Swindle

Breed - Fae
Gender - Male
Element - Earth
Talent – Nine lives (or possibly nine hundred).
Faction - Gatherers
Role – Sub-par junk dealer and scammer, occasionally employed as a thief.
Dark Secret – Still has a serious crush on one of the male Fae that bullied him.
Traits – Twitchy and easily startled, severe anxiety issues, fidgets constantly, considers himself a talented salesman and conman (is neither), blatantly obvious tells when lying, speaks rapidly (and rarely thinks first), apologizes to/flatters others insincerely, clearly untrustworthy.
Appearance – Body is encased in a generous layer of partially-hardened maple syrup, which oozes slowly but steadily from his scales. As such, he is quite literally sticky-fingered.
Sins – Greed, deception, petty theft.
Likes – Winter (particularly when it snows), easy marks/victims, finally being free of his family, shaved ice (but not with maple syrup).
Dislikes - Cleaning himself (v difficult), anything that melts his carapace, his recurring nightmares (bullying PTSD), being used as a dipping sauce.
Theme Music – Friends Like You (Bowling for Soup)

Those rare Fae nests blessed by the lifeblood of an ancient tree typically give rise to uniquely talented and extraordinary hatchlings. Hatchlings with the innate ability to divine the will of the Gladekeeper. Hatchlings with bodies comprised entirely of living amber. Even hatchlings who can understand the secret languages of the natural world, quite literally conversing with the stars in the sky.

Unless, of course, that ancient tree is a maple. Then, you just get Swindle.

Hatched with a thick coating of maple syrup on his body, it was assumed that he would have some great talent or miraculous ability. Or perhaps not. As his childhood progressed, it became painfully clear that this strange, sticky carapace was the only unique attribute the young Fae possessed.

He was widely and openly regarded as a disappointment, and subjected to no small amount of teasing by his peers. Well, at least it began as teasing - hatchlings daring one-another to lick him, or attempting to stick small objects to his scales while his back was turned.

When Swindle reached the cusp of adolescence, that teasing transitioned into flat-out bullying. His peers delighted in being cruel towards him – pinning the Fae’s wings against solid surfaces until he became hopelessly stuck, coating him with assorted dirt and debris that would take hours to scrape off, and insinuating that the only use he would ever have in life was as a snack for a larger dragon or beast.

Swindle loathed every minute of it, but the Fae clan was the only home that he had ever known. These bullies were his siblings and relations, and he saw no other choice than to resign himself to their cruelty – particularly after one of his numerous and increasingly desperate attempts to peel his sticky carapace from his body failed disastrously, quite nearly resulting in his death.

The Fae had quite nearly reached maturity when the situation came to a head. His peers bribed a winged beast to terrorize him, to pretend that the sticky little dragon would make an ideal snack. Unfortunately, that’s exactly what he was.

The bribe went awry – carried off in the beast’s beak, it seemed that Swindle was doomed to become its next meal. However, he’d had a great deal of practice escaping from unfortunate situations. Slipping himself free from the outermost layer of his carapace, he made an escape - only to discover that he had been carried for countless miles, and that he was hopelessly lost in the vastness of Sornieth.

Encountering other dragons proved to be a traumatic experience, but not a painful one. The ruffians who found him determined that he would be of at least some use – they had been searching for a dragon small enough and desperate enough to maintain their clan’s junkyard.

It was a terrible job - leaving his sticky scales perpetually coated with filth and debris – but he did it anyway. Deemed useful by his peers in this new clan, he was not subjected to any of the teasing or bullying that had been so commonplace in his original home.

As such, his confidence grew, and he soon realized that his circumstances could be exploited to his own benefit. After all, Swindle was nothing if not a survivor, making the best of any unfortunate situation. As such, he began to steal small trinkets from the junkyard, pawning them off to travellers and passers-through for paltry sums of treasure.

Typically, the worth of these objects was exaggerated – the Fae was running the most basic of scams. Unfortunately, one of the dragons whom he attempted to scam was a Coatl named Thundercloud. She herself was a master thief, and Swindle found himself horribly out of his depth. Thundercloud, however, was far from angry. In her opinion, the Fae was hilarious and adorable, and clearly had the potential to become a more talented trickster.

As such, the Coatl has been giving him lessons in the fine art of theft. It’s best to start them young, after all, and Swindle is still several years shy of maturity. Despite his relative poverty, they’ve reached an agreement for the payment of his lessons – the Fae allows Thundercloud to select any items that she desires from the variety of trinkets that he steals.

He is painfully aware that the Coatl belongs to a dangerous clan, and wants absolutely nothing to do with them. What he doesn’t know is that the thefts that she has been coaching him to perform are in fact on behalf of that clan. The items that she claims from him are ones that formerly belonged to members of the Clan of Second Chances, many possessing either magical, monetary or sentimental value to her clan mates.

It’s a matter of inter-clan politics. The Unrepentant Clan is expected to tolerate the frequent and unsubtle petty thefts of Swindle’s current clan, as allowing this supposed defiance ensures that the ruffians remain satisfied with their agreement of truce.

If Thundercloud was to be caught stealing from her neighbors’ clan, it would upset the delicate balance of that truce, likely sparking an armed conflict – in fact, Dusk has explicitly forbidden her to do so.

If the Fae is to be caught stealing from his own clan, however, it’s likely that the ruffians will merely execute him – and as far as the Coatl is concerned, his life is no value. He is merely her pawn.

Of course, neither of them yet knows that Swindle can’t actually die.