Manley

Manley has a tendency to tinker with things he shouldn't. Swarthy by gnome standards, he learned the crafts of metalsmithing and alchemy from his father and mother, respectively. After his youth, he helped the family manage a small trading operation, which earned him enough money to follow his own research. Manley is most often seen in a gray jumpsuit and goggles with yellow glass. He is hairless and keeps his skin oiled - both deliberate attempts, he claims, to avoid "pinching and chafing."

His most prized possession is a mechanical suit of his own design, nicknamed the Hissing Mantis. It has four roughly equal appendages, with specialized claws that can grasp ceilings and walls as easily they run over earth. A half-dome cockpit of yellowish glass provides protection from the elements or attack.

He first encountered Chroma while chasing a rumor. Traders spoke of a human mechanic who had somehow figured out a way of catching rain energy that enabled him to fly. After nearly a half-orbit of travel, however, Manley had found nothing but rumors. Chroma approached him in a bar, sensing his deep distress. Inexplicably, Chroma received a flash of insight on the man's location and offered to help Manley find him - but proceeded to blurt it out loud enough for the entire bar to hear. They managed to later fend off an ambush from one of the bar's patrons who wanted the knowledge for himself.

Their efforts were almost in vain. They reached the mechanic's hiding place only to find he had been assassinated and the suit stolen. A series of tattoos on the mechanic's back had the look of blueprints, but Manley couldn't make sense of them. He kept a sketch of them for later reference. A little while later on the same island, he managed to track down the broken suit in a pawnshop. where it had been hocked after being badly damaged.

Comparing the broken suit to the sketch, he managed to figure out how to backwards-engineer it. Just as he began the process, however, Chroma muttered something about Shadow Cultists and wandered off. Manley didn't pay much attention, as religion wasn't his thing. A few hours later, to Manley's horror, Chroma reappeared with a spray of blood across her face (though unharmed) and a mysterious stranger in tow, Mavia, who apparently saved Chroma from certain death by assassins.

This incident cemented Manley's belief that Chroma needs a guardian until she is at least a little wiser to the ways of the world. He then discovered Mavia possesses a glider bike, a rare, motorized, two-wheeled contraption that can speed across the landscape (and perhaps soar through the air briefly given enough speed). Determined to learn more about it, he insisted on traveling with Mavia, which ultimately proved to her benefit when his four-limbed suit was able to fend off another assassin's attack. Grudgingly grateful, she allowed him to examine it.

Courtesy of these adventures, Manley's suit now has extendable butterfly-like wings with fine webbing that make use of rain or clouds (and the strange essences of Sola they carry) to fly. Studying the propellant system of Mavia's bike inspired him to craft an energy cannon which heats darts of metal to a white-hot temperature, now attached to the shoulder of his suit. He's convinced based on this experience that he can offer Mavia improvements to her bike. She is, perhaps wisely, reluctant to let him experiment with it.