Three centuries ago, Kriv Rhogar was a master jeweler in the gleaming Dragonborn city of Tymanther, crafting crowns for princes and rings for lovers. His work was art — until he watched a petty lord commission a necklace as beautiful as dawn, only to lock it away in a vault where no eyes would ever see it again. That night, Kriv melted down the necklace and reforged it into a hundred simple wedding bands, distributing them anonymously to couples too poor to afford such things. The theft cost him everything — his guild membership, his reputation, his home. But the ancestors found him in the wreckage.
They came as whispers in cooling metal, voices in the hammer's ring. They showed him a path he'd never considered: that sometimes righteousness required deception, that the stubborn living needed to be tricked into doing good, that his hands could serve justice better through subterfuge than through honest craft. He became 'Old-Copper,' a wandering con artist whose elaborate schemes always somehow ended with orphans fed, curses lifted, and cruel merchants humbled. His workshop became a temple where spirits dwelt in restored heirlooms, whispering their stories to anyone who would listen.
Now his copper scales wear a patina of sea-foam green, and his claws tremble with age when he works too long. But he cannot stop. Every 'scam' he runs is a prayer, every false promise a benediction. He tells himself he'll rest when the world learns kindness — knowing full well it never will, and that this exhausting, beautiful work will be his forever.