Trollmage

• Build & height: 2.08 m and big-boned, with a troll's frame but an elf's long fingers. He slouches so much he reads as 1.90 m. Soft belly, enormous slippered feet.
• Face: wide and gentle, with heavy-lidded eyes that are always half-closed. Two small lower tusks (troll) peek over his lip when he smiles. Long pointed ears (elf) that droop when he's sad and twitch when he's lying.
• Hair: shaggy, moss-dark green-black, with a rune-bead braid at each temple. A twig is usually caught in it.
• Eyes: deep violet. When a stored spell is ready they glow brighter the longer he has waited.
• Skin & sin-mark: grey-green, faintly mottled like river stone, with darker stone freckles across the nose and shoulders. His sin-mark is a violet hourglass on the back of his left hand. Fine violet Codex script crawls up to his elbow (the Sloth Codex, inscribed), and beside it a ragged amber patch that keeps changing shape: the incomplete Gluttony Codex.
• Clothing, layer by layer: a long undyed linen shirt · a heavy plum-coloured robe with far too many pockets (snacks, chalk, quills, three spare socks, a book in every one) · a rope belt with the Codex chained to it by a brass chain · enormous felt slippers, even in snow · a knitted scarf from his grandmother.
• Signature item: the Codex on its chain, which twitches by itself, and the crow on his head.
• Movement: as little as possible. He leans and naps in impossible places (standing up, in coils of rope, in a battle). When he does move fast it's shocking, like a boulder rolling.
• Voice: slow, nasal and comfortable, full of yawns. "Mm." "Five more minutes." Panic makes him talk very fast and very high. His balloons droop at the tail.
• Variant looks: Real K-II (inside Hrafnkell's AUDIT, ch. 30–35): sweating and small, the violet gone dark. Dream-waited (Sömnen, ch. 54): eyes blazing, a hundred spells popping like fireworks. Crowned (Saga III): Brygdar troll-iron on his brow, which he hates.

A spell written once that casts itself as many times as he has waited for it. He writes the spell's name in glowing violet letters in the air, then a colon, then the amount, which is set by how long he waited.

• Notation (drawn exactly like this): MACRO : MOVE MOUNTAIN = 1 m · MACRO : UPDRAFT = 1 ROOF · MACRO : SNOWFALL = FOUR DAYS · MACRO : LEAK = 3 BOATS · MACRO : SLIPPERY = 40 · MACRO : SNEEZE = 12.
• Rules: the waiting is a store he can spend in part (since Saga I's end). He entered Saga II with about three weeks banked. Once spent, he is empty: no magic until he has waited again. Waiting means real idleness: sleeping, lying in the sun, doing nothing. Worrying doesn't count.
• What it can't do: cast without having waited. Hurry. Inside AUDIT (ch. 30) he is crushed to his assigned K-II, and nothing he waited for will cast.
• Sömnen exploit: inside a lucid dream he can imagine he's already waited, and it counts there only ("I WAITED IN MY HEAD! IT COUNTS!", ch. 54). It never works in the waking world.

• Tempo: 2. He is officially the slowest fighter in the saga.
• Home tempo: Codexia, variable. In the Library a waited hour counts as a day.
• Heartbeat technique: THE BANKED BEAT. While he waits, Trollmage banks heartbeats. When he releases a MACRO, every banked beat fires in the same heartbeat, so for that one beat his tempo equals the number of beats he banked: thousands, tens of thousands. Then he's at 2 again. No one else can save a heartbeat for later.
• Burn cost: after a big release his body crashes. He falls asleep where he stands, sometimes for days, and the crew has to carry him. (Drekk has carried him like a sack of flour more than once.)

A spell is only as strong as how long he waited. The crew has to buy him time: defend him while he does nothing, which is the funniest and most stressful part of every fight. Then he's spent.

• Hrafnkell's AUDIT: inside the howl everyone fights at their assigned rank, and Trollmage really is a K-II. (He won anyway, with brains.)
• Hurry: ambushes, wake-up calls, anything that forces him to act now.
• Being woken: a stored spell is lost if he's woken badly (shaken, splashed). Gently is fine.
• His own Gluttony: it may eat an ally's Codex.
• Grief: after Grandmother Ulla's death (ch. 31), "You let me burn" is the Nightmare that freezes him (ch. 48).

• His Codex on its brass chain: thick, warm, and it twitches and hungers.
• The crow: black, scruffy, opinionated. It sits on his head or chest, steals food, screams warnings and drinks troll-coffee (and then flies backwards for an hour). It has refused every name it has ever been offered. Since ch. 419 (MACRO : FORWARDS = THIRTEEN DAYS) it can fly forwards after coffee.
• The library-index shard (one of the 38) for reading Ledger entries.
• Grandmother Ulla's scarf.
• Troll-coffee, which he brews and nobody else can drink.

He doesn't fight; he waits, and then he ends the fight. In the opening he finds a safe corner and lies down ("Wake me when it's time"). Mid-fight the crew protects the sleeping troll. Then he stands up, yawns, writes one MACRO in the air, and the battlefield changes. Team combos: MACRO : SLIPPERY = 40 → everyone else · COMPACT + MACRO (multiply a cube) · Subtick Shot × MACRO (one perfect shot, many times) · Index-Read → Rougeina's list.

• Wants: to read every book that exists. And a nap.
• Fears: being needed and not being ready; disappointing his grandmother (even now).
• Contradiction: the laziest person alive is the only one who can save everyone, because he's lazy.
• Humour: a gentle, self-mocking slacker, and Räva's comedy rival (two jokers, one lazy and one restless).
• Habits: naps standing up; brews terrible coffee; carries snacks for the crow; reads upside down; says "Mm" to everything.
• Alone: he reads to the crow.

• Vigolas: "the lazy one". The captain always buys him time, and Trollmage would fall asleep in front of a blade for him.
• Kompis: they share the night watch; one fishes, one sleeps.
• Rougeina: she pokes him awake with a blade pommel, and he lets her.
• Smurjan & Kali: Kali calls him "mine to annoy". Smurjan's voices argue with him about soup.
• Drekk: carries him like a sack of flour.
• Grandmother Ulla: "Your great-great-grandmother would be so angry how lazy you are. … And so proud." (her last words, ch. 31)
• Räva: comedy rival.
• Flisa: Ferdinand's anger, who thinks every bark-ship is stolen. He's a Brygdar: "We pick up what he drops." She sat on his chest until he explained the hundred years, and respects it, grudgingly ("Hm.", ch. 267).
• Jeppson: two Sloths; six hours on a slipway without a word. In the Splinterlands they finish each other's answer to the strippers: "Learn to wait for him to drop it." / "Sometimes a hundred years… Bring a pillow." (ch. 274)

• "The spell is named WAIT."
• "Your rule applies to everyone. Including you, Mr. Hound."
• "I WAITED IN MY HEAD! IT COUNTS! IT COUNTS!"
• "Nothing personal! I just don't know any of you!"
• "Why did the troll bring a ladder to the tavern?"
• "We ask. Then we wait under the tree till he drops some. Sometimes a week. Sometimes a hundred years." (ch. 267)
• "Bring a pillow." (ch. 274)