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Troels, the Blue Kobold
Background
Troels (Vanar for “Spear of God”) was born a human in a simple herding village in the mountains of Vanien, one of the semi-Viking nations on the shores of the Sea of Karrak. It was a simple life, and about age ten, he was trusted enough to look after a flock in one of the less nearby pastures.
In the early spring of his eleventh year, Troels was trying to bring the flock back to the village before a nasty storm hit: he failed. The track he was walking along washed out from under him, sending the boy down the long, muddy slope of the mountainside, and into the spring-melt strengthened river. He was washed downstream for far longer than he was remotely happy with, and managed to struggle ashore at the mouth of a side-stream, which he followed into a cave, and later passed out from exhaustion and hypothermia, his last thoughts on wanting to live.
Master Kuumaarke, Storm-Dragon magus, sensed Troels' spontaneous-goblinization event from leagues away.
The next morning the mage found the sleeping child curled up on a ball, sheltered by the upper jaw of the skull of the great storm dragon Sompek. The promise of food and hearth was more than enough to get the confused child to follow Kuumaarke back to his simple home, deep in the Vale of Last Slumbers.
Over the next seven years, Troels became Kuumaarke's housekeeper, groundskeeper, herdsmaster, apprentice, and eventually, friend. It isn't that he didn't try to escape the vale, but the stream he followed that fateful night seemed to have vanished. (Kuumaarke occasionally muttered cryptically about meddlesome dragon spirits).
Finally, on the Spring Equinox, Kuumaarke declared that his student had learned all he was capable from simple instruction, and it was time that he ventured into the wider world to broadened his horizons.
“Master, how exactly am I going to get to the outside world? It isn't as if I haven't tried to escape the vale since you brought me here.”
“An excellent question. I've prepared some equipment, and a pack for you. You should examine it for suitability.”
And once the young kobold was distracted, Kuumaarke opened the Dragon Gate beneath his feet, and dumped Taoels unceremoniously in the shadow of The Ent, outside Woodsdrop.