| Slixi Boompowder | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Gender | Female |
| Race | Goblin |
| Affiliation(s) | Steamwheedle Cartel |
| Status | Alive |
| Relative(s) | Klaxz (husband) |
|
Slixi Boompowder is a goblin who invented tossaways, a means of protection from the Uninvited Guest, after her husband, the Steamwheedle trade prince Klaxz Boompowder, fell victim to the creature. She has green eyes and her hair is arranged in ratty teal braids.
Biography[]
Slixi used to mock Klaxz's search for galleons until he returned from the South Sea with six of the legendary coins.
The following year, Slixi and Klaxz attended the funeral of the trade prince Rikter Hogsnozzle. She was concerned about the impression she made at the event, telling Klaxz that he'd be sleeping in the bathtub if he embarrassed her by refusing to carry Hogsnozzle's coffin. Unbeknownst to Klaxz, his behavior at the funeral attracted the attention of an invisible creature that would later be called the Uninvited Guest, which followed him home and began consuming his thoughts of greed. Over the following days, Klaxz started acting strange by forgiving debts, offering discounts, and giving away his and Slixi's valuables. Slixi suspected another trade prince had arranged for a spell to be put on her husband and sent the bruiser Bang and cartel spies on a fact-finding mission. The next day, when Klaxz approached their personal vault, Slixi knocked him out with a frying pan and buried his stash of real galleons in the woods to prevent him from giving them away. Bang returned to Slixi with nothing more concrete than a tale about an invisible creature that fed on souls and could only be seen under a full moon. That night, Slixi became even more furious at Klaxz when he refused to eat and suggested that they should share their food with others instead.
Over the following days, Klaxz's affliction worsened and Slixi tried to watch him to prevent him from plundering the rest of their items. However, when she turned her back, he managed to slip out to the market to hand away all of their jewelry. Slixi confronted him, but he merely said that he was freeing them from the prison of their greed. Days later, Slixi arrived home to find their house completely empty and Klaxz missing. She subsequently found him wandering on the outskirts of town. After she failed to convince him to return home, he walked off into the sunset, never to be seen by his wife again.
Slixi returned to the house and, for the first time, felt the Uninvited Guest's presence in the form of an icy sensation moving up her neck. She fled into the moonlit woods to dig up the galleons, now the last thing she owned. As she ran with the coins, she tripped and dropped them, only to subsequently notice that her invisible pursuer had stopped to count them. She collected the closest galleons and backed away past a patch of moonlight until she felt pinpricks moving up her spine and realized her mistake. She tossed the last galleons behind her and caught a glimpse of the Uninvited in the moonlight before running away. She managed to escape, possibly because she no longer had anything the Uninvited could feed on—neither money nor an ounce of greed.
Slixi settled in a tiny cottage and did what goblins do best. She tinkered and invented something of value: tossaways, painted-gold coins that looked exactly like galleons. As the tale of Klaxz's fate spread, everyone who heard it rushed to the market to buy tossaways from his clever widow. Slixi is apparently still alive; years after the events with Klaxz, an old woman described as having "ratty teal braids" just like Slixi's warned a group of children about the Uninvited using a nursery rhyme, and some say that one can hear an old woman's voice recite the rhyme on quiet nights: "In dark of night and bright of day, / Keep in your hand a tossaway. / Guard your fortune, mind your greed, / Or else the Uninvited Guest will feed."[1]