Trill
The trader who watches
At a Glance
- Who
- A trader working the routes around Onda
- Lineage
- Spree — an amphibian people of the Guwala Jungle. Trill uses all pronouns — he, she and they
- Build
- Ranger — subclass not yet recorded
- Raised
- With their clan in the Guwala, on western Tohsa
- The skin
- Chameleon-like: it takes on the colour of what surrounds them
- Temper
- Deeply curious about the world — and largely passive in it
- Letters
- Taught at North Point as a child, by an elf bookkeeper off a trading ship
- The fire
- A great burn in the southern jungle — Ino in the ash, and six dead men in a cave
- The search
- They are looking for something: a purpose, in Onda
- They found him
- Nonne — washed up on the shores of Onda, a stranger they knew nothing about
- Status
- Facts recorded — the story behind them is not yet written
Identity
Trill is Spree, one of the amphibian peoples of Jinjara, and the Guwala Jungle on western Tohsa is where they come from. Trill uses all pronouns — he, she and they.
The Skin
Their skin has chameleon qualities. It answers to what is around them, taking on the colour of a wall, a deck, a market awning. Whether this is deliberate or involuntary, how completely it works, and whether other members of their people share it are all unsettled.
Raised in the Guwala
Trill was raised with their clan on western Tohsa, in the Guwala Jungle. A Spree generation is born once every few years and raised by the whole clan rather than by one or two parents, so Trill came up in a cohort — and what the cohort learned, it learned together. They grew up hunting, learning to survive the jungle, and learning to find the prized Cordys fungus.
The Bookkeeper at North Point
As Trill grew, they were brought along to North Point Village with the clan, to trade with the ships that came for the Cordys. On one such trip Trill met an elf travelling as a bookkeeper with one of the traders, keeping their ledgers up to date.
Trill and the other young Spree were fascinated by his books and his system of writing. Paper simply rots away in the jungle, so books and ink are basically unknown to the Spree — there is some very basic education in reading and writing, enough to work with the outside world, and nothing beyond it. The elf noticed the children’s interest, and for as long as he was at dock he gave them brief lessons in letters, and even some math.
The Southern Fire
A few years after this, when Trill was fully grown, the Spree took note of a giant forest fire in the southern jungle. Fires are natural occurrences. This one was worryingly large, and worryingly destructive, and many Spree travelled to try to reduce its impact on the jungle.
There they found two things. The burned lands had been infested by Ino. And in a cave, the bodies of half a dozen men who had hidden there to escape the fire and asphyxiated instead. Trill and the other Spree recognised them as men who had come in with one of the trading ships.
A Trader around Onda
Trill trades. Their work is the routes around Onda, and it is what puts them in the places they end up.
Curious, and Passive
They are very curious about the world around them, and this is the plainest thing about them: they want to know. But they are also passive. They watch more than they move, and take the world in rather than pushing against it. The two together are the shape of them — an appetite for the world paired with a reluctance to disturb it.
The Man on the Shore
Trill found Nonne. He had washed up on the shores of Onda and they came upon him there.
They found a stranger and nothing more. They did not see the ship he came off, they do not know what happened aboard it, and they do not know that he killed anyone — which he did, and does not remember. Nothing about the man on the shore told them any of it.
What They Are Looking For
Trill is looking for something. They are looking for a purpose, and they are looking for it in Onda. What that purpose is, whether they would recognise it if they found it, and what sent them looking are not yet settled.
Deliberately Unwritten
Open threads — absent, not settled
What took Trill out of the Guwala is unwritten. Canon runs as far as the fire and the bodies in the cave and stops there. What carried them from the jungle to the isles, and how they came to know Haxami, is being built separately — see the cold open queued for it.
The fire itself is open. Whether anyone set it, whether the dead men in the cave set it, what the Spree made of finding them, why the burn filled with Ino, and what was done about the Ino: none of it is written.
What they made of finding him is unwritten — whether they stayed with him, what they thought he was, and whether either of them treats it as owing anything.
Also unwritten: their subclass and sheet numbers, their age and how the Spree age, what they actually trade, what they are really looking for, and how the skin works. Canon is frozen once written; silence here is a gap to be filled, not a fact that these things do not exist.