A wiry male rock gnome with copper-red hair, a sharply pointed beard, bright amber eyes, and soot-stained hands. He wears battered scale mail beneath a leather apron covered in brass fittings, dangling wires, tiny lenses, and spring-loaded tools. His goggles are constantly pushed up onto his forehead, and a palm-sized mechanical beetle usually rides on his shoulder.

Cutty is an excitable, suspicious, and relentlessly inventive gnome who sees hidden inefficiencies everywhere. He is fascinated by futuristic concepts, loudly narrates his own experiments, and regards ordinary solutions as temporary failures waiting to be corrected. Beneath his manic confidence is a lonely desire to be accepted as a visionary rather than remembered as a dangerous nuisance.

Cutty Flam was once considered one of the most promising young minds in a secluded rock gnome enclave. While his kin perfected clockwork toys, mining devices, and practical household contraptions, Cutty became obsessed with a forbidden question: what if invention should not merely solve problems, but anticipate them centuries before they existed? He sketched airships powered by bottled lightning, self-writing books, talking metal servants, and a network of enchanted mirrors that could connect distant cities. His people initially admired his imagination, but admiration turned to alarm when Cutty began dismantling perfectly functional machines in pursuit of improvements that nobody had requested. Eventually, Cutty unveiled his greatest project, a roaring brass engine designed to eliminate the need for sleep by rotating a person's dreams through a mechanical crystal. The demonstration destroyed three workshops, flooded the village with blue smoke, and caused the village elder to dream about being chased by enormous spoons. Cutty was cast out, declared dangerously impractical, and told never to return until he learned the difference between a flaw and a feature. He now lives as a hermit in a remote workshop, studying magic, machinery, and the strange behavior of adventurers. His isolation has given him time to refine his theories, though not his judgment. He travels because the wider world is full of devices, systems, traditions, and people that are functioning adequately, which means they are all in urgent need of improvement.