Rankbreaker Cindergnaw

Cindergnaw Rankbreaker

The Cindergnaw live where nothing should: slag fields, fumaroles, black country where even the water tastes of dead iron. Their kobold cousins from kinder lands never knew such harshness, and it has made them scavengers. They eat what falls, what rots, what is left behind; drinking their water or tasting their food is a gamble with your life, because what feeds them poisons everyone else.
Their bite is small. Their mouths carry germs out of another age, kept alive by carrion, and the smallest wound calls for swift cauterization or a healing spell before infection takes hold.
Poor craftsmen, they gather a little of everything and anything, scrap, bone, hardened leather, forge debris, and cobble it into armor with neither logic nor grace. They are the sworn enemies of the Emberwardens (the Göldunn dwarves of the volcanoes), and every eruption rekindles the hatred: the Tylkalan, an opportunistic plant, blooms just before, and dwarves and kobolds fight over it in a race against the lava.

The rankbreaker

In a clan that fights over every carcass, he gets two shares, and it shows: a head taller than the others, twice their weight. In return, he charges first, straight into the enemy line, with a nerve no other Cindergnaw allows himself. His weapon takes both hands, forge debris welded to the end of a haft too long for him, heavy enough to split a shield or break a leg through its greave. Every swing takes all his momentum, and he stays open while he hauls it back up. When he falls, the others suddenly remember they are afraid.
The Cindergnaw are no great danger in themselves. But the place where you meet them will never play in your favor.