Snarl

Snarl rose from the scrabbling warrens beneath the ruined quarter called Gutterfen, apprenticed as a runner to a Deathmaster skull known only as Mort-hesh. He earned his name in a blooded alley fight that cost him an ear and left the pale crescent scar that marks his face. Mort-hesh promoted him to shadowhand — right hand and chief assassin — after Snarl staged the explosion of a rival's strongbox that collapsed half a townhouse and buried the rival in rubble. The green shard he bears, called a verdegloam chip by lore-seekers, is said to be a sliver of a larger crystal taken from a crashed hagstone. The cult of the Riven Bell and the scholar Lyrin Voss (who wrote The Shards of Gutterfen) both record encounters with Snarl; the cult claims the shard lets him twist a single spell's intent, while Voss's notes suggest the shard's power is limited and drains with repeated use. Snarl lairs in layered caches under Mort-hesh's hall, feeds on scraps and the occasional traitor, and fears only the bone-speakers — hunters who capture and claim ratmen for gladiatorial pits.

Snarl stands roughly 5 feet tall but stooped, with a wiry, furred body mottled brown and gray. His snout is long and pink-rimmed; one right ear is missing, a ragged stump with scar tissue and a metal hoop pierced into it. A white, puckered scar streaks from his right eyebrow across cheek and down to his jaw. He wears patched leather armor reinforced with small brass plates and scavenged chain links, each piece soot-darkened. At his belt are several slender throwing daggers with pitted iron heads and a looped pouch of powder charges; one dagger's flat face bears burn marks from premature explosions. His left hand often twitches near a narrow green shard wrapped in leather strips, no larger than a thumb. Fingers are long and ink-stained, nails cracked. When portrayed in a doorway he fills roughly half the opening, crouched and ready to bolt; smoke or ember-splatter marks frequently stain his clothing from detonated blades.