Appearance: Haughty, with angled features and a certain look like she was hewn from mahogany Koganusan is the spitting image of dwarvish merchant's wife of a billion woodcuts . She's pictured here without her beard on. In the fortress where she was raised, wigs and toupees were the fashion at the time, ever since the discovery and subsequent invention of bauxite and mythril filaments. The metallurgs and engravers of the time were highly skilled and braiding and shearing miniature works of art designed to be worn under the chins. She had to sell hers to pay her way.
Name: Koganusan Hawlaestic Sunkissed. If you get on her good side, she'll let you call her "Cog".
Age: Koganusan is not in the flower of her youth. More of the wrinkly unripe fruit of middle age. She's three-and-fifty.
Gender: Despite the beard and bodily hair, she's female.
Personality: Koganusan, like the infamous dwarven encampment for which she's named, is introverted and secluded to the point of mutism. She doesn't talk much, and what does end up coming out of his mouth is often broken and twisted, followed by mutterings and swears in Mine-speak. Unless you want to buy or sell, in which case she opens up like the emperor's palace to foreign ambassadors, and it's practically impossible to get her to stop.
Previous Profession: Purveyor and Racketeer.
History: It's hard to explain a dwarf's history without revealing something of their ancestry. A dwarf of the valleys shares little if anything with the dwarves of the hearth, who in turn share nothing with the saltsmithers of port Arz, or the merchants of the catacombs of Dhalmad. And none of those will even deign to raise their name to the dwarves of the shantytown. Barely anything but mining camps hewn into the side of a mountain, which gather houses like dog doings attract flies. As for Koganusan, she was born and raised in one of these, known in dwarvish as Gröf Herbergi, or salt catacombs. The place was built above rich seams of salts and nitrates over a bed of sandstone. It's a dry, acidic place where the sand stains your feet red. Gröf Herbergi was deep set into sandstone, and gained a reputation for salts and acidic deposits, as well a deeply hot and bitterly long sun. The name of "Sunkissed" denotes Koganusan's place in life: On the surface, bargaining with trade caravans.
Her mother, a broad woman by the name of
Korsefandi, was the town tanner and leatherworker, with a face like she was constantly sucking on lemons. She taught her well before her untimely death and subsequent. How to cut leather, and dye wool. How to juggle scales. How to balance books. How to pretend iron was silver, and to melt down coins in secret. How to grease palms, and shave a little off the top for you and yours. She'd been good at it, and Koganusan had struggled to keep the lies going after her death. Of course, by that time she'd been in way too over her head already. She barely remembered for what exactly she'd been accused of, but these lies are like a dam, and all it takes is one rock to was away for the dam to burst. She'd ran, carrying most of her possessions on her back. Modern science has, as of yet, been unable to determine the maximum carrying capacity for a dwarven peasant, and she'd made it almost to the big city of men itself before she'd faltered and had been forced to sell her beard. She's in the arena because it's the easiest way to get back on her feet, gather enough to make a profit, and get herself some dinerii behind her. And once she does, she's going back to the mountains and sinking her teeth into the nearest mineral vein and she's never going to let it go.
Preferred Arms: The dwarvish weapons of choice are hammers and picks. Mine-to-mine warfare means that anything long or that requires stabbing are practically useless. However, Koganusan was never at home in mines at the best of times, and her preferred weapon to defend her hearth and home was the khopesh, a sickle-like sword.
Still a work in progress.
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