===== Sikro =====
//(SIK-roh)//

{{:homebrew_rules_reference:player_characters:sikro.png?direct&400 |}}

**Sikro** was born in the shadow of the **Ural Mountains**, on the western frontier where **Europa's** industrial sprawl gives way to the silent, wind-scoured wilderness that most Europans prefer to pretend does not exist. A kobold by blood, he grew up navigating a world built for larger bodies and less patient temperaments, developing an early fluency in reading terrain, weather, and the intentions of creatures far more dangerous than himself. Where others saw the wilderness as an obstacle between cities, Sikro saw it as the only honest place left in the world. He spent his formative years ranging further and further from any settlement, tracking across the Europan interior with the quiet economy of someone built for terrain that did not favor his size.

His travels eventually carried him to the far south, past the Himilayan ranges and into the **Northern Marches** of the **Manchurian Empire**, where the wind-scoured steppes still bear the scorched memory of dragonfire and the cairns of ancient battles rise from the plains like broken teeth. There, among the monasteries that guard the rites of the dragon cairns, Sikro spent several years studying under masters who viewed dragons not as enemies to be slain but as forces to be understood, negotiated with, and — for those rare few with the discipline and the patience — bound in a covenant of mutual service. The monks debated endlessly whether the techniques they practiced were spiritual, shard-induced, or something far older than either. Sikro absorbed what he could and asked fewer questions than most. He left the Northern Marches with a working knowledge of **Draconic**, a fire resistance earned through ritual rather than birthright, and an archanotech companion — a draconic construct of articulated brass and shardisite-fed fire that moves with him as a single operational unit, the ranger and his machine.

Sikro does not speak often about the monasteries or what the covenant with his drake required of him. What is visible to anyone who travels with him is the result: a kobold ranger who moves through hostile terrain as though the wilderness is reading from the same map he is, accompanied by a brass-and-fire drake that shares his initiative and his instincts.