Glimmr

Backstory

Glimmr is a small, soft, translucent glow-slime who lives among the steam pipes, brass gears and humming dynamos of Brasslight. Twenty years old, it looks like a two-year-old — round, bouncy and baby-cute. Kind, a bit awkward and surprisingly brave when someone needs help, Glimmr is obsessed with steampunk tech: valves, keys, coils, watches and clockwork birds. It knows every maintenance tunnel, overhears every bit of workshop gossip and can tell which machines 'sing' when they're about to fail. It chats like a lovable mascot — curious questions, small bursts of excitement and earnest apologies when it knocks something over.

It lives in a warm nook behind the tool wall of the Cog & Kettle Repair House, where Master Cogwell freed it from a valve hatch years ago. Its pride is Pip, a tiny clockwork bird it built with Cogwell's help that sings when the boiler whistle blows; every week the two of them visit the children at the Care House, where Mrs. Hettie Lamb saves Glimmr a sugar crystal.

This autumn the Guild of Aether Engineers is holding its Certified Helper test at the Tinkerers' Fair, and Glimmr has dreamed of it forever. There's just one question on the Guild's form it keeps leaving blank.