She didn't know who he was and she didn't know why he was there, but Bex

needed to know what the man in the sewer was up to. Night after night she'd creep into his makeshift hovel, fashioned from junk and parts right into the concave of the walls. And listen. Until he called her out. She pushed for a name, but the voices on his radio transmission said 'Paladin'. Not a name but a nickname, a title. To this day, she is certain he didn't come up with it.

If anything, Paladin is the raw opposite of the kindly, stalwart defender. A scrawny, pale creature, on surface level his primary objective seems to be pushing others away. But his intentions couldn't be further in the long term. He had an itch, he said, to fix the world's problems, even if he had to start small. That was why he took the contract to Prosperios. That was why he had come.

The radio was only given to those with ties directly to nobility. He was a man of importance, she realized.

How quickly young Paladin's optimism faded to bitterness. Hailing from the cross-sea country of Thyrell, a land crushed by war, he showed remarkable skill with pure machinery, avoiding the alchemy and arcane fusions of other engineering aspirants. This was what Prosperios was looking for, and they welcomed him as a prodigy. He thought he would be solving hunger, unsafe labor conditions and stilted medical treatment. Instead he was ordered to fix the city's ongoing power problem. A problem created by overbuilding of infrastructure, not the hard-working engineers struggling to keep it running. Although he protested, he was strong-armed into the assignment alongside dozens of others. Paladin soon realized that this was where promising young minds came to die, forever wasted on an impossible puzzle prolonged by city officials, while the majority population suffered. His anger cooled to a shrill frustration, and while he agreed to apply himself to the problem, his mind was already drifting.

Back in Thyrell he had begun his most ambitious project: an automaton body capable of housing a real, living nervous system. Designed for the terminally ill and suffering, he theorized that by combining just enough alchemy for a successful transfer, and arcane enchantment to provide a never-ending power supply, he could potentially add years on to any struggling life. Yet somewhere the progress had stuttered, and his work became purist. What then of the automaton?

Build bigger, build better. That was Prosperios' mantra, and here, in the sewer, he resumed crafting her piece by piece. The plan was ambitious; proposition the fae for a wish, offered once a year for the eligible, to bring her to life. He was unwilling to risk another on this experiment, he said. By granting her sentience instead of transferring a pre-existing person, he would assume full responsibility should it fail.

Bex is not certain it will succeed. But she respects his vision, if not his dismal lack of self-care. Seriously, Man. Go to bed. Drink some water. Take a break.

He has no time for breaks. He must finish the work before the next wishing period. She wouldn't understand.

Unfortunately even the most secretive of pursuits can attract unwanted attention, and this has come in the form of mercenaries hired to sabotage the Automaton. With a pair of mechanical gauntlets and a mouthful of Thyrellian curses, Paladin continues to pursue his work, risks be darned. If he must pick up a few unnecessary hitchhikers for the ride? So be it. It's not like he can get rid of them anyway.