A wiry kobold with rust-red scales, a narrow snout, and one chipped horn capped in black lacquer. He wears battered leather armor cut down and re-stitched to fit a small frame, with a soldier's belt, a scavenged dagger at each hip, and a constant watchful squint. His tail is wrapped in cloth where an old spear wound left a crooked kink.

Sharper than his size suggests, Skritt is alert, sardonic, and hard to surprise. He speaks in clipped battlefield phrases, sizes up every room like a kill box, and pretends not to care when people notice how reliably he protects them. He is loyal once earned, but he will never surrender his own judgment to anyone else's banner.

Skritt Emberscale was born in a tunnel camp where kobolds served as haulers, sentries, and cannon fodder for a bigger dragon lord's wars. He learned early that glory belonged to the loud and the well armored, while survival belonged to the quick, the quiet, and the ones who could count the enemy's steps before the enemy counted theirs. When his clutch was scattered by a disastrous raid, Skritt was folded into a mercenary column as a runner and scout, small enough to slip through brush and rubble, mean enough to survive the drills, and clever enough to turn battlefield waste into useful tools. He never became a banner hero. He became the one who found the weak wall, poisoned the supply chain, or stole the map before the officers noticed it was missing. Years of marching under orders taught him formation, discipline, and how to read a battlefield, but they also taught him that every law has a seam and every chain has a weak link. Now he drifts from paymaster to paymaster, half soldier and half thief, selling sharpened instincts and a grin full of bad intent. He claims he left the army on his own terms, which is true if you ignore the part where several quartermasters wanted him hanged for proving he was better at command than they were.