Spondulix the Numismatist was weird. Weird, by any and all standards.

By arcane standards, the wizard caste of his colony recognized his innate talent, yet could not train him as a sorcerer either; strangely, he could cast even when wearing a chain shirt. He called himself a numismatist; they condescendingly called him a bewilderment, a befuddlement, a beguiler, an anomaly and atrocity to magic, and trained him no further.

By duergar standards, for example, he was not a selfish prig, scrambling for a position of power like the rest in his affluent mountain colony, called Van Darkholme. So his job became to manage the Great King’s Vault–—a bank of sorts, where duergar would come in, deposit cheques signed by the labormaster, and Spondulix would pay out their day’s wages.

He loved money, but didn’t quite seem to grasp the concept of it. To many, a coin was a coin was a coin. Gold gathered in the Petty Kingdoms could be spent in Yakami, and vice versa, and the point of all life was to gather gold, any gold, and look down your nose at those who did not have as much. For all intents and purposes, Spondulix did the first part reasonably well. The second… he didn’t seem to bother, for whatever reason.

He was fascinated by how old any coin was, where it was minted, what history was embedded in it, when it was minted, and where. He hated spending money because it wasn’t money to him, it was his collection.

His obsession started when one day, in the Vault, one–just one!–of the gold pieces that came through for sorting after tax season was minted in that place of ill fate: Zakarion. He took one of his own coins and replaced it in the larder–he was no thief, not to the King!–and pocketed the Zakarion Gold. What a journey it must have had! How could it have gotten here? Had a refugee dropped it in the dirt? Had they traded with a Darkholme duergar? Tales of wild speculation flew inside of his head. What an adventure it had to get here! What a joy it was to see, in a sea of boring crude Darkholme gold pieces, which was a boring mix of Al-Qashqan and Zweistrum currency.

Horrifyingly, one day, he must have been so lost in his thoughts that he actually gave his Zakarion gold piece away. For two weeks he was miserable, his favorite coin lost, lost in the caverns of crystals and gems and mushrooms… when one day, on his birthday, in fact, just as unceremoniously, the coin returned.

It was a bittersweet feeling. Relief flooded through him when his coin was in the month’s tax collection he sorted through… but he had the strangest realization. He was the coin. An oddity that did not fit in with the others, and just as some unexpected adventure took him away, he would only ever come back here, to the vault, forced to be with others that resembled him on a completely superficial level.

He wanted to find crudely-sculpted Northmen coins, he wanted tumultuous Lunda coins and the Ngonda coins minted as a direct rival, he wanted the coins the Shining Sea minted as the only thing the bickering Kingdoms could agree on, he wanted far-off Yakami coins and he wanted Zhengese coins minted with the seven kingdoms neatly on the obverse. And while he could–and might!–travel the world to collect them, he realized his fortunes would literally be easier to find in a great melting pot of a settlement known as Ohm’s Basin, where coins of all kinds would flow through.

He put in a two-week’s notice, and began to buy all kinds of equipment to leave. The King of Van Darkholme, Wilbur–who was not so much a king as an expedition leader turned opulent, spoiled noble–even summoned him personally to be searched, thinking he had taken the Vault’s riches. He was stunned to find nothing but a standard journeyman’s gear. The parting was suddenly more wistful–the position of wage distributor was being given to a scribe and intern named Kel whom Spondulix was friends with, and the King, in spite of it all, was sad to see a fellow duergar go out into a world that was more cutthroat to the gray dwarves than they were to each other. Nevertheless, he gave him his blessing, and told Spondulix he would be welcome back any time.

And so, Spondulix came to the Ohm Basin.

Spondulix has been a part of two expeditions since his arrival at Barrow's Maw.