Anaximander
Played by John in Umgar's Request.
Background
Talathese
Son of a fisherman in Talathese, Anaximander was in trouble with his father often for disassembing rigging and netting and and other tools of the trade. At 14, his father volunteered him for the Talathese navy, where the young lad worked as a siegecraft engineer's apprentice. Various disciplinary issues resulted in his discharge at age 17, whereupon he succeeded in securing a position as an architect's apprentice, where he learned the basics of masonry, carpentry, and engineering principles. As he approached his mid 20s, his bold ideas and failed experiments convinced the architect to send him to his elder brother for further tutelage.
The elder brother, Archimedes, was a philosopher-scientist-inventor, interested in formulating comprehensible and comprehensive theories to explain all natural phenomena and magic. Here, Anaximander thrived as a general apprentice, and took over many of the master's duties, which provided them a meager income repairing tools and instruments and occasionally teaching their philosophies to young seekers.
Upon Archimedes' death, Anaximander found himself destitute and directionless, and resolved to sail forth and see where he arrived. He hitched a ride on a trade vessel in return for performing various seaman's duties, and arrived in Zareph some weeks later.
Zareph
In that great and bustling city of mining and industry, he found a job working as an engineer in an armor production facility controlled by the government. For more than a decade he contributed innovations in articulated limb armor, new metallurgical processes, and other inventions. A mishap in a ballista-production facility wrenched Anaximander's arm from its socket, leading him to develop a sophisticated prosthetic.
His most celebrated invention, prior to the accident, was the development of a set of tools that decreased the time required for a talented armorer to construct a suit of fine chainmail by 30%. For this invention, he was provided a generous bonus, which he used to put a down payment on a house -- with an extensively outfitted inventors workshop.
With a personal workshop at his disposal, he delved deeply into all matters of scientific inquiry, and developed philosophical theories inspired by his old master, Archimedes. For a time he became obsessed with the heavens, and once walked from Zareph to the shores of Lowen Bay, recording astronomical observations along the way, in an attempt to measure the circumference of Gurth. His girlfriend Anastasia Fletcher accompanied him on the journey, but the continuous contact shed light on his eccentric proclivities, and she returned separately.
This multi-week endeavor earned him a dismissal of employment from the government, and, combined with his various romantic dalliances and generosities, he was soon in dire financial straits.
After a rough encounter with his creditors, who threatened to seize the house and the workshop and its contents, one of his female friends, Cassandra Devereaux, offered to whisk him away to her father's farm outside Lowenport. After much debate, Anaximander agreed, and the couple spirited away a wagonload of instruments and rare materials.
Ghaines
The farmer, Robert Devereaux, provided lodging and work until his beloved daughter found a lover more to her liking in the city.
Anaximander walked away from the Devereaux farm with a leather sack stuffed with a subset of his beloved instrumentation and tools, a shadow of his former, younger self.
Not long after, at a soup kitchen in Ghaines, he met Umgar, and the kindly patriarch took the dejected inventor under his wing, provided a rudimentary workshop, and put Anaximander to work repairing and improving plows and hinges and aqueducts in return for simple food and lodging and the occasional silver piece.
His Patron has gradually improved Anaximander's workshop over the past eight years.