Azimuth Andrea Almanac Caspian Kelshplotter

Azimuth Andrea Almanac Caspian Kelshplotter belonged to the Kelshplotter Clan, whose name carried considerable weight among the rock Gnomes of the Murkmire Marshlands. Generations earlier, when a great quake had destroyed the ancestral homes of the gnomes, the Kelshplotters led the survivors through the Deepways and found them the caverns that would become Little Lockford. In the centuries since, the clan had built a reputation as the foremost guides and architects of the Undermire, prized for an ability to fuse the natural contours of a cavern with the structures raised within it. By Azimuth's time, however, the family's fortunes had faded considerably, and the clan's once-celebrated business had dwindled to a fraction of its former standing, leaving considerable debts behind it that showed no sign of being repaid through legitimate work alone.

Azimuth himself carried on the family trade as a cartographer and Artificer, and was known for a diligence that many of his peers considered promising well beyond his years. His work centered on the Deepways surrounding the settlement, a labyrinth whose passages shifted with enough regularity that no map of them could be considered permanent. He made it his project to chart these changes as they occurred, updating his almanac with each expedition and cross-referencing new findings against decades of prior surveys, rarely without his Mastiff, Bunson, at his side. Less openly, Azimuth had begun putting his family's inherited knowledge of caverns and structures to less reputable use, taking on work of a criminal nature that traded on his understanding of hidden passages and vulnerable buildings in an effort to keep the clan's debts from overwhelming it entirely.

Azimuth's personal life was no less complicated. He had fallen in love with the artificer Tixie Taffebeser Tockworth in his youth, and learned from her the basics of Artificial Infusions. The two were for a time considered one of Little Lockford's more promising pairings, before Tixie ended the relationship abruptly and without explanation, returning a locket he had given her as a token of his affection. Azimuth kept that locket regardless, carrying it on every expedition thereafter with her picture still inside it, and never courted anyone else in the years that followed.

By unfortunate circumstance, Azimuth was away on one of his surveys of the Deepways when Tixie initiated the Big Little Lockford Lockdown and sealed the settlement's gates behind her. He returned to find the town closed against him and joined the survivors' encampment beyond the gates.

In Tockworth's Clockworks, Azimuth learned of a distant cave-in near the Lockford Lightspring while organizing his scouting patrols and, with the refugees' resources exhausted and many scouts missing or dead, chose to investigate personally. He convinced the Martial Artist Ragnum Ironknuckles to accompany him by accelerating the fermentation of the dwarf's latest batch of whiskey, and the two set off alongside Azimuth's loyal mastiff Bunson. At the Lightspring, they joined forces with Nessa Nina Quickpick Rumbauld Pennyluck, Merben Ordri Fizzlehide Pennyluck, and Punmiri Tel-Phaeun they fought off monsters who attacked from the Undermire and traveled back to the encampment. Azimuth was entranced by the size of Pumiri, but when Mayor Zamzu Quickzipper Ukkem Zapp Mulberry Kreem requested that they take down Tixie, the artificer was nervous about facing his old girlfriend, even when given a Driftglobe as a reward.

At the refugee camp, Azimuth crafted a Spell Scroll of invisibility for Punmiri before the party descended into Old Lockford, and used his cartographic teleportation to help the group cross the city unseen after a skirmish with Clockwork Constructs. Crossing the volcanic sea via the Slagline, he empowered Ragnum's leap between buckets and later teleported himself alongside Nessa when the transport stalled above the magma, narrowly avoiding a fungal Shambling Mound in the process. At Warehouse 6, he resisted a deadly psychic crush from a Grey Ooze before the party located the reclusive Mage Igna Tynn Nimblepipe Bifimp Giltpurple Flint, who revealed the location of Tockworth's fail-safe key alongside warnings about the workshop's animated defenses. Azimuth remained reluctant throughout to be the one to end Tixie, given their former relationship.

As part of "Team Extraction" alongside Nessa, Azimuth teleported into Tockworth's bedroom to reach her vault, and activate her security key. Once the alarm was triggered and Tixie confronted them in a fury, he scattered oil and ball bearings in her path to slow her pursuit through the darkened workshop. When she caught up to them on the streets outside, Azimuth made a heroic last stand to buy Nessa time to escape with the recovered key, and Tixie, barely recognizing her former lover, cut him down with her force-empowered blade. After destroying the key, Nessa doubled-back and revived him with a Potion of Healing just before his death. Azimuth later helped convince Igna to pilot her Apparatus of Igna into the city, tunneling beneath the Security Center's rising iron shell; there, Punmiri ended Tockworth's transformation for good.

In the aftermath, Ragnum, Nessa, and Punmiri chose to leave Little Lockford. Mayor Zamzu named Azimuth the settlement's new Security Overseer, and Punmiri gifted him a locket to replace the one he had once carried of Tixie, ensuring he would never forget her.