Dr. Provostinalkov

The "mad scientist" of the Gwyndinas Sewers — and not mad at all, just brilliant and profoundly lonely. A noodle-armed boy of perhaps 17–20, with pastel blue-green hair, green-reflecting goggles, a long lab coat, a buttoned petticoat and crooked, crowded teeth, speaking in a clipped foreign accent. Living alone in a hidden, laser-guarded laboratory deep in the sewers, he is — almost incidentally — fabricating a Shard of the Autark, the legendary god-slaying material, which he calls only "the substance." Eldrich the Elder discovered him and means to be his first customer.

He tried "normal human people clubs" (javelin-throwing, reading) and didn't fit; the sewers suit him better. He invented a gelatin nutrient-cube food generator (the same cubes Jugs handed Draak on the ship — apparently a simultaneous invention), funds his hugely expensive equipment by "a lot of fraud," and his experimental runoff is what dyes the sewer water glowing green and poisonous. (Name heard as "Provostinalkov" / "Dr. Provostinalkov"; spelling unconfirmed.)

Session 19

• Met when Thalia solved his children's color-and-shape puzzle door and rang the "Ring for assistance" bell, getting past a corridor of lethal green laser-beams (littered with the dust and empty armor of those who charged in).
• His product makes a person superhumanly good at any single thing; history/lore checks reveal it as an attempt to artificially manufacture a Shard of the Autark — a feat that's supposed to be impossible (true shards only fall from the sky).
• Closed the sale to Eldrich the Elder: took the old man's entire checkbook/bank account, handing Thalia a signed purchase receipt and a failed sample shard (whose magic aura is too vast for Fenric's sight to bound). The real product needs ~1–2 more months.
• Friendly and harmless: gave Draak pills for his green glow and perfume for his stink, agreed to try a sewer-water filter, and warned the party off the hairy monster (don't beckon it) and the bound "monsters" nearby.
• Tipped the party toward a sewer "circus" healer with a disease-curing natural-remedy pet (near "the bird guy's house") — possibly the Spirit of Nature Wiggleus is mourning.
• Confirmed the pig-head mechanisms predate him and that the oozes come out of the walls and split when they grow large enough. Silithane probed (and dismissed) whether he could be Smiling Sam — he deals in no blood.

Session 21

• Extracted from the sewers by Eldrich the Elder (who showed him his own note, warned him of Varian interference, and rushed when the party revealed Varia already knew about him). Cleaned up, sun-squinting, still socially oblivious — does little jazz hands at being out: "look at me!"
• Claims he solved moving his lab by inventing a shrinking ray to shrink the whole thing into a box, and will simply invent a "larging ray" to rebuild it — delivered so confidently no one can tell if he's joking.
• Now a protected member of Eldrich's caravan beyond the Palisade, to resume fabricating the Shard of the Autark at a safe new base; mock-outraged he didn't get any ice cream.

Session 49 (likely)

• Out of hiding at the Menagoles. A concealed "Doctor" travelling in Eldrich the Elder's caravan finally emerges in his hidden Tapped Clapper war room, greeted by the party as a known acquaintance ("hi Doctor, it's been a while") — "it wasn't safe to come out, but now it is." Not named on the recording, but almost certainly Provostinalkov, Eldrich's established hidden travelling companion. See Canon Questions.

Session 50

• His "substance" has a natural source. Infiltrating the Middle Tor mine, the party finds Laewendas digging a natural vein of glowing green crystal the GM confirms is the same material the Doctor makes — i.e. a naturally-occurring source of the Shard of the Autark substance he fabricates. The kidnapped alchemist Snuffles is being forced to refine it (grinding ore-dust into a glowing bowl that keeps failing into black sludge) — trying to replicate the very feat Provostinalkov has already achieved for Eldrich the Elder. Both sides of the war are now racing for the god-killing material; the Doctor's finished product is Eldrich's edge.