Tile Monger
The ruffie known as the Tile Monger (tyl MON-ger) oversees a team of archeologists at an excavation between Riverside Valley and Centropolis, where a prehistoric tile game has been discovered.
Personality
Upon meeting the Tile Monger, most come to the conclusion that he is either insane or at best, a little left of center. As far as anyone can tell, his obsession with the ancient tile game has left him no room for normal social relationships. He seems to have neither family nor friends, and even his colleagues avoid interaction beyond their typical obligations. He does not bathe of his own accord, he never goes home, he scarcely eats and were it not for the efforts of the rest of the archaeological team, he would have long since become terribly ill.
Lore
An excavation project deep under the hills between Riverside Valley and Centropolis once revealed a startling discovery: a strange stone building housing a massive machine that archeologists believed may have been a pre-historic form of entertainment. Although they never figured out how the complex got its power, the building still appears to be completely intact and fully functional, even after untold millennia underground.
While the archeologists attempted to determine the power source and why the massive building was buried, the put out a request to the citizens of Subeta to help figure out the purpose of the game by playing it. The game was described to consist of three consoles in each set, each set of consoles was for one player only. The left console seemed to be a matching game, and it responded to anyone. Sometimes, it even dispensed little white and gold tiles embossed with crude depictions of the species of Subeta. The second console was less of a console and more of a large stone tray with indentations, into which these white and gold species tiles fit perfectly. The final console greatly resembled the first, but getting it to perform any function had been an impossibility. The archeologists assumed that these third consoles were broken but had no idea how to fix them. Hundreds of these console sets lined every wall and interior surface of the building.
Unable to sit around all day playing with the machine, the archeologists left one of their own in charge of monitoring all of the consoles, a field ruffie identifying himself from that day forward only by a title: the Tile Monger. He patrolled the rows of consoles watching Subetans play from behind his thick glasses, likely the only piece of his wardrobe that is still completely intact. The tarp he wore as a cloak was retrieved from the team's garbage, tattered and ridden with tears and holes. Beneath this he wore his original lab coat with a pocket protector and pens in the chest pocket, filthy from the years spent underground.
And so it came to be that the citizens of Subeta learned to play this tile game. Long after the archaeologists have left, and the game has been mastered by many, the Tile Monger still dwells in that excavation site muttering about the importance of the tiles, meticulously tracing the faces on each with his fingers as he waits for the next Subetan to come learn the game.
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