Esymires Kalish

**Esymires Kalish** was a Kassarid known for his brilliantly inventive mind and quirky mannerisms. Born on the archipelago's central island of Eukanos, he grew up in the picturesque seaside village of Kitheron in a humble family of fishers.

Esymires' work was funded by a mixture of the sale of patented items and state sponsorship, leaving him free to wander pretty much as he liked. He took advantage of his financial freedom by traveling broadly.

## Early Life

Esymires' first flash of brilliance brought him to public attention when he managed to sneak into a village council meeting. The council was interested in collecting a commission from the village's fishers for the purpose of hiring a cartographer to chart the various sandbars that lay beneath the waves. Debate raged over the amount to charge, when, as the story goes, suddenly there was a quiet cough.

Young Esymires, who was seven years old at the time, stepped forward with a bit of old planking he had salvaged from a derelict boat. On it he had used bits of sharpened fish bone to scratch in fine lines an elaborate map of the waters of Kitheron, with sandbars and other underwater obstructions clearly marked. The crowd murmured appreciatively, and all the more when Esymires told of how he had made the map. He used bits of driftwood stuck in a grid on the sandy shore at regular intervals, then stretched prone to peer down these fixed sight lines. He used this humble mechanism to note where boats veered to avoid the shallower water. Working in this way--with eyes on the water and hands moving along the rough wood--he was able to map much of the area with surprising accuracy.

Since that golden moment, and as a token of thanks for the fame and tourism Kitheron has enjoyed in the wake of Esymires' later renown, the village has erected a bronze sculpture in the sand where the boy drew his map. It consists of a grid of crooked driftwood sticking out of the sand, and a boy lying on his stomach and staring eastward over the sea.

Emboldened by his success, Esymires found the floodgates of his imagination opened, and he began to draw all the wondrous things blooming in his mind. Within weeks of the council, he took to scrawling with blackened firewood on just about any flat surface, to include the walls of his home. The home and its remarkable drawings have since been preserved as a monument to the brilliant inventor.

The drawings weren't enough, though. Esymires began bargaining with villagers to collect scraps of whatever they no longer wanted, and used these castoff pieces to make his ideas real. Within a few years, he found himself in a comfortable workshop on one of the cliffs looking over the sea to the east; the space was necessary to house his sprawling collection.

## Later Life

It wasn't long before word of the intelligent boy spread, first through Kitheron, then to the Kassarid port capital of Phaleia, and from there to the major cities of mainland Edelenn. Commissions began pouring in, and the inventor quickly found himself inundated with engineering requests ranging from creating a fountain in a Vondheider noble's mountain-top manor to delivering a city from annual flooding. In each case Esymires' work combined functionality with artistry, and his involvement in a project quickly became accepted as a guarantee of an elegant and satisfactory solution.

## Notable Inventions

Plenty of helpful inventions came from the Kassarid's fecund mind. Here is a small sampling:

* *Gravity Roadway.* An early project. The gravity roadway was a result of a request from the dwarves of southern Rindis who sought a more effective means of transporting ore from their high delves into the smelting forges of the valleys. Iron rails made it possible for carts to wend their way downward, complete with a complex braking system. A heavy winching system allowed the cars to return to the top, albeit they could carry almost no cargo during that trip. This was a glaring oversight that prompted Esymires to consider the roadway a total failure, and was a project he always intended to return to later in life.
* *Steam Gates of Shtazhkeshk.* The leadership of the largest city in Trand had a problem. Its iron gates were a symbol of the city's power and a reminder of its rich history, but they were exceedingly heavy. The matter came to a head after the city narrowly avoided capture in one of its many conflicts. The city's soldiers managed to shut the gates on the approaching enemy, but only just in time, and with massive effort that could only be attributed to fortune. As a result, the city's elders called upon Esymires to find a way to keep the historic gates while making it possible to shut them with greater ease. He modified the hinges and supplied engines that operated on steam, making it possible for a single person to open and close them.
* *Kitchens of Amaj Jibari.* One of Esymires' most challenging later commissions. A powerful regional ruler in Rahajmanath commissioned a kitchen which could run itself. While it still required some human intervention, the clever use of steam, machine, and hydraulic systems immediately made the kitchens one of the wonders of the world.

## Workshop Locations

Esymires' ever-working mind rarely permitted him rest, and this was evident in the many workshops he established throughout Edelenn. Here is where his workshops were known to be located:

* Kitheron, Kassara
* Flenmoor, Moriga
* Sparse grasslands in eastern Seth-Arban
* Ebendele, Muwaka

## Epithets and Impact on Popular Culture

Through his long life Esymires earned many nicknames, to include Esymires the Brilliant, Esymires the Daft, Esymires the Polymath, and the Little Man from Kassara. Esymires himself never paid any heed to these epithets, wrapped up as he was in his work.

Because of his wide impact on the continent of Edelenn, Esymires was also known as the Engineer of Edelenn.

The word *esymirean* is applied to one who is vastly intelligent and capable of great things, but exhibits strange behavior. It may also be applied to an inanimate object of immensely practical but quirky application.

## Appearances

Esymires appeared in the following episodes:

* *Season 1, Ep 12 - You Can Always Go Downtown*
* *Season 1, Ep 13 - At the Library*