Phifer Trickfuse

Art by http://kottkrig.tumblr.com/

A Short Summary

## Description

### Appearance

She’s short and she’s dead.  With the obvious out of the way, there is not much else that is remarkable about Phifer.  She has straw-like, gray, and apparently untamable hair (often decorated with flowers), and a shiny brass prosthetic nose decorated with delicate filigree designs.  She occasionally tries to conceal her mottled skin with powder, so depending on her effort level she either looks a sickly greenish-purple or pale as the driven snow.

Her bright blue eyes are sunken and heavily-lidded, often droopy from apparent exhaustion.  Though the undead need no sleep, Phifer appears constantly on the verge of nodding off.  She has abysmal posture, not unlike that of a beached jellyfish, and can’t seem to go longer than twenty seconds without a dramatic yawn.

Despite her excessively lazy demeanor, she’s quite a snappy dresser, and ever so practical.  Constantly carrying the tools of her trade, Phifer can be heard from a mile off, thanks to the jingling of a dozen glass vials at her waist.  If she is not wearing a clean silk cravat (missing only on a hot day or if she is hard at work), one would be able to clearly see the wound in her neck that killed her, and if she leans her head back a bit, it will even come wide open so that you can see straight down into her trachea!  An exciting party trick, to be sure.

Absolutely useless in a fight, Phifer rarely carries a weapon on her person.  Instead, she is nearly always accompanied by a loyal bodyguard named Caskethead.  He may be a geist, but he’s quite well-trained and he hardly smells at all, really.

### Personality

Phifer was once quiet, mild-mannered, and immensely focused, but death has changed her somewhat.  She no longer cares much for keeping her opinions to herself; instead, she speaks her mind and demands to be heard.  Manners are no longer her top priority, either, nor is suffering fools, but perhaps the most drastic shift in her personality is her newly discovered-- well, apathy.  Where once she used to be energetic and dedicated, Phife is now quite lazy and lackadaisical.  Given a second chance at life, she’s decided she can relax a bit.  Or a lot.  She can be moody, but more often than not she just goes with the flow.

A little bit vain, Phife cares more for what people think about her appearance than what they think of her attitude.  She adorns herself in flowers and bright, cheerful pastels, and often powders her face to conceal her sickly appearance.  With her pouches full of herbs and naturalistic garb, she might almost resemble some sort of strange gnomish druid.  This could not be farther from the truth.

While she continues her alchemical research – often using herself as a test subject, since she can withstand nearly every adverse effect imaginable – she has also taken up the role of physician to make a bit of a living (no pun intended).  Her bedside manner, however, leaves much to be desired.  Indeed, she seems to delight in making her patients as uncomfortable as possible, employing bad jokes, awkward idioms, and brutal honesty to make people squirm.  Some speculate this satisfies some latent need she has as a result of her undead condition, as she seems utterly incapable of the violence that drives most other death knights.  In fact, her only means of protecting herself seems to be her anti-magic aura, her undead bodyguards, and a clever application of alchemical bombs.

### ---Locked Files (*Please note that this section is in locked company files; it should be treated as OOC knowledge)*

In life, Phifer was a scientist dedicated to curing gnome leprosy.  One of the greatest scourges of her people – and all but ignored by the greater portion Alliance unless they were showing up just to slaughter the infected – Phife considered finding its cure to be her calling in life, and often took great risks in service to her research.  For many years, luck was on her side, but eventually that luck ran out when she was exposed to an irradiated sample and contracted the disease herself.  Before the leprosy could ravage her mind, Phifer decided organize her data and neatly pack up her research notes, sending them off to Ironforge to ensure her work wasn’t for naught.

What happened in those next few weeks became a vague blur, but the next thing she knew, she was standing in a cold, dark room, surrounded by chanting hooded figures and the smell of decay.  Her body – and her data – had been retrieved by the Cult of the Damned, and they had apparently decided that her knowledge of epidemiology and disease was too valuable to be allowed to perish with her.  She had attempted to kill herself, the hooded figures explained, by slitting her own throat before the leprosy could ravage her mind, but the Cult of the Damned had brought her back and given her a second chance.  She should be grateful, they told her, but Phifer had been ripped from the peace of death in order to serve them.

And serve them she did, for a time.  What else could she do?  They had made her into a monster, and she had nowhere else to go.  But it did not escape her that the gash along her throat – the wound that had apparently killed her – went from right to left, not left to right.  How could it have been self-inflicted, if she was right-handed?  No, someone had murdered her (someone rather incompetent, at that) and she suspected it was the work of her new overlords.  They wanted what she knew to help them advance the scourge, but she would rather die – again – than give that to them.

Breaking the bonds of her servitude had been more difficult than she imagined, but after honing a mastery of anti-magic over the course of several years, she was able to rid herself their mental control.  It helped, of course, that they never expected sweet, soft-spoken Phifer to betray them.  Everyone always underestimates the gnome.

Phifer fled, stealing what she could of her research in the process.  She is sure they are probably hunting her for it, but she simply cannot bring herself to destroy any of it.  Instead, she hopes to take them out first.

If, you know, she gets around to it.

## In Modan Co

Phifer serves in Modan Co's medical division.