A wiry, soot-smudged goblin with rust-red skin, oversized amber eyes, and a narrow face crowded with chipped teeth. Bristle wears patched leather armor beneath a stained tool harness, with copper wire braided through his ragged black hair. His left ear bears three tiny brass rings, each attached to a different device whose purpose he refuses to explain. His fingers are permanently darkened by oil, charcoal, and alchemical residue.

Bristle is cheerful, suspicious, and intensely practical. He treats every problem as a machine with a hidden access panel, including arguments, curses, and social etiquette. He is delighted by competent craftsmanship, offended by waste, and incapable of giving a simple answer when a technical one might be more entertaining. Beneath his manic confidence, he is desperate to prove that goblin ingenuity is not merely useful, but indispensable.

Bristle was born beneath a collapsed tannery in a goblin warren where broken things were more valuable than intact ones. He learned early that a bent nail could become a spring, a cracked kettle could become a pressure vessel, and a suspiciously warm stone could become somebody else’s problem. His first successful invention was a self-stirring soup pot. His second was a self-stirring soup pot that attempted to escape. The guildsfolk who witnessed the incident did not appreciate the distinction, but they did recognize talent, and an elderly clockmaker named Vech Tlacoyan took him on as an apprentice. At the guild workshop, Bristle developed a reputation for immaculate workmanship and alarming design notes. He can repair a crossbow trigger by touch, identify an alloy by its smell, and produce a perfectly balanced device from scraps that should not fit together. Unfortunately, he also has a habit of naming inventions according to their current function rather than their original purpose. His portable heater was once a siege engine. His lockpick was once a surgical instrument. His compass was once intended to locate buried people, preferably before they stopped moving. After an experiment destroyed half the guild roof, Bristle left with his tools, his debts, and a sealed brass cylinder that whispers whenever he gets near a dungeon. He insists it is harmless. He also insists the cylinder is not listening.