Iridiah

= Iridiah Tinkerbotham =
Gender: Female
Faction: Alliance
Race: Gnome
Class: Rogue
Profession: Miner/Goblin Engineer 
Hobbies: Fishing, Cooking, Lockpicking, Detonations, Mayhem 
Age: 73 
Guild: TheBlackCompany
Usually found in: Stormwind
== Appearance ==
Small of stature even for a gnome, the young rogue has an impatient manner, a rather careless haircut, and a knack for running into things. Look closer, however, and beneath the apparent disarray, you may note the calculating glint in her steady gaze.
Her leather armor is well-scarred. At her hips she wears a pair of mismatched but wicked-looking knives, their blades sticky with some greenish residue. Her fingertips are stained black with grease or ink, and there is an inky smudge on her nose. Around her lingers a curious mingled odor of blastpowder and toast.
== History ==
Iridiah Tinkerbotham was born in Gnomeregan, elder of the two daughters of Pippin ("Pip") Tinkerbotham and Linnea Pebblekeep. Pip Tinkerbotham was a noted Gnomish craftsman and engineer, and himself the son of Tiffin Hotstockings, renowned inventor of the first pair of reasonably safe electric socks. Linnea Pebblekeep was a geologist and archaeologist who worked closely with the dwarves of the Explorer's League in Ironforge. 
Their daughter Iridiah was from her earliest childhood an inquisitive and headstrong child, fond of mischief and rough-and-tumble games. She was also, however, devoted to and fiercely protective of her dreamy, distractable little sister Saskiah, and she showed a remarkable aptitude for the engineer's craft, which delighted her father. However, it became apparent as Iridiah reached adolescence that the engineering that most intrigued her was not the clever and useful craft of the gnomes, but the dangerous and destructive devices of the rival goblins. When the time came for her to take her own name, she became Iridiah Powderfuse. She began to conduct risky, unsupervised late-night experiments in her father's workshop. Pippin, a pacific soul, was appalled and did everything he could to persuade his rebellious daughter to his own line of work, but her nature was such that the more he pushed her the firmer she stood. Their disagreement finally came to a head late one night when Iridiah's secret tinkerings set off a detonation in her father's workshop that destroyed a year's worth of work on a prototype battery-operated umbrella, as well as a very handsome rock collection that Linnea had given Pip for their 50th wedding anniversary. In an unaccustomed fury, Pip called his daughter a goblin changeling, and handed down an ultimatum: she was to learn a useful and creative trade, or she was to make herself scarce. Anyone acquainted with gentle Pippin Tinkerbotham would know that he could not have meant such a thing in seriousness; nevertheless, in the small hours of the morning, Iridiah slipped out of Gnomeregan without a backward look.
 
It is unknown exactly where her travels brought her over the course of the next few years, but when she turned up at last in Gadgetzan and presented herself to the Goblin Engineering Master for training, she had developed a fluency in Dark Iron, the ability to swear like a sailor, and a remarkable skill with sharp objects and poisonous substances. Though the goblins were initially wary of the brash and peculiar gnome, they soon recognized her as a kindred soul in her capacity for drink, her taste for other people's money, and her childlike delight in blowing things to smithereens. She remained in Gadgetzan for the next several years studying with the goblin demolitions experts and cultivating several bad habits. 
During the wars with the Horde, some residual loyalty to the gnomish and dwarven people led her to furnish explosives occasionally to the Alliance side, in addition to acting as a middleperson for the goblin weapons-merchants. Via one of her arms-dealing transactions, she met the gnome warlock Tocke von Kleinentod, who was serving Stormwind as a mercenary at the time. Rumor suggests it was Tocke who first brought Iridiah's various talents to the attention of SI:7; what is clear is that she was soon running covert and highly-lucrative errands for that group. She had also, despite having utterly failed until this point to evince the least romantic inclination, fallen hard for the dashing young warlock. The two of them were soon wed in a goblin civil ceremony in Booty Bay. With the outbreak of the Third War, they both returned to the front on behalf of the Alliance. 
 
Shortly after the war's eruption, Iridiah was surprised to receive in the mail a cryptic letter. It was from her mother, Linnea Pebblekeep; she told Iridiah that her little sister Saskiah was demonstrating great promise as a mage. Her parents had decided that Saskiah would be better off studying in one of the larger cities of the Alliance, and Linnea was therefore sending Saskiah alone to Kharanos, and hoped that Iridiah would return to Dun Morogh to escort her sister safely the rest of the way to Ironforge or to Stormwind. Linnea would not be able to take Saskiah herself, the letter explained, because certain developments at an excavation deep below Gnomeregan demanded her urgent attention; she hoped Iridiah was and would remain well, and that she would look after Saskiah. At the bottom of the letter, a hastily-scrawled note in Pip's handwriting read only, "Love, Papa." 
 
Though wary of her parents' sudden and mysterious contact after so many years, Iri was touched by the thought of seeing Saskiah again. After a brief discussion with Tocke, she set out alone for Dun Morogh to find her sister and bring her back to Stormwind. 
 
Upon her arrival in Kharanos, she discovered her little sister staying alone in a room at the Thunderbrews' inn. The two sisters had a joyful - and, though you will not hear it from Iridiah, a somewhat tearful - reunion. Iridiah was disturbed to learn, however, that Saskiah had brought with her to Kharanos little else but the clothes she was wearing, some coin, and her beloved pet frog, Mr. Hatmuddle. Their parents, Saskiah explained to her big sister, had apparently arrived at the decision to send Saskiah away quite abruptly; they had awakened her late one night, pressed the letter to Iridiah into her hands with instructions to mail it in Kharanos, bundled her into her warmest clothes, handed her a small purse of money, and hustled her through the upper tunnels of Gnomeregan and out into Dun Morogh. From there, Saskiah and Mr. Hatmuddle had made their own way to Kharanos. There had been no word from Linnea or Pip since then. As Iridiah listened to her sister's account, she grew increasingly restless and troubled. She left Saskiah once more in the kind care of the Thunderbrews, and made her solitary way back to Gnomeregan. 
What had happened to Gnomeregan in the interim since Saskiah's hasty departure is by now common knowledge. Iridiah was absent for seven days. When she returned at last to Kharanos, weary, soot-stained, and much the worse for wear, all she would say to Saskiah of her findings was that their parents had been lost, and were dead. She has not spoken of her final journey to Gnomeregan since, not even to her husband Tocke. She did, however, discard the surname Powderfuse, taking in its place her late father's last name, Tinkerbotham. 
== Present Day ==
Iridiah returned to Stormwind, bringing Saskiah with her, and saw her sister safely established in her lessons at the Mage Tower before returning to the front. With the war's end, she and Tocke also settled in Stormwind, where she now helps run the mercenary band The Black Company, and keeps a watchful eye on her little sister. When she is not off on an assigment for the Company, she can often be found frequenting The Slaughtered Lamb tavern in Stormwind's Mage Quarter.
Category:Alliance 
Category:Gnome 
Category:Rogue 
Category:Miner (A) 
Category:Engineer (A)