in on campus.

Speaking of which, if rumors are true, you won't be on campus for much longer anyway, so look at this as an opportunity to branch out. You're free to stay in the apartment, and we've set up a small trust for you - just talk to Gnomish Accountant, and he'll get the deposits going to your account so you can use them as you need them.

Seriously, love, take this time to do you. You've spent decades in that junior adjunct position and you can do so much more.

Love, The Aunts

So now Trixie has an apartment and a small monthly trust stipend - really just enough to survive - so she can do what she wants. Which is explore the world of Esteomund, not just Pichetope, but the whole world as well!