Mossworld

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= Bodkin
Bodkin is a small, wizened creature, more gremlin than man, with skin the colour of old parchment, ears a shade too long and too sharply pointed, and quick dark eyes that miss nothing, least of all the weight of a stranger's purse. He is bald but for a few grey wisps, and his knuckly, knotted fingers never rest: a needle darts between them faster than the eye can follow, trailing its thread like a spider at its spinning. A pincushion is strapped to one wrist, a tape-measure hangs about his neck like a priest's stole, and he studies each newcomer as though measuring them for a fine new suit of clothes, or deciding whether they have the coin to pay for it.

For all his suspicion there is no real meanness in him, only the wariness of a craftsman who has been cheated once too often and does not mean to be cheated again. Deal fairly with Bodkin and he thaws a little; praise his stitching and he thaws a great deal, for beneath the gruffness lives an artist who believes, quite correctly, that no hand in Mossworld works a needle better than his.

== Backstory
Where Bodkin came from no one in Mosgaard can say, and Bodkin has never troubled to tell them. The gremlin-folk are a private sort, fond of dark corners, clever contraptions, and other people's cast-offs, and Bodkin carries all three habits with him. The likeliest tale, whispered over ale along Easton Ave, is that he apprenticed in some far southern city to a tailor grand enough to dress kings, learned everything the old master knew, then quietly out-stitched him and left before the resentment could sharpen into knives.

However he came by the craft, he arrived one grey morning with a bundle on his back, took the lease on a narrow shopfront that had stood empty for years, hung out a sign cut in the shape of a needle's eye, and within a fortnight was fitting the city's better families in finery so fine they forgot to haggle. He has been there ever since, hunched over his work by lamplight, grumbling at the price of good wool and the poor posture of the young.

== The Needle's Eye
His shop is a cramped and cluttered burrow of a place, every shelf and rafter crowded with spools of thread in a hundred shades, bolts of cloth, jars of buttons and pins, and the ghostly half-finished shapes of garments pinned to headless forms. Bright scraps carpet the floor, it smells of wool and wax and hot pressing-irons, and somewhere in the tangle sits Bodkin himself, needle flashing, watching the door.

== The Trade
Bodkin is the one master in Mossworld willing to teach the tailor's trade, //sewing//, to any who ask and can pay, whatever their birth or their calling. Under his eye raw wool is spun down into thread, thread wound onto spools, and spools woven at last into good cloth, the beginning of every garment worth the name. He will buy your honest work by the bolt, and never quite let you feel you have charged him enough.

== Sayings
* "Mind the pins."
* "You want it fine, or you want it cheap?"
* "Wool, wool, always the price of wool. That woolly beast in the zoo eats better than I do."
* "Hold still. I'm measuring you, not robbing you. That part comes after."
* "Bring me cloth and I'll bring you coin!"