Almost a decade ago, Glaz Nixbrix left Jalmeray on a ship to Alkenstar, ready to start his new life. After growing up with his insular family in the Jalmeri treetops and raised as a young woman, he was sick of being treated like someone he was not. He wouldn’t live by their rules anymore; he would never live by anyone’s rules again except for his own. Nixbrix made his way to the Garundi continent with the intention of living for himself and no one else. Alkenstar sounded like the perfect place to do just that—a land with new technology and promises of a bright future. Furthermore, the region’s frequent mana storms would stifle any divination spells his family might use to track him down. He felt like he’d just struck gold, a feeling reinforced by the metallic towers, auburn skies, and shiny brass clockworks that populated his new home. But after spending just a few days in the City of Smog, Nixbrix discovered that Alkenstar had just as many rules as his monkey goblin community, only he didn’t know what they were. The immigrant’s ignorance of the law didn’t stop the shieldmarshals from trying to arrest him, though. Before Nixbrix knew what was what, he was on the run and scavenging to survive. He fell in with some petty criminals, pickpockets, con artists, and arsonists. These individuals would become his best friends in the world. They traveled the city together, taking what they wanted, running from the shieldmarshals, and living life only for themselves. This was the freedom Nixbrix was searching for: no rules to follow but his own, no matter what other people thought. The gang did pretty well for a time. They stole some fancy prototype wearable clockwork armor from a gnome inventor, though only Nixbrix was small enough to fit inside it. The gang took the thing for a spin, using the oversized firearm strapped to its back to blast through doors and windows when invading rival gangs’ territories. Nixbrix, never one for subtlety, often aimed for the walls of buildings for the gang’s entrances, and he quickly developed a reputation as the “Brick Blaster of Ferrous Quarter.” As time went on, Nixbrix lost touch with his old crew, often because of arrests or shoot-outs with the shieldmarshals, but he was always meeting new people. He also started to understand the ins and outs of his special armor. He even made a few modifications himself, like his innovative buzz-saw knuckles. One day, while staring at a massive factory fire that seemingly sprung out of nowhere, Nixbrix saw a group of people running from the conflagration, the shieldmarshals hot on their tail. Nixbrix decided to help some fellow criminals out, bust some shieldmarshal skulls, and maybe make a few friends on the way. After beating down the shieldmarshals, he hid out with the people they’d been chasing and learned why they’d set the fire. “For the fun of it,” it turns out, was exactly the kind of answer Nixbrix was hoping for. They became fast friends. Not long after, someone floated the idea of giving their little gang an official name, something to stoke fear into the hearts of other Alkenstar outlaws. Nixbrix suggested the Powderkeg Punks, and everyone liked this suggestion so much that they made Nixbrix their group’s official boss. He liked the sound of that.
