Hix

Hix is a goblin alchemist from the Portal Goblins in the Everwinter. Unique among his kind, he turned against his kin and helped Wayland destroy Tolernt City.

## Description

Hix is short and scrawny at 3'3" tall and 34 lb. He has green skin, red eyes, and at 21-years-old he already has white hair and a white goat-patch on his chin. He wears a chain shirt and carries a small launching crossbow at his hip. A pair of goggles and a blacksmith's apron help to protect him while working with caustic alchemical substances.

## History

Hix was born in Tolernt City. His father, Geir, was an alchemist who had been drafted into the goblin army and his mother was a glassblower from Tolernt City. Hix's parents hardly knew each other since their meeting had been a one-night encounter. After Hix was born and weaned, his mother tracked down his father at Tolernt Castle and left Hix to him. Hix has only fleeting memories of his mother.

### Childhood

Hix was raised as an alchemist. This included learning to read and write alchemical formulae, a major taboo in goblin society. To avoid this, goblin alchemists disguise their books as small locked boxes, and only read and write in privacy.

As a result, Hix was raised in a counter-cultural environment, one where reading was accepted as a good thing. However, reading itself was not the largest impact on the subculture among goblin alchemists, but rather the freedom to read and write whatever they felt like with the knowledge that anyone else who could read it would never willingly share it with someone who could not. This allowed goblin alchemists to express their dissatisfaction with the status quo of goblin society without having to say it and risk being eavesdropped upon or otherwise spied upon.

Hix's father in particular was very unhappy with the open massacre of those who came through the Portal. In his notes, he expressed that such ways demonstrated an utter lack of morals and that the claims from the generals about protecting Everwinter from giant extra-planar invaders were complete bullshit since most of the "invaders" came unarmed, and most who came with weapons hardly knew how to use them.

### Conversion

Like his father, Hix was drafted into the goblin army when he came of age. While out patrolling for the supposed "invaders", Hix was in a team which found a campsite full of people who had frozen to death. As Hix and the rest of the team were searching the camp, Hix stumbled upon a copy of the The Eight Scrolls. Hix hid the scrolls in his pack to ensure they would not be destroyed.

Over the next two days, Hix read through the scrolls fervently. Their emphasis on the importance of freedom and fighting oppression made Hix feel closer to the writers of the scroll than to his own people, and proved near-conclusively that the "invaders" were actually decent people with a sophisticated culture and much more to them than just enormous size and brute strength. Hix made the first prayer of his life, asking Desna to free him from the servitude he had been forced into as an alchemist for the goblin army.

### Destruction of Tolernt Castle

When Hix returned from the patrol, he shared the scrolls with his father, Geir. Geir had much the same reaction to them, and they began planning to escape the castle and seek out survivors of the genocide. Their plans were interrupted when, two months later, an army of humans and elves showed up and assaulted the castle.

Recognizing a chance for escape, they both immediately set to sabotaging the catapults full of alchemist's fire that they had been forced to prepare. They expected a prolonged siege so they were disabling the catapults carefully and discreetly. They made excellent progress, but the humans surprised them when they charged the western wall. Most of the goblin siege engineers on the western wall tried to fire and had their catapults backfire or fail to fire at all. It bought the humans enough time to reach the wall in what seemed like a suicide mission.

Once again, the humans pulled out a surprise when they somehow managed to make a siege tower spring into place right next to the gatehouse. They made short work of the guards, opened the gate, and allowed their armies to pour through. Hix and Geir ran to the keep as quickly as they could to disable the catapults there as well. Their progress was slowed because so many goblins had crammed into such tight quarters and it was hard to avoid being noticed.

Working quickly, Geir and Hix managed to disable all of the catapults before General Zarug demanded that all of the alchemists and siege engineers be brought before him. Zarug was furious and demanded to know why the catapults had failed earlier, meanwhile sending men to inspect the remaining catapults. No one spoke up, so he began ordering the executions of those assembled, one-by-one. After the second execution, Geir immediately confessed to having sabotaged the catapults. Geir was beheaded, and Zarug stomped on his head six times and spit on his corpse and before setting it on fire.

When Zarug learned that all of the remaining catapults were disabled, he ordered the remaining siege engineers to repair as many of the catapults as they could before the keep was assaulted. Zarug took the remaining alchemists with him through the castle's escape route, along with the kingdom leaders and most loyal warriors. Two to three hours later, the increasing smoke from the castle began to form an enormous column in the sky. Hix looked at it with hope in his eyes as he was marched away from the castle.

### Betrayal

Following the destruction of Tolernt Castle, General Zarug tasked Hix with a mission to attack Wayland in retalliation. Hix was given one day to prepare, and was to be accompanied by the most loyal goblin warriors. Hix prepared his supplies during the day, with every intention to blow up himself and all of the generals' lackeys that accompanied him rather than kill more humans. By nightfall, he laid down in his tent and quietly cried. The loss of his father and his impending death were too much for him. He quietly prayed to Desna for a way out over and over until he drifted off to sleep.

Desna came to him in a dream, showing him a scene of Zarug's tent exploding and raining down fire on the camp, and of the walls of Tolernt City being felled by massive boulders. As he saw the city's keep being consumed in flames of goblin creation, Hix woke sharply. He realized that although Zarug's hand-picked guards were among the most loyal, they were not necessarily the brightest of the guards. He felt as though he was being guided by Desna.

Using the noise from rocks to create a simple distraction, Hix waited until the guards left to investigate and then snuck into the general's tent and laid six land mines around it. He slipped back out of the tent and walked a short distance outside of the camp, and fired a rocket bomb at Zarug's tent. The mines detonated in a massive explosion, turning the tent into small flaming rags raining down on the campsite. Hix began hurrying west through the snow, using occasional landmines to ensure that no one would survive to follow him.

### Joining Wayland

After crossing the badlands, Hix walked through the grassland until he found a road. He followed the road north and came across the shrine of the Lady of the Lake. Hix saw three pilgrims quietly praying in front of the shrine. He wanted to meet them, so he walked up to the shrine and did as they did, kneeling in front of the shrine, head bowed down.

After a minute, one of the pilgrims stood up and finally looked back at Hix, screaming "It's a goblin!" Hix was so startled that he fell over on his back when trying to stand up, dislocating his shoulder as he hit the ground. The other two pilgrims turned and drew weapons. Hix balled up in a fetal position, his one good arm protecting his head, and started sobbing uncontrollably. The pilgrims had never seen such a pitiful sight and stayed their weapons.

Shortly, Hix realized he was not going to be murdered by the people he had just tried to befriend. He calmed down a bit, still crying from the immense pain. The pilgrims remained wary, carefully studying the little goblin before them.

Over the next few wordless minutes, they gradually became more comfortable with one other. Finally, one of the pilgrims broke the silence by asking "What do you think is wrong with it?" Hix replied "I hurt my shoulder!", "Wait, it can talk?", "No." Hix replied, first laughing then groaning in pain.

After talking for two hours, Hix explained how he had ended up so far from Everwinter on his own. The pilgrims agreed to take Hix back to Wayland to see a doctor. Jameil Rovund was confused to see a goblin in Wayland, but after Hix and the pilgrims explained the situation, he was quite willing to pop Hix's shoulder back into place.

Over the next few weeks, Hix traveled in Wayland always accompanied by someone who knew him and his story. He lived off of scraps and lived out of the city shrine initially, but as he got more familiar with the city, he became interested in working to help Wayland. He eventually found work at the Pathfinder Society.